It’s rich to watch a City Council member rail at the very existence of Chicago’s ethics office, especially given that 30 current or former aldermen have been convicted in the past 40 years.

Robert Fioretti of the Second Ward believes that the jurisdiction of the seven-person ethics operation is outrageously broad. To bolster the contention, he used an annual budget hearing last week to, as he described it, quote the Supreme Court justice Byron White declaring “I know it when I see it” about pornography.
Mr. Fioretti was suggesting that he knows what’s unethical, and the office doesn’t, though he botched his jurisprudential history. The porn line was from another justice, Potter Stewart.
As for the office’s being promiscuous in its labors, Steve Berlin, its longtime leader, persuasively squashed several of Mr. Fioretti’s qualms with low-key aplomb.
The alderman did some final harrumphing and declared that the two men differed. He concluded that the office’s annual budget — now just $598,894 for a group competently overseeing ethics, campaign finance and lobbying issues — is not “prudently fiscal,” as, presumably, opposed to being fiscally prudent.

But since we assume neither the king’s English nor upright behavior from our elected officials, I viewed his miscues as a benign part of the free entertainment of a long day at the Council on Thursday.

Four departments paraded before the Committee on Budget and Government Operations, facing soft inquiries and receiving so many salutes to their bureaucrats’ work that a libertarian would gag.
Aldermen want to stay on the best of terms with the folks who hear their requests to fix a pothole, erect a fence, replace a lamp, deal with gang-bangers and, as I would learn, procure an inflatable Jumping Jack for a block party. Their thank-you lists at times exceeded the litanies from Academy Award winners.

The day’s big enchilada was the Police Department, led by Garry McCarthy, the central casting “no-nonsense New York cop” import. His large team arrived dressed to the nines, with more commendations and ribbons than are found on a May Day reviewing stand of a tin-pot dictatorship.
This law enforcement “Project Runway” was not mirrored by the business attire of the leaders of the ethics, cultural affairs and housing and economic development departments. But their sessions had their moments, even if the aldermanic and news media turnouts were tiny.

Andrew Mooney, a respected holdover from the Richard M. Daley regime, led the housing contingent. The interrogation focused on tax increment financing; what might be done with the head-turning 11,266 parcels of vacant city-owned land; and the frustrating matter of jobs.
“Cities are left to their own devices to stimulate their economies,” Mr. Mooney said, summarizing the lay of the land in an era of scant state and federal help.
Aldermen wondered about how wards could get their mitts on T.I.F. revenues, seen as some magical elixir or at least, as Matthew O’Shea of the 19th Ward put it, “the only tool I have in my repertoire” for development.
The subject prompted a plaintive and nostalgia-filled call to revive vacant factory space from Richard Mell, the 33rd Ward alderman with éminence grise status who is the father-in-law of Rod Blagojevich, the convicted former governor.
He recalled long-gone days of workers hopping a bus to the Western Electric or Stewart-Warner plants, and his reverie continued until Carrie Austin, the committee chairwoman, interrupted:

“Alderman, can you wrap your story up?” He gave way to lunch, and then the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, led by Michelle Boone.
She inherits an operation rife with politically driven untidiness, including apparent violations of anti-patronage hiring mandates. There’s also the challenge of following the impressive creative legacy of Lois Weisberg, her octogenarian predecessor.
There was no probing of Ms. Boone’s vision beyond her plan to hold lots of community meetings. But John Arena, 45th Ward alderman, wondered why $400,000 budgeted for inflatable Jumping Jacks, a staple of block parties, was being cut in half.
Ms. Boone explained, and detailed a seemingly more efficient system of allocation that would not shirk block parties.
In this age of pension and budget debacles and tottering European economies, it’s reassuring to know that, at least in Chicago, a few young citizens may get more bounce for the buck.
jwarren@chicagonewscoop.org