Budget Puts Chicago LGBT Liaison in Jeopardy

The LGBT liaison for Chicago city government stands to be a casualty of budget-cutting under new mayor Rahm Emanuel, Windy City Times reports.

Emanuel’s proposed 2012 budget, unveiled Wednesday, cuts the position and reorganizes the various advisory councils to the Chicago Commission on Human Relations, with the LGBT and several other councils to be housed under two new ones — the Advisory Council on Gender and Sexuality and the Advisory Council on Equity.

Although the City Council has yet to act on the budget, Bill Greaves, who serves as the LGBT liaison and director of the LGBT advisory council, has already been informed he won’t have a job as of January 1, according to an email obtained by the Times. In it he told members of the advisory council that Human Relations commissioner Mona Noriega had given him the news. He promised further discussion at the council meeting next Wednesday.

Beth Kelly, chair of the advisory council, told the paper that Greaves’s proposed departure and the reorganization of councils is an “affront to LGBT communities in Chicago” and a “symbolic erasure.”

Emanuel’s press office had not responded to the paper’s request for comment by deadline, the Times reports. The paper notes that the budget-cutting would affect numerous city departments and is designed to make up a projected $636 million deficit.