For one bright moment at last week’s City Council meeting, Alderman Nick Sposato—a lowly independent—pulled a badass move straight out of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s playbook.
In case you were busy counting the money from your hedge fund and missed it, this all started last year, when Mayor Emanuel announced his bright idea of spending $55 million of your property tax dollars to buy two plots of land near the corner of Cermak and Michigan.
Moreover, McHugh had already received city approval to build a data center on the site. In September he sued the city, basically asking a judge to keep the mayor from snatching his property.
Of course, the money to buy the land for the Marriott comes from that mayoral slush fund known as the tax increment financing program.
That’s when Sposato pounced, taking advantage of a parliamentary rule that allows any one alderman to divert a proposal to the council’s rules committee.
By the way, I’m not bragging—OK, maybe a little—but I was the guy who suggested that the independents use the rules committee to do to Mayor Emanuel what he does to them. So this is officially the first time that any alderman has ever listened to me.
