Chicago’s City Council will soon have a new committee tasked with making sure as many residents as possible take part in the upcoming U.S. census count despite the fears of the city’s big undocumented immigrant population that federal authorities could use the information to try to deport them.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot is again expanding the roster of City Council committees, putting popular veteran Northwest Side Ald. Ariel Reboyras, 30th, in charge of the special “Complete Count” Committee that will exist only until after the 2020 census is finished.
Creating this 19th committee gives Lightfoot another avenue to push back against Republican President Donald Trump, who has sought to include a citizenship question on the census. Though the Supreme Court denied that move, many immigrants living without legal permission in Chicago and elsewhere are leery about taking part in the once-a-decade count that helps determine the level of federal funding cities receive.
The new committee also allows Lightfoot to give a new chairmanship to Reboyras. She bounced him from running the Public Safety Committee, where he was closely linked to the police agenda of Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
“We’ll be working very closely with, there’s about 25 organizations currently working on the city of Chicago,” Reboyras said after the Rules Committee voted to create the new committee. “So the objective is to gather all the information and bring it to one central location, which will be the city of Chicago Committee on Complete Count.”
Though it would have been difficult to keep Reboyras atop the Public Safety Committee, Lightfoot’s move to strip him of that chairmanship was met by grumbling from other City Council members who said he shouldn’t have been punished simply for doing his job in a difficult spot under Emanuel.
Lightfoot wants to avoid any unnecessary City Council drama as she prepares to ask aldermen to take what promises to be a series of politically difficult votes to raise taxes and fees to cover a huge 2020 budget hole.
Asked whether he’s happy to have another chairmanship, which will come with a budget of about $110,000 so he can hire two employees, Reboyras said, “Why surely, I’m always happy to help out the current administration.”
The full City Council will consider the creation of the new committee on Wednesday.
Twitter @_johnbyrne
