You can bet that Mayor Richard M. Daley and his political machine will be lining up to get their cut of the hundreds of billions of federal financial rescue package to bail out Chicago from a budget crisis brought on by years of corruption, cronyism, loafing and insider dealings.

Daley and his minions, of course, are counting on president-elect Barack Obama to slice a hunk of the $700-billion-and-growing federal bailout to rescue a city budget that is deep in the red.

They’ll have to jockey for position with the likes of Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and the mayors of hard-hit Michigan auto-making towns already in line. “Washington can’t do what it did in Herbert Hoover’s time and twiddle its thumbs,” Schumer said, probably becoming aware that some of that $700 billion already has been ladled out to AIG and other hurting private corporations. Better get some now, before it runs out.

Somehow, state and local governments have positioned themselves to be mentioned in the same breath as GM, Ford, Chrysler, investment banks and others that the $700 billion was meant to rescue. Not that the private sector should be in line either for such billowing largesse. But, for all the criticism raining down on banks, hedge funds, insurance companies and perhaps even automakers, let us not leave out Daley and his minions when we’re calling for an end to the gravy train for the entrepreneurs who highballed us into this position. If business CEOs and other finaglers should suffer—and they should—from their miscalculations or swindles, then why not impose on Daley and Chicago some basics in return for a slice of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act proceeds?

For example, in return for stabilization act money, recipient companies, such as GM, would be expected to zero out their stock value, leaving shareholders with nothing. The executives of the companies would be forced out, replaced by a competent, neutral overseer. Splendid and costly labor agreements would be revoked, and contracts with suppliers redone.

In return for federal bailout assistance, then, Daley would have to give up his job and the city would be placed in the hands of a federally appointed receiver. Those outrageous labor contracts with their sweet pension and other benefits would be abrogated and the old law prohibiting organized government workers from striking would be enforced. Every contract with suppliers, service providers and consultants also would be annulled; their goods and services would be evaluated—objectively and on their own merits—to determine their need, if any.

And because these are federal funds that would be flowing to the city, their misapplication or fraudulent use would be prosecuted under federal law, in federal court—out of reach of the Chicago machine.

Chicago is facing a fiscal 2009 city budget with a $469 million. Daley is trying to close the gap with this or that tax increase or job cut, but it’s hard to conceive how he’ll do it. Heated debate centers on whether each garbage truck should have two or three laborers (not counting the driver), when suburban trucks do just fine with no laborers and only one driver. It’s the kind of manpower reduction that the machine would never tolerate.

One reason I live in the suburbs is to be out of the reach of the machine’s maul, and its extravagant labor contracts, its payroll padding and featherbedding, and the greed and corruption that squeezes in from every side. I opposed the $700 billion bailout when it was meant only to pull the private sector out of its financial morass, but now that Chicago could be a beneficiary, there are twice as many reasons to oppose it.

**
Dennis Byrne is a member of the Chicago Daily Observer Editorial Board