Ernest Sanders, Greater Auburn Gresham Development Corporation, Ammad Omar, WBEZ and Chicago News Cooperative reporter, Rebecca Vevea, discuss possible cuts to police and fire, the ongoing public education debate, and the reduction of Black-majority wards in Chicago.

Miguel de Valle and Dick Simpson drop by The Newsroom this week for a discussion of the city’s deficit – how it got so big, and what factors (and people) are to blame.  Is Chicago a global city? Does that matter? What’s so special about 90 minutes anyway? Wouldn’t 75 – or maybe 63 minutes also improve the school day?

Mayor Emanuel tells us to stop worrying about the historic abuses in the TIF program. He’s appointed an internal oversight committee to make sure everything runs smoothly from now on. So we couldn’t resist asking the Reader’s Ben Joravsky to come back on the show, since he’s widely credited with being the reporter who “owns” the TIF abuse story. What will Ben cover now that TIFs have been fixed?

Kate Grossman is Deputy Editorial Page Editor at the Sun-Times, and earlier in her career worked for years as a reporter covering the schools. Today’s show is a nice mix of two knowledgeable reporters discussing schools, TIFs, whether Rich Daley will ever testify in the Burge case, and whether you’ll ever have to pay to read the Sun-Times on line.

Oh, and a brief celebration to mark our first anniversary.   Not to worry, though, it’s a very subdued ceremony.

When it comes to CPS budgets and issues, few people are more knowledgeable than George Schmidt, who’s been involved in teaching and reporting on the schools for decades. A blogger and reporter for Substance News, he appears on this week’s show to dish some dirt about the most recent schools budget and offer his perspective on Mayor Emanuel, J.C Brizard and a wide range of issues.

Joining him on the panel is Elias Cepeda, Managing Editor of Extra Newspaper. Elias has been covering schools, too, but he also brings his perspective on the police, and the Mayor’s effort to cut $190 million from their budget.

Just one day after the Chicago Public Schools passed their record budget, Board member Rod Sierra joins the panel to discuss the $150 million dollar property tax increase (“only $1.61 a week”, he explains) and the massive deficits looming in the next few years as pension payments and increased health care bills come due.

Sarah Karp (Catalyst Chicago) and Nora Ferrell (Community Media Workshop) are also on this week’s panel. There’s plenty of substantive conversation about class size, students with special needs, underutilized classrooms and the like, but things get most frisky when attention turns to media strategy.

Appearing on Chicago Tonight, J.C. Brizard proposed a 2% salary bump to some teachers if they’d agree to start the extended school calendar 6 months early. CPS would have you believe it was just a spontaneous offer, but our panel’s not buying it. Media strategy is very important in the Emanuel administration, and Sarah Karp reveals that reporters were given a heads-up to watch the show.

Nora Ferrell, who’s been involved with the Burge torture cases for years, was asked – will Rahm Emanuel seek to settle the cases to get this episode off the table, and will Former Mayor Daley be called in for deposition? “Yes, and Yes”, was her reply.

One day after his 45-minute live “town hall” webcast with Mayor Emanuel, the BGA’s Andy Shaw talks about how he perceives the Mayor’s First Hundred Days. And Mike Miner, Reader media columnist, talks about his recent piece, “To feed, or not feed, the digital beast.

We talk about Emanuel’s budget challenges, the Channel 2 “editing gaffe” with the four-year-old who said he wanted his own gun, and the likelihood of a Chicago casino.

Education  takes center stage on today’s program as we’re joined by Chicago Reporter’s Angela Caputo and education blogger Fred Klonsky.  Has the bureaucracy been so purged of waste and bloat that now it’s ready to accept a hundred million dollar tax hike?

Ammad Omar, News Desk Editor at WBEZ, also joins the panel, and says that there’s a strong possibility Rich Daley will have to be deposed in one of the ongoing Burge trials regarding the possibility that, as mayor, he participated in a cover-up of Burge’s involvement with torture.  Also, the redeployment of police to “hot-spots”.

Meghan Cottrell (Chicago Reporter), Hunter Clauss (Chicago News Cooperative) and Don Washington (Mayoral Tutorial) are on today’s panel for a lively discussion of marijuana tickets, expense-padding firefighters, tree-trimming and a dozen other elements in the construction of an effective City budget.

When Barack Obama started to yield to the Tea Party, it gave them encouragement to continue pressing for more. “People want their president to be tough and decisive”, says Bob Crawford, the sole guest on this week’s Chicago Newsroom. Despite his misgivings, he still doesn’t see a serious Republican challenger, and thinks Obama will probably be re-elected.

It’s a rare privilege to have a guest of Crawford’s stature on the program, and we have a good time taking a few samples of the hundreds of audio clips in his University of Illinois archive of Mayoral recordings.  Bob reported for nearly thirty years from City Hall, mostly for WBBM Newsradio 780.

How does Bob feel Rahm Emanuel’s doing so far?

“In many ways his job skills might make him more qualified than Rich Daley was, simply because of the way he came to the job.” he said, referring to the fact that, unlike his predecessor, Emanuel didn’t come up in the system, and owes no allegiance to “pay to play”.

Crawford says there’s just no way Emanuel can balance the budget without layoffs, and some of those layoffs will have to be union people. And there will probably have to be an end to the “prevailing wage” policy that pays union members at the same rate as higher-paid seasonal workers in the private sector.

It’s Bob Crawford Unplugged on this week’s Chicago Newsroom.

Chicago through the eyes of the Editors this week. Tom McNamee, Editorial Page Editor for the Sun-Times and Lou Ransom, Executive Editor of the Chicago Defender are our panelists this week.

The black out-migration from Chicago, privatization “tests” for blue-cart recycling (can privatization of garbage collection be far behind?) , City Council remapping and the Defender’s story on “vanishing children” on this week’s show.