From the roots of corruption to the balance of power between our 50 alders (aldermen) and the mayor—plus, why you shouldn’t sleep on committee meetings
By India Daniels
Chicago City Council meets monthly at City Hall downtown. (Photo: Maria Alejandra Cardona/City Bureau)
A previous version of this article ran in the Documenters Newswire newsletter. Subscribe to get explainers and updates on local government happenings delivered to your inbox each week.
City Council is the legislative body that creates policies for how “the city that works” actually works, like how many miles per hour over the speed limit you can drive without getting ticketed, or your rights as a renter. If you remember Schoolhouse Rock!’s “I’m Just a Bill” song, it’s a lot like that—just on the local level and with one group, rather than a house and senate like on Capitol Hill.
Here are four basic things you need to know about Chicago’s City Council:
City Council makes the rules, literally—our 50 City Council members debate and vote on everything from the next megadevelopment deal to whether your block gets permit parking. Each member (known as an alderman) represents and is elected by residents who live in a geographic area (known as a ward). The English origin of the word “alderman” meant “old man,” but since not all City Council members are elderly or men, Newswire refers to them as alders.
The mayor runs the show. While Mayor Lori Lightfoot doesn’t get to vote on most items, she presides over the monthly City Council meeting, where new proposals are introduced and legislation that has made it out of committee heads to a final vote. She also influences who chairs what committee and has the power to veto or block an ordinance that has been passed by City Council, though this doesn’t happen very often.
Legislation is usually introduced or sponsored by the mayor or alders, but technically anyone can propose an idea through the city clerk, an elected official who keeps track of the council’s paperwork, meeting proceedings and votes. Laws that pass are added to Chicago’s lengthy municipal code.
Alders deliberate on citywide policies, but they also have hyperlocal responsibilities. Each alder sits on several City Council committees, but they also support and provide resources to businesses, schools, organizations and the (about) 55,000 residents in their ward. If you want to find out who your alder is or get a better sense of what policies they support, Chicago Councilmatic makes it easy to look them up.
WHAT HAPPENS AT A CITY COUNCIL MEETING?
The full City Council meeting, typically held on the third or fourth Wednesday of the month, functions as a clearinghouse for proposed legislation, whether it’s being introduced for the first time or has already been discussed and recommended for approval by a committee.
Here’s what to expect at a City Council meeting:
There will be a lot of fast-talking, but also many lulls in the proceedings. The meeting may start slow with roll call, honorary resolutions and photo ops, but like a pharmaceutical commercial, there are a lot of words that officially need to be said at City Council. The meeting is likely to run at least two hours long, and sometimes it passes the five-hour mark.
Public commenters will get three minutes each to address alders. The three-minute limit is thanks to perennially concerned citizen George Blakemore. A fixture at local open meetings, Blakemore is known for his lengthy anti-corruption, pro-Black, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ tirades and custom paint-splattered jackets.
New legislation will be introduced (Schoolhouse Rock! calls them bills; City Council calls these ordinances, appointments, etc.) and referred to a relevant committee for discussion.
Laws will be passed. Committee chairs will report any proposed legislation discussed in the past month and whether their committee recommended it for passage. The full City Council will then vote on whether to officially pass it into law.
Parliamentary procedure hijinks may ensue. Like many groups, City Council uses a version of Robert’s Rules of Order, a procedure for running fair and efficient meetings. Every now and then, however, an alder will make a motion, such as to “defer and publish” that stalls or blocks a piece of legislation. Sometimes this is to buy time for building consensus or due to genuine objection, but sometimes it’s just plain old petty.
The full City Council meeting is the last hurdle for getting a law passed, but it’s not necessarily the most important part of the process. By the time an ordinance makes it to that full City Council meeting, there is a solid chance that it will be voted on with little to no discussion. City Council passes hundreds of items each month, so if the mayor supports an ordinance and the relevant committee has signed off on it, that’s often all the rest of City Council needs to know to sign off on it.
CITY COUNCIL COMMITTEES: WHERE THE SAUSAGE GETS MADE
City Council’s committees are smaller groups of alders who meet to review bills related to a specific topic before sending the proposed legislation to a full City Council vote. Most alders serve on somewhere between five and 10 committees, and most committees have around 17 members.
While a committee vote is technically just a recommendation on whether to pass an ordinance, the committee meeting is an opportunity for alders (and public commenters) to pick apart a proposed policy’s process and implications. Committees can also hold subject matter hearings to gather information that may shape future policies—for example, convening a panel to discuss examples of reparations programs—or get a status update, like how the Chicago Department of Public Health is distributing its supply of monkeypox vaccines.
According to the rules, alders are supposed to select City Council committee chairs. In practice, the mayor has a say and can install her allies in strategic seats. While chairing a committee might not be the most appealing task, the political cachet and additional budget make being a committee chair a pretty sweet gig.
City Council has a lot of committees—19 as of this writing—and each one operates a little differently. Instead of running down what each is responsible for (their names give you a rough idea), we’ve organized them into five categories. Here’s our unofficial taxonomy:
The Bigwigs: These committees decide how financial resources, land use and development play out in Chicago. Each tends to meet at least once a month. (Committees on Budget and Government Operations; Economic, Capital and Technology Development; Finance; Housing and Real Estate; Zoning, Landmarks and Building Standards)
The Nuts and Bolts: These committees have more to do with services the city provides, like COVID-19 recovery grants, or policies that the city upholds, like how much advance notice of schedule changes a worker is entitled to. Most meet every one to three months. (Committees on Aviation; Environmental Protection and Energy; Health and Human Relations; Public Safety; Special Events, Cultural Affairs and Recreation; Workforce Development)
Micromanagement Dept.: Most of these committees also meet at least once a month, but much of their agendas are taken up with very specific matters, like liquor licenses and handicap parking permits. These items have already been reviewed by a relevant city department, but sometimes alders override the staff recommendation—for reasons they don’t always explain. (Committees on Transportation and Public Way; Pedestrian and Traffic Safety; License and Consumer Protection)
Untapped Potential: These committees are intended to address areas we’ve said we want to do better in as a city, but they rarely meet. (Committees on Education and Child Development; Ethics and Government Oversight; Immigrant and Refugee Rights; Contracting Oversight and Equity)
The Committee on Committees and Rules: This one is pretty meta—at a City Council meeting, an alder may refer new legislation to this committee so it can decide what other committee(s) should discuss it. Who sits on this committee? “Up to 50 alders” (in other words, all of them). While it does have key tasks (Chicago’s ward remap is in this committee’s court), it’s also been called “where good legislation goes to die.”
