Mayor Emanuel, along with Bill Clinton, has announced a vague but ambitious plan to build “roads, rail and runways” in Chicago using a huge infusion of private money. Critics almost immediately pointed out that the not-for-profit entity proposed to manage all this investment would stand apart from the City Council, be unelected, and presumably immune from such niceties as the Open Meetings Act, the Purchasing Act, and Freedom of Information laws. Is this just another attempt to privatize the most important aspects of government, or a sincere effort to bring sorely-needed funding to the table to fix our infrastructure?

Did Rahm Emanuel really get only one hour’s notice from his friend Barack Obama that the G-8 was being whisked from Chicago? Both our guests – Hal Dardick (Tribune) and Carol Felsenthal (Chicago Magazine) think it’s plausible. But, they say, our mayor is probably relieved that the G-8 was moved.  If the change was made to thwart some of the planned protests, though, Dardick and Felsenthal say they believe all the protesters will be in Chicago anyway.

We take on the election for  Circuit Court Clerk this week. One of the big issues in the campaign is how, and when, to digitize the office. Millions of filings every year are still handled in avery analog way – putting papers into filing envelopes. Dardick says that fewer than 3,000 cases have ever  been filed electronically in Cook County, but neighboring DuPage files 78,000 every year.