New Council Assignments

Published Jan 31 2007, 09:05 PM by David S. Bernstein

New city council president Maureen Feeney has announced the committee assignments for 2007. There's a lot of shake-up, because A) the change in president, B) the death of Jimmy Kelly, and C) the bargaining that went into Feeney's victory. I don't see any evidence that she put anybody in the doghouse.

The biggest change is Chuck Turner regaining the Education chair from John Tobin. My sources say that Tobin offered this up to help swing Team Unity to vote for Feeney, once Tobin decided to support her -- but I'm sure others might tell different versions of how this came to be. Tobin gets Intergovernmental Relations, which is a pretty good booby prize.

Feeney gave Flaherty a decent landing, giving him the chair of the newly-reconfigured Labor & Workforce Development committee, plus Public Utilities.

Team Unity's Sam Yoon also scored big, keeping his precious Housing chair and adding Human Services, but Felix Arroyo and Charles Yancey didn't seem to trade up much.

I think Jerry McDermott may be the biggest winner; he loses Utilities but gets Ways & Means -- which Consalvo cannot be happy about losing -- and Financial Services/Community Investment.

Consalvo gets the wide-ranging Government Operations chair as consolation. Salvatore LaMattina scored with Neighborhood Services and Transportation. And Steve Murphy -- who might really be staying put after all -- swaps out Labor for Economic Development while keeping Public Safety.