'At its core, we're taking resources and putting them towards working class people, and to that extent, I find it hard to be against that,' Ald. Michael Rodriguez (22nd) said.
A key City Council committee on Wednesday advanced Mayor Lori Lightfoot's plan to spend $12.5 million in taxpayer funds to give out thousands of gas and transit cards to Chicagoans, despite pushback from some aldermen who have called it a"a promotional gimmick for a re-election campaign," and argued the money would be better spent elsewhere.
Many opponents have complained that the program appears to be no more than a political stunt in response to millionaire and"It's no secret that, in just a few months, we're going to have to start campaigning, and have to face the voters, and there are many questions in terms of where this program came from, if it was inspired by [mayoral candidate] Dr. Willie Wilson's gas giveaway.
"Let's not be petty. The mayor's name is on everything. You get off a plane, you're coming into Chicago, it says Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Your check says Mayor Lori Lightfoot. That is a non-issue, and really very, very petty," she told her fellow aldermen. The mayor's staff told aldermen that determining which parts of the city qualify as high mobility hardship areas was based on three factors: the percentage of workers in an area who commute and have a commute of more than 90 minutes, the percentage of an area's population that is disabled, and transportation costs as a percentage of income within an area.
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