Controlling The Message: One Year Under Rahm

By Chuck Sudo in News on May 16, 2012 9:15PM

AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast

Has he been mayor a year already? Cheezis! But it was on a day like today (but about 10 degrees cooler) when Rahm Emanuel proclaimed a new era in Chicago's history.

"Today is your day" he said before a crowd of Chicagoans at Millennium Park that came out to celebrate his day. What have we learned about Emanuel in the past 365 days?

We've learned his administration has an astounding capacity for message control and discipline. The general promises of not doing business as usual at City Hall, "securing Chicago's future," looking out for the "taxpayer," and touting Chicago as a "world-class city" remained unchanged as Candidate Emanuel emerged from his cocoon as the new Elective Majesty. The emails from Mayor's Press Office arrive in the inboxes of Our Town's media with the consistency and frequency we wished trains would arrive.

And Emanuel zips across town to media opportunities like a hyperactive child, repeating how this is the greatest city in the world and how rebuilding it is a team effort.

That's nice and well, but our concerns are with the roadmap. Rahm Emanuel vowed to usher in an unprecedented era of transparency in government and got off to a good start with the launch of the City's Open Data Portal. Of course, that commitment to transparency stopped when it came to some of his own actions. One of the major concerns of the new Chicago Infrastructure Trust is its incorporation as a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, thereby ensuring it isn't subject to Freedom of Information Act requests and the Open Meetings Act. The Trust, which will leverage private financing to repair the city's crumbling infrastructure, has the aldermen who voted against it concerned that Emanuel is doubling down on privatization snafus like his Richard M. Daley's parking meter lease.

Let's use that as a segue, shall we? On Inauguration Day Emanuel went out of the way to praise Daley as he headed out the door. Since then, Emanuel has made sure to remind us all that he's inherited pension funds that are nigh-insolvent, labor deals heavy on furlough days, crumbling infrastructure, and an angry electorate that finally understood what a slush fund Richard M. Daley had under his control with tax increment financing districts.

Emanuel soon discovered that City Council will support his measures, so long as he scratches their backs. Some of his measures don't pass by the unanimous votes Daley enjoyed for over two decades, but Emanuel quickly showed the Art of the Beltway Deal also worked in the Council chambers. He hit the ground running on collective bargaining and took a hardline stance with labor unions, winning some victories on new labor deals, while other unions brace for the worst. He passed a budget that didn't raise property taxes, but does nickel and dime you with fines and fees.

Even with all that message discipline, there's some tarnish to Emanuel's glow forming. A Chicago Tribune poll showed 52 percent of respondents were happy with Emanuel's job performance. But his support among African Americans, women and the poor was less. African Americans were one of the voting blocs that helped elect Emanuel to office, but the first group to hold his feet to the fire.

Respondents to the Tribune's poll were also divided as to whether Emanuel is ushering a period of reform in local government. After a year, Rahm Emanuel is still a mayor whose words are so vague that his actions merit closer scrutiny.