Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Thursday defiantly defended her decision to use money from her newly created political action committee to shame the 11 aldermen who dared to vote against her $11.6 billion budget.
“Since when is letting voters and residents know how aldermen voted bullying? That’s just silly,” the mayor said, responding to a Chicago Sun-Times editorial taking her to task for her chicagobudgetvotes.com website.
“We have an absolute right to make sure that people really understand who voted, why they voted, what they voted for. A lot of people can’t attend City Council meetings. They may not have access to livestreaming. ... We’re providing an important service. And I stand by it.”
The City Council approved the mayor’s budget by a vote of 39 to 11. Why, then, does she feel the need to incite a political backlash against the dissenters?
“It’s not about winning the vote. It’s about making sure that people in this city have access to basic information about how their government functions. This is not a political exercise for me. This is about educating the public about what happened,” she said.
Ald. Ray Lopez (15th), one of the 11 dissenters, has argued the mayor’s website belittles legitimate concerns about the shaky nature of the mayor’s budget and “shines the light on the true nature of her character: being petty and vindictive.”
Rookie Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th), another “no” vote, has used the mayor’s website as a rallying cry to his campaign contributors.
“Just seven months into her first term, the mayor has sent a very clear message: She will swiftly retaliate against anyone who sides with the people instead of her,” Sigcho-Lopez wrote.
On Thursday, Lightfoot said she is “not worried” about further straining her relationship with a City Council pushing back against her decision to strip aldermen of their control over licensing and permitting in their wards and her threat to do the same with aldermanic prerogative over zoning.
“I am putting out information about how they voted. Pure and simple. ... If they’re upset about how they voted and that people know about it, that’s on them. That’s not on me,” she said.
Lightfoot also stood behind interim Police Supt. Charlie Beck’s decision to abolish merit promotions.
“The merit selection process has become, I think, illegitimate. Survey after survey of police officers of all stripes have felt like people weren’t getting their jobs because of merit. They’re getting their jobs because of who they know,” the mayor said.
Black and Hispanic aldermen are concerned doing away with merit promotions will hurt efforts to diversify the department’s supervisory ranks by rewarding officers who don’t do well on written tests.
But Lightfoot maintained Thursday that aldermen have nothing to fear.
“We’re not gonna take a retreat back from diversity in the department. It’s critically important,” she said.
The mayor noted the upcoming sergeants exam has a written test that’s pass-fail. She hopes that will “eliminate any concerns about testing bias.” The other piece is an oral test being graded by “people outside the department,” she said.
“We have a lot of controls in place to make sure that we’re monitoring the test. And if we see that there are adverse consequences, then we’ll make the adjustments that are necessary,” she said.
“I’m comfortable with the path that we’re on right now. … This was a response to the deep concerns of a lot of people up and down the chain of command that the current structure for selecting supervisors is deeply flawed. And the culprit they have identified is merit selection.”
