Mayor Lori Lightfoot punished her enemies and rewarded her friends in a City Council reorganization that was the first test of her political clout.
Despite a municipal code that empowers the City Council to reorganize itself, alderpersons ceded that power to the newly-elected mayor, who was given carte blanche to dictate the number of committees and hand-pick committee chairs.Finance Committee Chairman Scott Waguespack , Contracting Oversight and Equity Chairman Jason Ervin and Rules Committee Chairwoman Michelle Harris are working behind the scenes to reorganize and empower the Council before a new mayor and Council are seated.
"I wouldn’t mind having Finance again after what we’ve done to try to clean it up. People want to see it continue to move in that direction. But it’s not really about that. It’s more about empowering the Council to be stronger," Waguespack said. "We’re just soliciting input from aldermen, first on possible rules changes for the next term. And then the other thing was just looking at the possibility of organizing the Council as a group to look at how we’re gonna try to just be a stronger Council, like a lot of people have been saying."
Ervin, who also chairs the Council’s Black Caucus, was one of Lightfoot’s most outspoken supporters. He’d even tried to narrow the field by warning that, with seven African American candidates and a diminished and divided Black vote, the African American community risks "losing it all." "This poses a unique opportunity. We’re sitting down and having a conversation. Who knows what’s gonna happen?Vallas and Johnson both favor a more independent Council, one that chooses its own leaders with input from the new mayor.
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