But progressives see it differently. Talk to them and they say that they took Lightfoot at her word when she frequently said during and since the campaign that the Lincoln Yards deal in particular needed lots of work and that a final decision should be left for a new mayor and City Council.

"Her consent for these deals will cost our schools, our parks, and our public services literally billions of dollars in deflected funding," thundered the Chicago Teachers Union in a statement shortly after the City Council vote. "The City Council and the new mayor will have to answer to the people occupying a packed City Council chambers who are jeering their maneuvers."

Or, as Ald.-elect Byron Sigho-Lopez—one of the city's five new socialist aldermen—put it: "I'm surprised that the newly elected mayor decided to hold a brief meeting with the developers and then do this. It was inconsistent with her prior statements." He was one of five newly elected aldermen who boycotted the council meeting to instead protest outside City Hall.

I understand what Lightfoot did. Indeed, I might have done the same thing.

Though I had and still have reservations about the size of the Lincoln Yards project, a city can only have one mayor at a time. Our current mayor negotiated two enormous deals that may in the end yield $10 billion or more in private investment here. What message would it send to other potential investors if we walked away from the deal?

Similarly, I think the progressives really are way, way off base in much of their opposition. The $2 billion-plus in subsidies mostly is for transportation infrastructure, the type of thing government generally pays for. And that money won't "come from" public schools, however much the CTU screams. It will come from property taxes paid by the developers. With few exceptions, the schools will get that money back by raising their property tax rate a little higher on landowners not located in the TIF districts.

But Lightfoot is the one who said she opposed action now. And she's the one who acted very much like the Emanuel she criticized in releasing terms of the deal under cover of night—in this case, a 10:45 p.m. email—too late for morning media coverage and too late to really have much impact before a 9 a.m. City Council meeting.

Team Lightfoot insists it did the best it could, and that in addition to an extra $80 million in promised work for woman- and minority-owned contractors, her crew says it will have the leverage to fight for things such as more park space, more affordable housing and smaller buildings.

But I suspect that leverage will be limited. And my sense is that, in the end, Lightfoot concluded the value of the private investment was worth the public subsidy and truncated civic process.

Interestingly, in another announcement today, Lightfoot named several distinctly establishment figures as co-chairs to her transition committee, including a former White House chief of staff Sam Skinner, Blackhawks' owner Rocky Wirtz and former U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker.

In that, and her actions on Lincoln Yards, I think we're starting to learn some things about our new mayor. Business leaders and those worried about the city's fiscal health will breathe easier. But some others are going to start to get angry.