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Some Chicago journos are upset with Time Magazine for crowning King Daley as one of the best mayors in the country.

Rightfully so. Here are the three mayors whom Time considers the worst. Recognize any similarities to Chicago and/or Illinois?

Dick Murphy / San Diego
When he was elected mayor in 2000, Dick Murphy thought he had his hands full dealing with a troubled ballpark project and sewer spills that were shutting down San Diego’s beaches. But then Murphy, 62, a state superior court judge, became embroiled in an even bigger mess: a $1.35 billion deficit at the city’s public-employee pension fund.

The crisis has so discredited him, he almost lost his job last November to Donna Frye, a last-minute write-in candidate who runs a surf shop. She actually won more votes, but some 5,500 people who wrote in her name failed to shade in an oval box, and the courts ruled the ballots invalid.

It was Murphy’s predecessor who first approved underfunding the pension fund. But when a balloon payment became due in 2002, Murphy dodged it by fashioning another underfunding plan, winning the pension board’s acceptance with a promise to hike pension payouts and give special benefits to the union presidents. Now the FBI, the U.S. Attorney and the SEC are investigating the deal.

Kwame Kilpatrick / Detroit
Equally at home in senior centers and hip-hop concerts, Kwame Kilpatrick, 34, inspired Detroit voters with his energy and determination when he rode into office three years ago. But a cherry red Lincoln Navigator has put a big dent in his reputation. After weeks of denying it, the mayor admitted in January that the city paid $24,995 to lease just such a car for his wife.

That outlay showed what Alan Ehrenhalt, executive editor of Governing Magazine, calls “a tin ear for symbolism,” given that Detroit’s $230 million budget deficit has prompted the mayor to eliminate 3,000 city positions and end 24-hour bus service. It has not helped that Kilpatrick left undiminished his 21-person security detail (the mayor of Chicago, a city with three times the population, has 15 guards). When Gary Brown, the deputy chief of police internal affairs, opened an investigation into misconduct by the security team, Kilpatrick fired him, ostensibly because Brown did not get his chief’s approval for the probe.

John Street / Philadelphia
John Street came into office in 2000 with an ambitious agenda to improve Philadelphia’s worst neighborhoods, and even his critics agree he has made considerable progress. But, says Otis White, of the public-policy consulting firm Civic Strategies, “whatever his grand visions have been, he will not be remembered for them. He will be remembered for the corruption [around him].”

There has been no evidence that Street, 61, himself is corrupt, but federal prosecutors say the mayor’s close friend and fund raiser, Ron White, partially took control of city contracting and turned the process into a naked shakedown for donations to Street’s 2003 re-election campaign. White died before going to trial, but former city treasurer Cory Kemp, a member of Street’s administration, and four other defendants await a jury’s verdict. The scandals have turned Street into a lame duck a year early. “The city is in a kind of suspended animation as long as the trials go on,” says former Philadelphia Daily News editor Zack Stalberg.

We got fundraising cronies coming out our wazoos, crippling deficits, public transportation cutbacks, massive layoffs, huge cost overruns on downtown boondoggles, not to mention no real democracy, and Time complains about a freaking Lincoln Navigator?

The only consolation is knowing, without a doubt, that Time long ago jumped the shark.

posted by Rich Miller
Monday, Apr 18, 05 @ 2:46 pm

Comments

And their cover story sucked, too. Idiots.

Comment by Anonymous Monday, Apr 18, 05 @ 3:07 pm
They’re probably just trying to sell their Chicago Bureau property to Trump so that he can build another skyscraper - they know they need the Mayor in order to get the zoning approved - hence their unwillingness to criticize Da Mayor and all that glowing fluff about Daley…

Hang-on…oops, it looks like I mixed-up my pubs and apparently just described those sell-outs over at the Chicago Sun-Times…

…for the record, I think Hizzoner does a fantastic job running the City of Chicago and plan to vote for him yet again. But - like any politico - he should get his share of lumps when he earns ‘em…

Comment by Tom DeLay's Mom Monday, Apr 18, 05 @ 4:10 pm
You didn’t even mention all the TIF (Tax Increment Financing) districts, all setup by the City, used basically as a giant slush fund to coverup all the cost overruns.

Now, everybody says, “So What?”. After all, it’s Chicago’s own money.

Well, the problem is that whenever you setup a TIF district, all the real estate tax assessment increases on properties located within the TIF district are taxed at the same tax rate, but NONE of that added money (commonly referred to as “TIF Increment”) goes to the tax district, it all goes into the City of Chicago’s “TIF slush fund”. City wins out, all the other tax districts get screwed over!

Ever wonder why the CPS doesn’t get the same level of local property tax funding as they should (based upon all the new construction increases)? Well, if that new construction (or any other type of real estate assessment increase) occurs inside a TIF district, well, all that assessment increase is taxed at the same tax rate with all the money sent to the TIF district.

Result: CPS gets no added cash, City TIF districts get fattened & bloated with cash, ready to be sheared by City Hall for their pet projects.

I guess I’m just too cynical….

Comment by Anonymous Monday, Apr 18, 05 @ 7:22 pm
>all the other tax districts get screwed over!

Well boo hoo hoo!

The best is when the bureaucracy screws over other parts of the bureaucracy. I look forward to more of this as Illinois implodes over the next ten years.

Tit-for-tat, looters!

Comment by Anonymous Monday, Apr 18, 05 @ 9:23 pm
I’m looking forward to them publishing a ranking of Governors. Maybe they would lay off Blago and give him a grade of “incomplete” because he hasn’t done anything he has promised.

Comment by Governor Flatus Monday, Apr 18, 05 @ 10:21 pm
Taxes are too high
Too much corruption
Daley is overrated

Comment by Anonymous Tuesday, Apr 19, 05 @ 12:16 am
Would the city have been better or worse if?:

Jane Byrne, or Harold Washington or Eugene Sawyer were still Mayor
OR if
Ed Vrdolyak or Dick Mell
or Don Haider or Don Rumsfield
or Jesse Jackson Jr.
or Ed Burke were Mayor

I think Daley gets too much credit for a National boom in cities and economic growth
Look at Guliani did much more faster in New York
Look at LA
the Pier in Cleveland
Lots of waterfronts were redone
Lots of downtown revitalized
Crime went down in New York a long time ago
What is unique about Chicago?
San Fran had lots more tech growth and jobs
What did Daley do that is unique?

Term limits would do good in Chicago
Change is good

Comment by Anonymous Tuesday, Apr 19, 05 @ 12:19 am
Worst. Magazine. Ever.

Comment by Anonymous Tuesday, Apr 19, 05 @ 5:22 am
i guess its ok to take the credit for all the good things…then say “I dunno”…better yet say “It was him” then get mad in public, fire a fallguy only to have the same person resurface in a cozy postion, when all the corruption, cost over runs, or just the good ol’ “hook up” occurs. Time overlooked Meigs rip up, millium Park, and a few idle trucks

Comment by Anonymous Tuesday, Apr 19, 05 @ 11:22 pm