The City Council's Zoning Committee approved the Children's Museum's move to Grant Park today by a 6-3 vote after six hours of testimony. Next up, the whole City Council votes on the plan next Wednesday, and Mayor Daley says he has all the votes he needs to get the plan approved. From the Sun-Times: Prior to [today's] final vote, [42nd Ward Alderman Brendan] Reilly tried to get the Zoning Committee to put off a decision,......

More aldermanic shenanigans today: Dick Mell (33rd) is re-writing a law he accidentally broke. Apparently, Mell forgot to register his arsenal of guns last year, and when he realized he was going to lose his appeal, he decided to change the law. Mell has quietly introduced an ordinance that would reopen gun registration in Chicago and create a one-month amnesty for himself and other gun owners in the same predicament. During the monthlong window, gun......

Aldermen are breaking local and state laws with astonishing regularity, according to a new report from The Beachwood Reporter and Chicago Talks. No one keeps written records, and not enough aldermen are present for votes or meetings. The investigation found that nearly half of the 21 committee meetings investigators documented did not have enough members present to vote under their own rules, yet they did. For instance, the traffic committee meeting that violated Illinois law......

A 14-year-old Illinois girl was on a cruise off the coast of California with her family when her appendix burst. The USS Ronald Reagan was dispatched to rescue her, and they did--including a helicopter transport between the ships. [Trib] Mayor Daley says he had no idea his son Patrick had invested in a sewer company that did work for the City. Reading from a prepared statement, the Mayor said "I did not know about......

Aldermen Helen Schiller and Danny Solis introduced a measure yesterday that would make feeding pigeons illegal. And the punishment would be up to $1,000 fine and six months in jail. Their proposed legislation reads... No person shall purposely provide food -- including, but not limited to grain, seeds, greens, bread crumbs and miscellaneous food scraps -- intended for pigeon ingestion on public property or property subject to the city right-of-way. Solis says pigeons deuce......

Former Chicago Police sergeant John Herman faces a minimum of 24 years in prison after he was convicted of rape this week. Herman had a bench trial rather than a jury trial, and Judge Joseph Claps not only found Herman guilty, he also had some additional harsh words for the rapist. "The defendant's testimony is unreasonable and nothing short of perjury," Claps said. Claps also didn't believe two officers who testified on Herman's behalf, saying......

Wow, it's been hours since Al Sharpton was in the news, so here we are today with a new round of Sharpton headlines. He held a press conference outside the Mayor's office this morning demanding that the City effectively treat its police brutality issues--or Sharpton will campaign against Chicago's Olympic bid. He also urged aldermen to reject Daley's nominee for police superintendent Jody Weis's because Daley selected Weis without input from the black community. Psst,......

One of the races that we've been watching this winter is the Democratic Primary in the 3rd Congressional District. Incumbent Dan Lipinski is hoping voters will send him back to D.C. for a third term, but he's facing a tough challenge from Mark Pera, an assistant county prosecutor from Western Springs. That challenge may have gotten a little tougher yesterday when Cook County Commissioner Forrest Claypool endorsed Pera. If you don't remember the 2004 general......

Alderman Howard Brookins Jr. of the 21st ward was hit with a lawsuit this week that claims he owes $41,819.18 in back rent for the Loop offices of his law practice. Brookins didn't know about the suit until the Sun-Times contacted him. Sounds like a fun phone call: S-T: Hi, this is a reporter from the Sun-Times. Brookins: [dryly] Grand. S-T: I'm calling about the lawsuit. Brookins: The what? S-T: The lawsuit? That your office......

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the death of Harold Washington. The Chicago of 1983 was very different from the Chicago of 2007: factories were shutting down, and white middle-class homeowners were leaving the city in droves, taking their property taxes and urban stability with them. An alarming upswing in crime and drugs, coupled with escalating racial tensions left many Chicagoans nervous about the future. Richard J. Daley had been dead for seven years, and......

Happy 80th birthday, Alderman Bernie Stone! All the other aldermen threw him a surprise party today. Squee, cutest city council meeting ever. Police are looking for a silver or white four-door car with a red door on the drivers side because it may be linked to Amadou Cisse's murder. John McDonaugh has quit his gig as president of the Cubs and was named president of the Blackhawks today. According to the press release, McDonaugh will......

Yesterday was Principal for a Day, er, day at Chicago Public Schools, and over 1,600 business leaders, politicians and other bigwigs— including 27 aldermen, five players from the Bears, 30 people from JP Morgan Chase, 71 people from Merrill Lynch, and a bunch of White Castle execs—participated. It's a weird, weird list that you can download from District 299, our go-to CPS blog. But CPS has issues that can't be solved with Charles Tillman's suggestion......

Judge Joan Lefkow handed 28 aldermen their asses today, denying their request to force the City to disclose the names of the police officers accused of brutality. Lefkow said that the case is currently being appealed (busy day at the 7th Circuit), but if the aldermen want to sue the City, they can. Have you been wondering which 28 aldermen signed the petition? We sure have. We called Manny Flores's office and were told there......

As several commenters pointed out, Second City Cop has been on the CTA identity theft case for a few days--and the story there is that a reverend who's on the CTA board attempted to keep the arrest quiet. The only reverend on the CTA's board of directors is Charles E Robinson. Our call to the Board's main office was not immediately returned. Jeanette Sliwinski's psychiatrist testified today that she "didn't see any psychotic symptoms"......

Property tax rates for the Chicago area were announced yesterday, and the fight over how much to raise taxes flared up again. While Todd Stroger tried to make his proposed increases more palatable by offering to rebate any leftover cash from a tax hike that hasn't yet been approved, Mayor Daley took a different approach, sending Library Commissioner Mary Dempsey to a city budget hearing yesterday to shill for higher property taxes. Predictably, county commissioners......

