Improving Government, The Chicago Way

Mayor Rahm (the Godfather, Rhambo) Emanuel has announced that city sanitation workers have achieved great efficiencies in workplace attendance under his administration:

In the first four months of 2012, the mayor's office says absenteeism is down 16.3 percent year-to-year for truck drivers, and 13.15 percent year-to-year for laborers. Additionally there has been a 40 percent reduction in disciplinary cases related to absenteeism – from 253 to 152.

While it is possible that removing "ghost" workers alone could account for a good deal of this, Mayor Emanuel assured everybody that there was no truth to rumors that sanitation workers had been told that anyone showing up late on Monday would find themselves in the landfill on Tuesday.