With the State of Oregon facing a $2.5 billion deficit (peanuts compared to Illinois’s $12 billion shortfall, but that’s another story), voters there recently passed two ballot initiatives that would raise taxes on those in the upper income tax bracket and on corporations in an effort to close the budget gap.

Apparently feeling that the rich people and the corporations of Oregon needed a champion, Chicago’s own Mayor Richard M. Daley decided to comment on a situation 2,000 miles away that has nothing to do with Chicago. He told the media that the decision of the voters (a pesky group, apparently) was “class war” against “those who succeed and work hard.”

The mayor seldom has met a rich person or corporation he didn’t like, even in Oregon. The fact that those Illinoisans making more than $1 million per year appear to be shielding half their income from taxes (on Illinois millionaires’ estimated $129 billion annual income, they’ve worked it so that only $58 billion—one half—is taxable) and that Chicagoans are paying more for everything (property taxes, sales taxes, parking, you name it) while corporations enjoy public subsidies from the City, never seems to come in for criticism from the Mayor, however.

While he apparently has the time to criticize Oregon’s voters, the Mayor has not taken the time to do the same to his own City officials for cracking down as hard as possible on St. Matthew Lutheran Church in Pilsen. The City alleged building code violations and demanded a ludicrous fine of at least $5,500 per day from a poor parish known for providing free meals and other social services for low-income people, the unemployed, and the homeless.

Neither has Daley criticized City agencies for what Rev. Julio Loza of the church called their “lack of assistance” when St. Matthew appealed to the City for help. Fortunately, the nonprofit group Partners for Sacred Places and one City official, Alderman Danny Solis, have stepped in to defend the church with the aggressiveness Mayor Daley has shown in defending the rich folks of Oregon. They are helping St. Matthew’s with planning, compliance, grants, and fundraising.

Let’s hope that by the time of the church’s next court date in May, the City will have backed off. Instead of harassing this church, the City should do what it can not only to help it survive, but thrive, and to aid it in doing what it does so well—assisting those in the community who need help the most.

Oregon, it is assumed, can take care of itself.