Ugh, finally: 28 aldermen are filing a petition to U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow demanding the City release the names of the most-complained-about police officers. The Sun-Times's spot-on editorial is completely degraded by heinous illustration that accompanies it, from the same "artist" who also did yesterday's ricockulously bad Stroger drawing. The Book Cellar is hosting "Chicago’s Wittiest Women Writers" tonight. We deeply resent not being invited to participate, but cannot deny the wit of Stacey......

Aw, Mayor Daley's mad at the press for blasting his new tax plan in editorials and offering pretty negative coverage in articles. (And cartoons.) Addressing reporters at a news conference, he said "...all of the sudden, you decided that everything is bad. Everything is wrong. That I don't understand struggling families. That's an insult to me...You've done a lot to me over the years. You try to put me in different images. And you have......

Mayor Daley unveiled his $5.4 billion budget today, and with it the expected $108 million increase in property taxes and the 10-cent charge on bottled water. City stickers for SUVs will be more expensive, parking fines will be higher, the tax on liquor will also increase, and the monthly phone surcharge that covers 911 costs will go from $1.25 to $2.50. Also, every time you hear a baby giggle, you have to give the City......

Amid criticism and sermons, the Cook County Board voted 9-7 this afternoon to defer until mid-October any further action on theproposed two percent sales tax increase. So while the tax hike isn't off the table yet, the deadline for first-quarter tax increases was today under state law — which means any increase that may happen won't take effect until April 1, 2008, at the earliest. (The county's fiscal year ends November 30.) County Commissioner Roberto......

Oak Forest officials just realized one unseemly result of the state-wide smoking ban set to take effect January 1: throngs of angry, drunk, cold smokers loitering outside bars. In order to avoid an uprising, or at least to steer clear of unsightly smokers’ tents popping up on their well-tended streets, the local council is taking up the issue. Aldermen are looking into setting rules for would-be structures that may pop up 15 feet away from......

This is going to get way boring, but what the eff. The City Council meeting is streaming online! Watch it yourself, or just follow along with us. Updates at the bottom, until we get too tired of doing this. 10:02 They take attendance. 10:03 This stream is...meh. It keeps cutting out. "We have taken a major step in making our city government more transparent." Turns out they didn't know how hard it would be to......

We cannot wait for tomorrow. Not just because it's the season premieres of The Office and Ugly Betty, but also because there's an even more important show debuting. On the internet. We write, of course, of City Council Meetings, which, starting tomorrow, will be streamed online. Clear your calendars; the meeting starts at 10 a.m. These meetings were supposed to be broadcast back in 2004, but aldermen are pretty pretty princesses. "Some aldermen complained that......

In a 43-6 vote, the Chicago City Council voted to create a new Office of Compliance to police city hiring. Critics have charged that the new office will compete with, and therefore undermine the effectiveness of, the city Inspector General. Daley lauded the vote while reassuring critics, telling the Tribune, "it is the primary responsibility of the inspector general to investigate allegations of misconduct. ... At its core, this department is about assuring that the......

Several days ago, we reported that the Aldermen were going to be considering a ban on sparklers in the city. Unfortunately, the Daily Southtown reports that City Council approved Jim Balcer's (11th) revised proposal to get rid of sparklers in the city, and the sparklers are now banned. They didn't even debate. The Mayor gave his pearls of wisdom on the topic as well. "Sparklers are completely different now," Daley said. "They've gotten more dangerous,......

That's us, holding a sparkler earlier this year. It was at a friend's birthday party, and it was really fun. But all that might be over if City Council gets their way. Two years ago, a 6-year-old was burned by a sparkler on the Fourth of July. So, the City Council threw sparklers in with all the other fireworks on the list of contraband in Chicago. However, it never got any fire behind it,......

Nearly two weeks after Congressman Luis Gutierrez announced that he will, indeed, seek a ninth term in Congress (after announcing that he wouldn't run again), First Ward Alderman Manny Flores has announced that he won't seek the congressional seat. "I did this of my own accord. He's my friend," Flores told the Sun-Times, adding that Gutierrez didn't try to persuade him. Of course, Gutierrez's decision shouldn't be too shocking. The conventional wisdom is that if......

Now that we've gone 21 days since legislators approved a budget, Governor Blagojevich is starting to talk like he really will veto parts of the bill. You may remember his promise to cut $500 million in pork and special projects from the bill, and to move money around to cover his universal health plan. According to the Associated Press, there's no shortage of ludicrous and silly spending in this budget, including hosting a sister city......

One of Chicago's newest aldermen, Bob Fioretti (2nd) is taking heat from one of the city's older hotels. The 14-story Congress Plaza Hotel, designed and built to accommodate visitors to the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, has been embroiled in a strike with UNITE HERE Local 1 since June 2003. According to Crain's Chicago Business, the hotel, owned by Albert Nasser Shayo, a Syrian globe-trotting businessman with residences in New York, Argentina, and Switzerland, who......

Yesterday should have been a great day in Englewood, with the official opening of the new Kennedy-King College campus at 63rd and Halsted. Then Arenda Troutman (pictured) and Shirley Coleman showed up to get their natural clowns on. The two deposed and controversial aldermen claimed that they weren't invited to the opening, even though it was due to their lobbying that Kennedy-King relocated to this very part of Englewood (with possibly a little bit of......

We aren't naive. We know the police protect and serve, that it's a largely thankless task, and recognize their achievements when we can. Overall, though, this hasn't been a good year for the Chicago Police Department, public relations-wise. So if there were a list of the bad seeds in existence, wouldn't you want to know the names? Wouldn't you know who's out there perverting their oath to protect and serve? Judge Joan Lefkow thinks so.......