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Mayor Brandon Johnson introduced his $17.6 billion 2027 budget to the City Council on Oct. 21.

He calls it a “Fair Share” budget, a callback to Harold Washington’s 1986 proposal that bears little resemblance to the city’s modern spending plans. Johnson says his budget makes giant corporations and Big Tech pay.

The budget fills an $882 million hole with $427 million in new taxes and fees, $231 million in one-time money and $61 million in rosier revenue estimates. It also borrows $481 million to pay police misconduct settlements.

The council has until Dec. 31 to pass a budget. Johnson and all 50 aldermen face voters in February.

Here are four ways Johnson’s “fair share” budget hits the little guy.

1. The head tax is window dressing

Harold Washington proposed cutting the city’s head tax in his 1986 budget: from $5 per month per employee to $4.

The head tax no longer exists in Chicago. But Johnson proposes bringing it back, at an even higher rate than his failed proposal to do so last year.

• 2026 proposal: $21 per employee per month, for employers with more than 100 workers.

• 2027 proposal: $25 per employee per month, for employers with 125 or more workers, with a credit for employees who work at sites in disadvantaged areas.

Johnson’s proposal would create a jobs-specific tax bill five times higher than any peer city.

The tax would raise an estimated $114 million. And it is highly unlikely to pass. Twenty-nine aldermen signed a letter before the budget dropped saying no head tax, a strong majority of City Council.

The head tax proposal is kayfabe. Johnson gets to play the people’s champion grappling with “giant corporations.” The city’s largest employers are cast as the heel. But everyone knows how the match ends: a majority of the council has already said no. And if the council did indeed pass it, everyone would pay. A tax on each job is a tax on hiring.

Ald. Bill Conway, 34th Ward, said on WTTW it would effect about 376,000 jobs, roughly a third of the city’s private-sector workforce.

Chicago cannot afford a penalty on growth. A new Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago report found:

• The Chicago region’s economy grew 1.5% a year from 2010 to 2023. The 15 largest metros averaged 2.9%. Chicago ranked 14th of 15.

• The region’s population did not grow at all from 2010 to 2024. Peer metros grew 1.1% a year.

A city that does not grow can’t outrun its problems.

Johnson’s own plan admits as much. He calls it the “Equitable Employer Tax,” and refunds the full tax for jobs located in census tracts the city designates as disadvantaged. Budget Chairman Jason Ervin said on WTTW the credit is meant to “drive investment into those areas.”

But that only works if employers decide where to put jobs based on the tax.

If a $300-a-year charge per worker can pull jobs to the South and West sides, it can also push them to Schaumburg, Oak Brook or Indiana.

2. The real tax hikes land on customers and small businesses

The head tax gets the headlines. But that’s not where most of the new money is coming from.

Johnson wants to raise Chicago’s personal property lease transaction tax from 15% to 20%. That is estimated to bring in an extra $235 million, more than half of all the new taxes and fees in the budget. He calls it a tax on Big Tech because it covers cloud software.

But Big Tech doesn’t really pay it. The law puts the tax on whoever leases the property or uses the software. Microsoft, Salesforce, Anthropic and Amazon Web Services simply add it to the invoice. And it’s not just software. The tax hits:

• Copier and equipment leases

• Tool rentals at Home Depot

• A tux for prom

• A bouncy castle for a block party

Fox32’s Brandon Pope asked Johnson about the impact of the lease tax on small businesses in his interview last week.

The fine print makes this tax worse for startups. Johnson’s revenue ordinance cuts the lease tax exemption for small, new businesses. Today a firm under $25 million in receipts and less than 60 months old pays no lease tax on cloud software. Johnson’s plan drops that to $4 million and 36 months.

Johnson’s plan also goes back on a promise. Last year the council raised the lease tax from 11% to 15% and wrote into law that the rate “shall not be increased prior to January 1, 2028.” Johnson’s ordinance strikes that sentence.

