*** UPDATE *** I can’t believe I forgot to post Mark Brown’s column here. The whole idea for this post came to me when I read his piece about the new Starz series “Boss” starring Kelsey Grammer as a Chicago mayor…

The scene is shot in the actual City Council chambers, which unfortunately may be its only brush with reality.

At one point, Mayor Kane becomes so frustrated with the City Council refusing to go along with him on a particularly outlandish scheme that he clears the chambers of the press and public, shuts off the lights (and presumably the sound system) in the upstairs gallery and decrees:

“Hand over the hardware. Laptops, BlackBerries, phones, iPads. All of it. No word in, no word out. No Twitter. No Facebook. Nothing.”

Mayor Kane goes on to tell the aldermen they will stay there until they vote his way, and if they don’t, he’ll make their votes public. The aldermen grumble, then throw their electronic devices into a box as ordered, but still refuse to vote with the mayor.

Somebody has got to be kidding.

That could happen in the General Assembly, because the Legislature is exempt from the Open Meetings Act. Something similar has actually happened, although it wasn’t done to strongarm members. But there’s no way a Chicago mayor could get away with pulling a stunt like that. And, as Brown points out in his column, there’s almost no way a Chicago mayor would ever need to do something like that.

[ *** End Of Update *** ]

* Gov. Pat Quinn’s administration has found an interesting way of getting around Freedom of Information Requests: Don’t keep records in the first place…

Hundreds of people saw Lady Antebellum, M.C. Hammer, Jason Aldean and other recording artists at the Illinois State Fair this year for free, courtesy of the governor’s office and the Department of Agriculture. But those agencies did not keep records of who received the tickets.

The state gave out 1,997 tickets, valued at from about $10 to $40, with the majority of them going to television and radio stations for promotional purposes to dole out to listeners and viewers. The governor’s office, the Department of Agriculture and the state fair received their own allotment of 654 tickets. The State Journal-Register filed a Freedom of Information Act request for information on who received the tickets.

* What’s next, a dispute over the shape of the table? Sheesh…

With every passing hour, the meeting between Chicago Public Schools officials and the Chicago Teachers Union to discuss longer school days appears less likely.

Last week, CTU President Karen Lewis had said she and her union officers were ready to talk about the district’s controversial plan, but suggested union headquarters as a meeting location.

CPS countered by suggesting the two parties meet at a school that has chosen to add 90 minutes to its school day.

And since then, the talks have stalled.

* Bad timing all around? Steve Stevlic has resigned as Chicago Tea Party director after it came out that he’d been busted last year for soliciting a prostitute. But according to a rival tea party group, Stevlic ought to also resign from the IPI…

Mr. Stevlic, of the 6800 block of West Cermak Rd in Berwyn, was removed from our tea party two years ago for inappropriate behavior towards a female tea party member. We never worked with him or his group and never will.

We also strongly suggest to all affiliated groups and organizations that support Steve Stevlic to stand him down. In particular, we suggest that John Tillman of the Illinois Policy Institute, where Stevan Stevlic, 36, was hired as an employee last week, fire him. We also demand, as tea partiers, that Steve Stevlic resign from his position and resign today. We just cannot afford him!

Actually, Stevlic is already gone. He resigned from IPI right after the revelations hit the media.

* An errant fax provides some insight into how things are done in St. Clair County…

St. Clair County Sheriff’s Department records clerk Joann Reed wanted a speeding ticket for the son of a deputy dismissed, but she didn’t go to a judge or jury in traffic court.

Instead, Reed faxed a copy of the Centreville Police Department’s ticket from the Sheriff’s Department’s fax machine to Centreville village attorney Carmen Durso, with a handwritten message: “Dismiss this case.”

The problem is, she didn’t fax the ticket to Durso. Reed accidentally faxed it to the News-Democrat’s newsroom.

Oops.

