This week's worst Chicago alder. Ray Lopez of the 15th Ward.

With Eddie Burke out, the race to the bottom is wide open.

With Eddie Burke out of the city council and about to go to federal trial for corruption the race to hold the title of the Chicago city council’s worst alder is wide open and from week to week it is any alder’s to hold.

I’m thinking of awarding the tiara and sash on a weekly basis.

But this week it’s an easy pick.

I’m going with Alder Ray Lopez of the 15th ward on the city’s south east side.

Block Club reports:

A measure to regulate where public bookcases, also known as Little Free Libraries, can be built in Chicago was advanced by a key city committee Tuesday.

Introduced this summer by Ald. Raymond Lopez (15th), the ordinance would require a public way use permit to build a free library on city-owned property.

Little Free Libraries are often placed on city parkways outside their owners’ homes.

Additionally, only “organizations, not-for-profit entities and licensed businesses” would be eligible to receive the necessary permit to build a bookcase on city land under the legislation.

Private individuals would not be allowed to construct the structures on public property at all, Lopez confirmed in an interview Tuesday.

“These bookcases have been popping up all throughout the city completely unregulated. And we’ve seen now as they gain traction in popularity, they’re showing up in locations that they probably need some clarification, particularly in parkways that don’t belong to the individual erecting the bookcase,” Lopez said. “So what this ordinance does is just basically creates a permit that will serve as a way of registering these in the public way.

Somebody had to keep an eye on free libraries on the grassy strip outside people’s houses and Alder Lopez has boldly taken on the job.

Lopez also objects to Chicago’s Sanctuary City status and wants it revoked.

Chicago’s status as a Sanctuary City goes back to the Harold Washington administration in 1985.

That year, Mayor Harold Washington, who was opposed to federal authorities asking questions of people applying for city of Chicago services, issued an executive order that barred city employees from enforcing federal immigration laws. The order became law in 2006, and the city reaffirmed it after Trump was elected president in 2016.

Now alder Lopez and some other Chicago alders want an end to the city’s Welcoming City law, siding with the likes of Trump, Florida’s DeSantis and Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

Yesterday when a city council committee voted to put a binding referendum on the 2024 ballot to institute a transfer tax on sales of homes over a million dollars, Lopez opposed that too.

But he did introduce a bill to fine parents $5,000 for “out of control children.”

Even Eddie Burke never thought of that one.