Policy

By ordering an outside audit of the city’s deal with Chicago Parking Meters LLC, Mayor Emanuel looks tough by sending a signal to the parking meter company that City Hall is minding the store and guarding the cash register.

Thanks to a deck that has been reshuffled and re-cut, the odds are even that legalized video gambling in Illinois can be fun for some players, profitable for some governments and, we hope, ruinous for fewer gaming addicts.

Mayor Emanuel empowered an ethics task force and dumped an ineffectual ethics board. Now it’s time to get the task-force recommendations through the City Council.

It’s time for lawmakers to stop talking about changing the way the Chicago Police Department handles the interrogation of violent crime suspects and to begin working towards real criminal justice reform.

Cook County has four separate mosquito abatement districts that cost taxpayers more than $11 million a year. Public officials keep talking about consolidating the districts but are all talk and no action.

No public pension fix will ever be complete, or successful, if it doesn’t end the costly and wasteful perks and sweeteners that suburbs, towns and villages dole out to favored workers.

Chicago’s set-aside program for minority- and women-owned business has made headlines over the years – mostly because contracts have been funneled to companies controlled by non-minority males instead of the people it’s supposed to benefit.