* This is just way too much power concentrated in one alderman’s hands…

Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Ald. Edward M. Burke (14th), chairman of the City Council’s Finance Committee, have agreed to work together to wring $15 million in savings out of the city’s $100-a-year million tab for workers compensation. […]

Burke, who has sole authority to process and settle workers compensation claims and handpick attorneys when claims are challenged, has agreed to more aggressively investigate and manage individual cases.

* Some of us wondered why Chicago’s Census effort was so mangled…

Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White’s Securities Department temporarily has revoked the securities license of Alvin Boutte Jr. after concluding that the Chicago municipal finance banker acted improperly in advising the agency that runs the state’s prepaid tuition program to invest $12.8 million in now-failed community lender ShoreBank Corp.

Mr. Boutte — a board member of the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority and recent co-chairman of a committee appointed by then-Mayor Richard M. Daley to provide a total count of the city’s population for the U.S. census — performed the “due diligence” review on behalf of the Illinois Student Assistance Commission for its investment in ShoreBank in late 2008. That investment was wiped out when ShoreBank failed in August 2010.

In its Oct. 3 order barring Mr. Boutte from offering or selling securities or providing investment advice, the Securities Department said Mr. Boutte misrepresented facts ISAC should have known before agreeing to invest and acted both as an adviser to ISAC and as a representative for ShoreBank in soliciting investors.

* This is such a typical Daley move…

In March 2004, then-Mayor Richard M. Daley announced a deal that promised to save taxpayer money, reduce natural gas consumption and bring “green” jobs to Chicago.

But taxpayers might see red when they learn how the deal turned out. More than seven years later, the initiative has been quietly suspended amid problems with some of the equipment — and acknowledgements by city officials that taxpayers will probably lose money on the deal and never realize the energy savings that Daley touted, the Better Government Association has learned. […]

In the end, the BGA found that one of the few beneficiaries of the deal appears to be a businessman with close ties to Daley: United Service Cos. President and CEO Rick Simon, the former chairman of the Chicago Convention & Tourism Bureau and a South Loop neighbor of the ex-mayor.

* And, of course, so is this…

Former Mayor Richard M. Daley on Monday denounced as “disgraceful” and a “personal insult to my wife” an internal audit concluding that recipients of city subsidies were told to donate to Maggie Daley’s After School Matters program.

The former mayor insisted that no arms were ever twisted to produce donations to the charity that his wife founded to occupy and educate Chicago teenagers. […]

Last week, Ferguson charged that After School Matters received $915,000 in contributions over a ten-year period from companies that received tax-increment-financing subsidies from the city.

TIF recipients interviewed by Ferguson’s investigators reported that, in the vast majority of cases, the charities were “unilaterally chosen” by the city with no specific standards for making those decisions.

* Related…

* Double-dipping in the teachers’ pension system: Michael Johnson didn’t wait until he retired as executive director of the Illinois Association of School Boards to start cashing in on his public pension. Johnson earned $324,785 in compensation from the Illinois Association of School Boards, or IASB, while simultaneously collecting $209,379.43 from the Illinois Teachers’ Retirement System between July 1, 2007, and July 1, 2008, according to documents obtained by Illinois Statehouse News.

* Union leaders pull down millions in public pensions: Former employees of the National Education Association, or NEA, Illinois Education Association, or IEA, Illinois Federation of Teachers, or IFT, and Illinois Association of School Boards, or IASB, drawing pensions have collected more than $47 million from the Illinois Teachers’ Retirement System, or TRS, to date.

* Feds investigating Cicero personnel practices: Federal authorities have interviewed dozens of current and former employees of the Town of Cicero, some under subpoena, as part of a wide-ranging investigation into the town’s personnel practices, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, along with the U.S. Department of Justice, is conducting the investigation to determine whether to file a federal lawsuit against Cicero. Over the last three decades, the federal government has sued the town repeatedly over its hiring practices and alleged discrimination, but this investigation specifically targets practices under Town President Larry Dominick.

* Evans steps down as Country Club Hills police chief

* County commissioners violated Open Meetings Act