Emanuel wants public’s ideas on keeping pols honest

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Updated: February 14, 2012 8:11AM

Mayor Rahm Emanuel launched an interactive website to engage Chicagoans in the daunting task of erasing a $635.7 million budget shortfall.

Now, he’s opening the same public dialogue on the issue of how to overhaul and strengthen Chicago’s ethics ordinance.

The Ethics Reform Task Force charged with delivering on one of Emanuel’s key campaign promises will be soliciting ideas at www.CityofChicago.org/ethicstaskforce.

The website includes several interactive forums that allow Chicagoans to respond to topics posed by the task force or email their own ideas on how to clean up City Hall. The public feedback will “inform” a final report expected to be delivered to the mayor in April.

The budget website fielded scores of suggestions, including: legalizing and taxing marijuana; imposing a city income tax and garbage collection fee; holding a Chicago Grand Prix; selling naming rights to public high schools and attaching cameras to stop signs to catch motorists rolling through.

Emanuel subsequently convinced the Illinois General Assembly to authorize speed cameras.

Chicagoans also urged the mayor to cut the City Council in half and slash the pay and expense accounts for remaining aldermen.

That’s an idea that’s almost certain to be resurrected on the ethics reform website.

“I created an Ethics Reform Task Force in order to recommend reforms to Chicago’s ethics ordinance and better serve taxpayers,” Emanuel said in a press release.

“This website will assist the … task force to assess the current ordinance, consider best practices across the nation and make recommendations to ensure appropriate oversight of government activity.”

The Ethics Reform Task Force is chaired by Cindi Canary, former director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform.

Other members include former state senator, comptroller and gubernatorial candidate Dawn Clark Netsch; former federal prosecutor Sergio Acosta and Ald. Will Burns (4th).

Last month, Emanuel said the panel had carte-blanche to look at everything.

That includes examining the work of the city’s do-nothing Board of Ethics and empowering the city inspector general to investigate aldermen instead of letting the City Council have its own sleuth with his hands tied behind his back.

The ethics panel could also entertain the idea of making alderman a full-time job and barring outside employment or even cutting the City Council in half. That’s a controversial subject that Emanuel broached with aldermen during the transition that must either be approved by the Legislature or by voters in a binding referendum.

Without mentioning his predecessor and political mentor by name, Emanuel also drew a distinction between himself and former Mayor Richard M. Daley, who reacted to virtually every new scandal by apologizing and ordering another round of ethics reforms.

“We’re not doing this in reaction to something. We’re proactively doing it. That’s a big distinction. ... I didn’t wait for something to happen. I’m trying to get ahead of it to set clear rules,” he said.