* Where's Alderman Moore?

Whatever else you say about Mayor Daley, he is punctual. And he expects his aldermen to be, too.

You may be surprised to learn how infrequently our City Council meets. Our City Council meets about once a month. Sometimes they take August off, sometimes they meet more than once in November and December, around budget time. They start at 10 AM, and they "work" through lunch, but they like to wrap up by early- to mid-afternoon, before the best Loop restaurants shut down lunch to get ready for dinner. The official business of one of the world's great cities is done in 3-4 hours a month.

As specified in our state law, our Mayor chairs City Council meetings. Mayor Daley gavels each meeting to order at PRECISELY 10 AM. Within seconds our City Clerk, or an underclerk if the Clerk is shall we say indisposed, is calling the roll to verify quorum (26). One minute later, it's done. This post reports on those opening roll calls.

Suppose you had a job that paid $100K/year and required you to be downtown once a month at 10 AM, think you could handle it?

Here are the roll call records of all the aldermen with a record of 90% or less of making the opening roll call:

Ward	Alderman	Absences	Present
8	Stroger	40	23%
3	Tillman	35	33%
20	Troutman	34	35%
16	Coleman	31	40%
46	Shiller	31	40%
4	Preckwinkle	25	52%
45	Levar	22	58%
21	Brookins	21	60%
32	Matlak	20	62%
49	Moore	20	62%
48	Mary Ann Smith	19	63%
47	Schulter	16	69%
24	Chandler	15	71%
18	Murphy	13	75%
40	O'Connor	13	75%
26	Ocasio	11	79%
2	Haithcock	10	81%
41	Doherty	10	81%
33	Mell	8	85%
6	Lyle	6	88%
27	Burnett	6	88%

Discussion

Before anything else, an alderman is a legislator. An alderman's most important responsibility is their vote in the City Council. But if you don't show, you can't vote.

Or can you? Alderman is not like any job you or I have ever had. Council tradition allows an alderman to wander in whenever, check in with the chair, add their name to the official "attendance" (which is separate from the opening roll call), and even retroactively add their rubber stamp "yea" vote to all the previous votes they missed! (These requests from delinquent aldermen are not recorded). So missing the opening roll call does not necessarily mean the alderman missed the meeting, or that they did not vote, but it may.

What would they miss by showing up late? Nothing important, most meetings. Most meetings start out with honorary stuff, like, say, recognizing a fireman who rushed into a burning building to save a baby, or consoling the family of a police officer lost in the line of duty, that sort of thing. Nothing really important, not like a multi-million dollar tax break for a corporation, or a massive subsidy for a developer.

Think of the opening roll call as 1st period attendance in high school. It is a measure of an alderman's commitment to their job and their respect for the institution of the Chicago City Council and the office they are privileged to hold.

The period of this report is roughly the term of the current aldermen, minus the last few meetings. The currently seated City Council was sworn in May 5, 2003. Remarkable given the City Council's history of convictions in recent decades, there were no personnel changes in the Chicago City Council until the December 13, 2006 meeting, at which the City Council gave their rubber-stamp approval to Daley's appointments of Darcel Beavers to replace William (7th), Michelle Harris to replace Todd Stroger (8th), and Lona Lane to replace Tom Murphy (18th). During that period, no one died. One alderman was indicted (Troutman, 20th ward, who finished a respectable 3rd in the sleepy-head derby) , but no aldermen were removed from office. We selected this period in order to compare apples to apples. During this roughly 3 1/2 year period, the City Council met 52 times.

Joe Moore and the Opening Gavel

More than 1/3 of the time, Joe Moore is not at his desk at the opening gavel of Chicago City Council meetings. Only 9 of the 50 aldermen have a worse record than Joe Moore on getting to work on time.

I think it is safe to say Joe Moore is not a "morning person."

Moore (49th), Shiller (46th), and Mary Ann Smith (48th) all make the short list of habitual latecomers. Maybe they should blame shoddy Red Line service.

The First Annual Morse Hell Hole - Forum 49 Aldermanic Sleepy Head Awards

But by far the biggest sleepy head in our City Council recently is former Alderman Todd Stroger (8th).

You might think that if you were going to make a practice of sneaking into work late, with lots of people watching, you might not want to draw attention to yourself, and tone down your head gear maybe. But not the 3rd ward's own Dorothy Tillman. She makes her entrance, late fully two-thirds of the time, usually a fashionable hour late, strolling in looking like a float in parade.

Source

The source of this roll call data is the Journal of Proceedings of the Chicago City Council, as published by the City Clerk. This is the official, legal record of the Chicago City Council as required by Illinois state law.