Foxes Debate Henhouse Legislation

This is silly:

• The City Council will move quickly to empower Chicago's inspector general to investigate alleged hiring abuses by aldermen to bolster the city's case to get out from under the Shakman decree, an influential alderman said today.

  But, Rules Committee Chairman Richard Mell (33rd) said aldermen are so divided about Mayor Daley's plan to give the inspector general more sweeping investigative authority over the City Council, a seven-member subcommittee has been appointed to sort it out.

  During a series of closed-door aldermanic briefings last week with Corporation Counsel Mara Georges, there was no consensus among the 48 aldermen in attendance, the chairman said.

  Some aldermen dug in their heels and advocated "doing nothing." Others wanted the City Council to create its own inspector general. And a third camp favored "some type of commission that the IG would report to -- rather than to the mayor" -- possibly the city's existing Board of Ethics.

Watch for this to be so watered down as to be pointless and we'll be stuck with hoping the Feds get off their asses every decade or so to lock up one of these thieves. And that's about as likely as snow in July with Obama running interference from Washington.