#1- Is Mayor Daley a net positive or a net negative?
#2- Is Mayor Daley the best option we have?
Question #1 is important, if he's a net negative we should want to replace him. But in a vacuum of political or management talent, he may be the best we have.
Fair Disclosure- I'm biased against Daley. For the purposes of this analysis I think I will be fine to put that bias aside since I like to document and record where conclusions and proof come from. But going in to this I should state where I stand on this. I think Daley is probably a net positive. Some of this may be because of the way the Chicago political machine operates and so he is uber-effective- and he probably is a competent manager. However I think someone not so politically connected would rely less on cronies to get the job done, perhaps increasing the effectiveness of municipal government across the board. Fairer bidding for contracts, more competition for licences, etc. But the data will bear this out.
A couple major tasks/work streams to be addressed:
#1- What is the official role of the Mayor? Does Daley accomplish this (Poorly, Well, Fantastically)?
#2- Was the Olympic bid a good use of city / private citizen resources?
#3- The parking meter deal.
#4- Is he dirty? And if not, why is he content to let people think he is? Why are the feds investigating him?
#5- Where is he leading the city? Is he doing this as well as can be asked (if he's as big a dictator as everyone assumes, could he be doing more)?
I think answering/ addressing these issues leads us to the answers for Question #1 and #2. As you can see, these 5 issues in and of themselves require frameworks or approaches to address. #2 and #3 are current as well- so there may be things that are added and the relevance of them may diminish over time. But as examples of decision making- since Daley's been in office for 20 years, one would hope that if these were colossally bad decisions, someone with his experience would not still be making these.
