No Experience, But....

This has always bugged us - putting someone in a position whent they have no idea how it actually works. Transportation, schools, police departments, etc. Rahm is continuing that trend:

• With a pledge to hold the line on CTA fares, Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel on Tuesday chose a proven reformer with no background in transportation to serve as CTA president: former Cook County Commissioner Forrest Claypool.

  “I don’t believe it’s time — given how the middle-class feels that they’re nickel-and-dimed on taxes — to be raising rates at this time,” said Emanuel, who campaigned on a promise to extend the CTA’s Red Line on the South Side and rebuild it on the North Side.

  “My first order of business is to see how operations are working to make sure we’re doing it in the most efficient and effective way. ...They have to go through the operations line by line … and find savings.”

Claypool is credited with revamping the Park District despite not having a background in that sector either. We contend that a trained monkey could have done the same thing - it was simply time to modernize and Claypool was in the right place at the right time. Here's what's brewing in any event:

• If Claypool’s CTA tenure is anything like his stint at the Park District, CTA unions could be in for a rough ride.

  He presided over an unprecedented expansion of recreational programming and capital spending while holding the line on property taxes and cutting 800 jobs from a payroll of 4,100. Park District harbors and Soldier Field were turned over to private managers, more than doubling non-tax revenues.

So Rahm has brought in union busters at the schools and CTA. Very interesting.