If a committee votes to recommend an ordinance for passage, it goes back to the full City Council for a final vote.
THE BALANCE (?) OF POWER
The dynamic between the mayor, City Council and residents is supposed to create checks and balances on who holds power. If the mayor wants to create a policy, City Council has to discuss the bill at open meetings before passing it into law. Alders answer to their constituents and are expected to represent their best interests in those meetings. If they’re not doing their job, people can vote them out. In theory, Chicago’s municipal code sets up a “weak mayor, strong council” system, with the mayor operating as more of a “city manager” than an all-powerful executive.
But in practice, power flows to those who already have money or influence. The average Chicagoan can’t take time out of their day to attend a City Council committee meeting—but well-paid lobbyists can and do. And an alder may remain in office for years, even if they're known for corruption or if locals don’t think they are advocating for their community.
Different alders have competing priorities, whereas the mayor (who controls a large portion of city resources and appointments) can influence alders by dangling perks for supporting her agenda or withholding resources if they don’t. In practice, this creates a “strong mayor, weak council” system—most visible under the 22-year tenure of Richard J. Daley. Even beyond the Daley dynasty, City Council has long been known for obediently “rubber-stamping” the mayor’s agenda, with the expectation that falling in line will benefit them—with the exception of “Council Wars” (April 1983 to May 1986), when 29 white alders stonewalled against Harold Washington, Chicago’s first Black mayor.
SIGNS OF CHANGE: ALDERMANIC PREROGATIVE
Among City Council members, aldermanic prerogative is a key perk of the job. Also known as aldermanic privilege, it is the practice of voting on a ward-specific decision (usually related to how space will be used) according to the local alder’s preference, with the understanding that other alders will do the same for you.
On the surface, aldermanic prerogative makes sense, right? Local alders should know the needs and priorities of their community better than someone from the other side of town, or a city official who knows a lot about business licenses but not whether that new shop makes sense on that particular block.
But aldermanic prerogative can set up alders to make decisions for their own benefit, at the expense of the Chicagoans they were elected to represent. Seemingly straightforward bureaucratic tasks that could be completed by city staff, like signing off on a shop’s new awning or a loading zone sign, are instead routed through City Council for approval. An alder may withhold support for a restaurant permit in the hopes that they’ll hire his law firm. A developer may donate to an alder’s reelection campaign, just in time to receive a letter of support for a zoning change. And the power to gatekeep what businesses or developments are allowed into a ward says a lot about who is and isn’t welcome. Many see connections between aldermanic prerogative and segregation.
When Mayor Lori Lightfoot entered office in 2019, she vowed to end corruption in city politics, specifically aldermanic prerogative. Perspectives on her success have been mixed. Some observers credit Lightfoot with “burying the rubber stamp” but others, many of whom are former Lightfoot allies, say she’s sown more chaos than change for the better.
One thing is sure: Lightfoot doesn’t seem particularly interested in greasing the wheels. Her reputation for stubbornness—which has at least as much to do with perceptions of her race, gender and sexuality as it does with her actual temperament—has contributed to the most divided council the city has had in decades.
As Lightfoot gears up to run for a second term in February 2023, City Council is headed for significant turnover. To date, three alders have left office in the past eight months and at least 12 more will not seek reelection (a mix of retirements, career changes and at least three bids for mayor).
Aldermanic prerogative has shown some cracks in recent years. In December 2021, City Council approved plans for a long-stalled mixed-income housing complex on the Northwest Side geared toward O’Hare Airport employees (many of whom are Black or brown) looking to shorten their commute. In doing so, it went against the wishes of local alder Anthony Napolitano (41st Ward), who argued that existing residents (over 80% white) weren’t experiencing a housing shortage. Napolitano warned his fellow alders that they were setting a dangerous precedent, and that they might one day find themselves outvoted on a matter in their ward.
Among the departing alders who were once Lightfoot allies is Susan Sadlowski Garza (10th Ward), chair of City Council’s Committee on Workforce Development. Sadlowski Garza waffled on but ultimately pushed for the relocation of the General Iron metal shredder from Lincoln Park to her Southeast Side ward. In an unexpected reversal, the city denied the permit in February 2022, heeding environmental justice activists and hunger strikers over Sadlowski Garza and the metal recycling company.
As ProPublica reporter Mick Dumke noted on Twitter recently, siding with Lightfoot doesn’t convey the same aldermanic perks and privilege that it did under previous mayors. Alders are no longer the feudal lords of their own fiefdoms.
Factor in a string of better-late-than-never indictments of corrupt politicians and the pandemic-induced “Great Resignation,” and you get a City Council shake-up that may just signal the end of Chicago’s political machine—at least as we know it.
Correction: Chicago’s deputy inspector general for public safety is appointed by the city’s chief inspector general, who is appointed by the mayor. The Friday, Sept. 23, issue of the Newswire incorrectly stated that both positions are appointed by the mayor.