As the paper goes to print Wednesday morning we are being told by good sources that two major issues dealing with the inequities of this great city are being bumped from expected action by the Chicago City Council and the Board of Education.

Following a rare 13-8 vote by the Finance Committee that went against the mayor’s office supporting an ordinance seeking to spend hundreds of millions of tax increment funding dollars raised in the city’s 50 wards on affordable housing in those wards, the so-called “Sweet Home Chicago” ordinance was to go for a vote by the full council Wednesday.

After a year of planning and work by University Village leaders and parents seeking better choice in K-8 education beyond the failed John M. Smyth Elementary School, the Board of Education was to take action on request to expand the very successful Andrew Jackson Language Academy, north of the Ike, into a now closed school south of the Ike. The plan included a Regional Gifted Program which was expected to lift Smyth, and its poor African American students, out of the educational gutter.

Both issues deal with the realities of Chicago’s historic relationship to the poor and disenfranchised. Both issues are not popular with the city’s leaders of the city and schools as each look to close budget shortfalls of more than $600 million.

It’s somewhat troubling that the leadership of a city of nearly 3 million people and a school system with 400,000 children meet once a month when significantly lesser towns and school districts meet weekly or twice monthly to serve their citizens. It is that fact that makes delay on any substantive issue important to the citizenry nothing short of a slap in the face equal to a back-door economic discrimination.

In the case of Sweet Home Chicago the discussion was bumped to deal with a counter proposal offered by the city after loosing Monday’s vote that forwarded the ordinance to full council vote Wednesday; A fine example of the mayor’s office trumping a real and legitimate vote from the alderman on the Finance Committee.

In the case of the Jackson expansion and the gifted program for Smyth, word from the board meeting underway Wednesday said that action would be delayed because the good-bye ceremony for outgoing CPS CEO Ron Huberman would go overtime, cutting the issue off for the month.

We submit that trumping promises of action to neighborhood leaders and parents, and a legal and binding committee vote by departing leaders, is a reason to hold those who tout change as a centerpiece of their campaigns for the upcoming February city elections to thorough scrutiny.

Daley’s machine, including Huberman, let the city’s poor, not already driven elsewhere, down.