WORKING TO PROTECT CITY WORKERS

October 28, 1993

Chicago Tribune

WHEN IN DOUBT, CHECK LAW OUT

RESIDENCY CODE FOR CITY CONTRACTS ALREADY ON BOOKS

Robert Davis, Tribune Staff Writer.

A funny thing happened to Ald. Helen Shiller (46th) on her way to drafting a new ordinance requiring contractors doing construction work for the city to hire Chicago residents.

She found one.

A 10-year-old ordinance requiring private contractors to hire Chicagoans as at least half of the work force for city-funded projects has been collecting dust in the lawbooks since the early days of the first term of the late Mayor Harold Washington.

During City Council Budget Committee hearings Wednesday, Corporation Counsel Susan Sher, who is in charge of enforcing city laws, expressed surprise when told by Shiller that such a law existed. Sher conceded that, to the best of her knowledge, it has never been enforced.

And Alexander Grzyb, the city's purchasing agent who lets construction contracts to private companies, also told Shiller he has never required firms to submit residency reports on their employees, even though the law states that they must in order to be paid.

"How can a law be on the municipal books and have it arbitrarily determined not to enforce that law?" wondered Shiller.

Grzyb said he has been purchasing agent for four years, and the law has been around for 10 years, but he was advised by the city Law Department that the law was constitutionally shaky and should be ignored.

"But it's not like someone challenged it in court," Shiller persisted. "It exists. It's there."

But all Shiller could extract from Grzyb and Sher were promises that they would research the measure's history and legality to see if it could be enforced or should be stricken from the books.

Shiller said the city plans to award about $430 million in construction contracts next year, and a 50 percent residency hiring rate would provide hundreds of jobs.

And Ald. John Steele (6th) called for stepped-up enforcement of the residency requirement for city employees after Sher testified that only about 10 cases were brought against suburban-dwelling city employees this year.

Steele estimated at least 500 of the city's 40,000 employees live outside the city, and Ald. Robert Shaw (9th) said he believed the number was "in excess of 1,000."

Under long-standing city law, Chicago residency is a condition of city employment. In the early 1970s, then-Mayor Richard J. Daley ordered a highly publicized enforcement of the generally ignored residency requirement, prompting a large-scale reverse migration of city employees, many of them police and firefighters, back into Chicago.

Copyright © 1993 Chicago Tribune Company