Straight shooting has been a trademark of our city since back in the days when the phrase was not a metaphor. It’s what made our city work.
For example, the way the Cubs do baseball fairly reeks of the simple, direct Chicago style. The Cubs don’t mess around with all that trading and free agent hunting, run scoring and victory-producing stuff. They show up at the park, we show up, they play, they stink, everybody goes home happy.
Our tradition of straightforward approaches to all things, including political bribery, is why I am saddened by last week’s approval by the City Council of a new ethics ordinance. The ordinance will empower a mayoral ethics panel to review the activities of aldermen for evidence of ethical violations.
I fear it will turn ours from a city of warm, fun-loving, if felonious, politicians into one of sterile bureaucrats.
Imagine sending a note to City Hall requesting the removal of a tree and, two months later, receiving the following:
Dear requesting citizen
28744,
The department of tree removal, after consultation with the department of tree installation, pursuant to greenery enhancement directive
781, has forwarded your request for the removal of a category 4/A terrestrial life unit from your category 4/h domestic habitat. However, prior to a hearing on the advisability of said removal, the following information must be forwarded to the mayor’s office of shade calculation and the municipal branch, leaf and trunk (BLT) authority.
a) What is the ethnic origin of the tree?
b) To what religions is the tree sacred?
c) What was the race and/or sex of the person who planted the tree?
Compare that to the response I received when I faxed a similar note to my local precinct captain. I received his reply within hours after our neighborhood bar closed.
Yo homey,
I would be most delighted to arrange the rubbing out of any trees that do not cooperate with your botanical objectives. Allow me to guarantee your personal satisfaction wid the woyk they do, which I will personally inspect the day after said woyk is completed. Incidentally, I will be accompanied by my parole officer, who maintains a sincere interest in all things arboreal.
Council members Tillman, Smith and others were right to oppose the ethics ordinance. Aldermen Stone, Burke and Jesse (G-d bless his prison-bound heart) Evans were wrong to support it. The ordinance runs counter to our municipal traditions. It dishonors our ancestors, it pollutes our water — alright, never mind that last part. It does, however — and this may be the most serious part — threaten our time-honored system of not low-price aldermen, but good aldermen at low prices. Of course, there is one last hope for our honored tradition of politics unpolluted by principle: The mayor could, like the Roman Catholic popes of yesteryear, sell exemptions to the committee’s scrutiny.
His father would be proud.
