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Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Cutting the council, by the numbers

From the Better Government Association analysis that kick-started the idea of trimming the size of the Chicago City Council:


In contrast, New York City has 51 City Council members, and each of those represent over 164,000 constituents. Los Angeles City Council members are only 15 in number, representing over 250,000 constituents each.

A look at the 10 most populous cities in the country reveals a similar finding—each have a higher number than Chicago of constituents represented by each city council seat....

Does anyone want to argue that city services are better in Chicago than in these top 10 cities? Or that centralizing city services isn't the most fair and efficient way of allocating them?

Currently, a ward superintendent who receives an average of $90,000 a year runs each ward.  They manage garbage collection, snow removal, and the blue cart recycling program within their wards, and only within their wards.  Even if it would make more sense for a garbage truck to continue its pick up down, say, a one way street, ward boundaries—not common sense or efficiency—dictate the route.

The idea that 50 aldermen create a stronger, more theoretically independent political body than 25 aldermen doesn't strike me as intuitively correct. The more constituents any elected official represents, the more power he or she has; the more diluted the power of any one alderman, the more concentrated power is at the top.

Think I'm wrong? Imagine the reflexive howls from the reflexive critics if mayor-elect Emanuel had proposed doubling the size of the council instead of halving it: He's trying to weaken any potential opponents! He's simply trying to reduce the impact of any negative votes out there and make it easier for him and his operatives and his money to control individual aldermanic districts.

Go take the BGA click survey if you want, but please, nothing will change nor should it.

We believe in  Chicago exceptionalism. There is no reason to look at how other cities do it, start from zero and try to hammer out an agreement on the optimal size of the Council. Chicago was blessed long ago to have chosen the perfect number of aldermen. Even when the population shrinks, the ratio of aldermen to citizens remains ideal and immutable. Change is bad. Re-thinking or re-imagining that at this point is unthinkable.



I think the whole notion that people rely on their alderman to get their "services" is exaggerated. For one thing, not everyone is the "classic" alderman constituent--owner of a separate single family house (I always imagine that many of these are the "dibs people"--guys who work for the city and are obsessed with the parking space in front of their house and with garbage collection.) I would guess most people never contact their alderman. A city should be able to provide services without the need for minimayors pulling strings. And of course, overall, the aldermen Chicago has are a sorry lot--blowhards, demagogues, and borderline thieves who have found a sweet way to pull in cash.

I thoroughly object to you calling our aldermen "borderline thieves"!

They are outright thieves! Almost 30 of them have gone to prison over the last couple of decades.
Chicago easily has the most corrupt & incompetent city council anywhere in this country!

Garry: I know
But of course I was just referring to the honest ones!

Obviously, quotidian, you have never worked in an aldermanic office. Constituents call for services ALL. THE. TIME. And not only poor constituents, as you claim.

How about this for a counter, Eric? The idea of representative legislatures was for the people to have a chance to know and interact with their reps. Our first Congress had an average of 30,000 constituents per district. While no one is calling for a return to that ratio, our next Congress will hold about 700,000 constituents per Member. Most people have no connection to government in the most representative body, and this accounts in some part for our low level of voter turnout.

By halving the size of the City Council, you'd be doubling the size of the wards, making it much less likely that constituents would ever know their alderman or feel connected to city government. There is fairly good turnover on the Council every 4 years, but doubling the size of the constituency makes incumbents more secure. (It will take more votes to unseat them).

Also, your piece is missing any notion of how City services are delivered. Residents of the South and West Sides know that they do not get equal service delivery to those on the North Side, and halving the number of aldermen is not going to make this any better.

Two comments.

First, in line with @rayspace's comment, I think that decreasing the number of representatives is probably penny-wise pound-foolish, because it also decreases the representative-ness. Not too long ago I saw someone floating a proposal semi-seriously to increase the US House to 1,000 representatives; the cost would be maybe a quarter billion dollars---chump change these days---but the payoff would be that each one would represent a dramatically smaller district and be more able to connect with their constituents. (Also better diversity of viewpoint, etc, etc) In the case of Chicago, I don't really have a kettle in that fire but 50 doesn't seem like an outrageously high number of aldermen.

On the provision of services: I don't doubt that this is often poorly handled, but there is at least the notion of a guarantee that each ward will get its fair share of city services, where a lot of big cities are notorious for providing their services to the richer sections and just leaving the poor areas to rot. Separate from any class-war angle, though, over-centralisation of services makes it harder to respond in emergencies (because decentralised local managers that can make decisions and have their equipment on hand can react more swiftly). In the big blizzard that shut down New York one of the biggest culprits was the fact that all the plows were stuck in one borough (Manhattan, I think) while the operators couldn't get in, and the central office directing snow cleanup just didn't know what the situation was like in all quarters of the city.

"Constituents call for services ALL. THE. TIME. And not only poor constituents, as you claim."

The poor are the ones who own single family homes?

Or did you read Q's comment so quickly as to miss the point?

I thought Q's comment was confusing, Chris--if the "classic aldermanic constituent" is someone who owns a separated single-family house, and who claims dibs, does that mean they don't call their alderman?

Either way, I stand by my remarks. And yes, poor people often own single-family homes. They're certainly not mansions, and they don't sell for $300K, but they are single-family homes nonetheless. My point was less about that and more that people of all income levels and housing situations call their alderman for services.


Wha? You asserted that Q claimed that the only people calling the Alderman for services are poor. I take "classic aldermanic constituent" to be someone who *does* call the alderman a lot--and Q did assert those guys are (largely) city employees, who, in my assessment, do *not* qualify as "poor".


I don't have any issue with that, but you wrote "not only poor constituents, as you claim", and are now standing by it, to which I, again, ask--more clearly this time--where did you get that from Q's comment? Or, more simply, Wha?

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