Is a little more direct democracy the solution to Chicago political corruption?

Mayoral hopeful Amara Enyia proposes just that to deal with the volatile subject of zoning applications, as rivals Gery Chico and Lori Lightfoot roll out their own ethics plans and the Chicago Teachers Union releases a new poll that pretty much shows the mayoral race wide open.

First, Enyia.

She's calling for some things other candidates also back, such as authorizing the city inspector general to investigate aldermen, but also adds a new wrinkle: how do deal with near-aldermanic control over things such as zoning applications and permits for sidewalk cafes, routine building improvements, driveway cuts and the like.

Those powers often are tempting for aldermen in search of a shakedown target, Enyia told me in an interview. So the routine stuff should be handled administratively by city bureaucrats who, presumably, have no personal interest in the matter, and zoning decisions should be flipped to ward assemblies comprised of local residents.

Some aldermen now have advisory zoning panels. Enyia would make creating them mandatory and eventually give them binding authority over questions such as whether to approve a proposed high-rise or affordable housing complex. Interestingly, she'd open the panels to anyone who wants to join, even if that means a committee of hundreds. "I think it's good if you actually have 500 people," she said. "You want to have as many people involved as possible."

I'm not sure about that, but her proposal does aim directly at what Ald. Ed Burke, 14th, allegedly did: shake down a restaurant owner who needed his permission to remodel his Burger King outlet.

Enyia also wants to create a New York City-style "public advocate" who would monitor and testify on things pending before the City Council.

Meanwhile Chico, in a somewhat similar move, said he'd abolish "aldermanic privilege"— control over routine permitting issues—by turning the job over to regular city departments to resolve.

And Lightfoot, along with more than a dozen candidates for alderman, signed a "people first" pledge promising, if elected, to run for only one office at a time, ban outside jobs for City Council members, limit aldermanic privilege and strengthen the City Council's rules on conflicts of interests.

In other news today, a Chicago Teachers Union poll found Toni Preckwinkle leading the field of candidates with 18 percent of respondents, compared with 12 percent for Susana Mendoza and 10 percent for Bill Daley. No other candidate got more than 7 percent.

CTU, which has endorsed Preckwinkle, also found voters are most concerned about crime, education, and property taxes and fees—19 percent, 16 percent and 15 percent, respectively—and that the union itself has a 62 percent favorable rating among respondents vs. 24 percent unfavorable.

The union also reports: "A majority (56 percent) of voters also say it is important that the next mayor do something to address the unequal concentration of wealth in downtown and the 'push out 'of working-class African-American and Latino families."

If that's the way the question was posed, I'm amazed the figure wasn't even higher.

The survey of 600 likely voters was conducted by Lake Survey Partners, Dec. 11-16, and has an error margin of plus or minus 4 percentage points.