No other big city does this. Chicago is the only one of the nation’s 15 largest cities with a standalone tax on leases. The other 14 tax leases at their normal sales tax rate, between 7.5% and 10.25%. Chicago’s lease tax is a separate city tax, and Illinois exempts Chicago leases from the state’s lease tax. So Chicago’s 15% is the whole tax on the lease, and the city keeps all of it. In the other 14 cities, the city’s share of the tax on a lease runs from zero to about 4.5%.

Also note: Not everyone goes to 20%. Johnson’s ordinance cuts the rate for film and television productions to 11%.

Why is a TV production’s “fair share” smaller than a landscaper’s?

A film crew renting cameras and lighting rigs for a Netflix series would pay an 11% tax. A neighborhood landscaping company renting a skid steer and a trencher for the spring season would pay 20% tax.

And the lease tax is not the only hike aimed at regular people:

• Sports betting: the city tax doubles, from 10.25% to 20%.

• Liquor: the tax on alcohol bought at a store doubles, from 1.5% to 3%.

• Packages: a new 15-cent tax on most types of home deliveries.

• Loading zones: from $110 to $350 a year outside downtown.

• Driveway permits: from $10 to $50.

• Licenses: massage businesses and pharmaceutical reps go to $1,000.

Of the $427 million in new revenue, $114 million comes from a corporate head tax the mayor has not done the political work to pass, and almost certainly won’t.

Far more, $313 million, comes from taxes, fines and fees that will hit everyday Chicagoans and small businesses.

3. It continues the city’s worst budgeting practices: covering recurring operating expenses with borrowing and one-time revenue

Johnson wants to borrow $481 million to pay police misconduct settlements. WTTW reported the breakdown:

• $261 million for 16 lawsuits tied to former Det. Reynaldo Guevara

• $120 million in settlements the city already owes

• $100 million set aside for lawsuits that haven’t been settled yet

This comes one year after the council approved $283.3 million in borrowing for the same purpose. The city’s CFO estimated that bond alone would cost about $52 million in interest over five years.

The city budgets about $82 million a year for police settlements. It paid $107.5 million in 2024 and more than $285 million in 2025. It has overspent that line in every year since 2010 except two, according to a Chicago Tribune analysis.

Paying for these settlements with bonds is borrowing for operations.

Budget Chairman Jason Ervin, 28th, defended this on WTTW. Charging current taxpayers all at once is not prudent, he said, so the city should “spread the pain.” Spreading the pain means future taxpayers are on the hook for the settlement plus interest.

Johnson’s own staff used to say this. Alyx Goodwin is now the mayor’s senior policy adviser on community safety. In a 2020 webinar for the Action Center on Race and the Economy, she attacked this exact practice as “police brutality bonds.”

“We see this very specifically as Wall Street profiting from police violence,” she said.

The council recently came within one vote of making this harder. Ald. Marty Quinn’s ordinance would have required 30 votes, three-fifths of the council, to approve new borrowing. Johnson vetoed it. On Oct. 14 the override failed 33-17, one vote short of the 34 it needed.

The budget also uses $231 million in one-time that won’t be there next year:

• $118 million from a TIF surplus sweep

• $75 million from the latest parking meter deal

• $38 million from the Catalyst Fund

4. It ignores efficiencies the city paid consultants to identify

Chicago’s spending problem is not a mystery. City spending is up $4.1 billion since 2019, a 46.5% increase.

• Pensions: up $1.54 billion, or 113%.

• Non-pension personnel: up $1.59 billion.

• Budgeted positions: about 900 fewer than in 2019, including 1,253 fewer police.

Spending rose by billions while the city budgets fewer workers. This means taxpayers are paying more and getting less.

But the city already paid consultants to find ways to do more with less. Ernst & Young identified up to $1.4 billion in potential efficiencies. Johnson’s 2026 budget used about $12 million. The city spent $3.2 million on the report.

Last week, Ald. Anthony Beale, 9th Ward, said on WTTW that none of the EY recommendations have been implemented. Johnson’s 2027 plan adds about $288 million in Corporate Fund spending instead.

The worst of both worlds

Johnson’s budget rollout attempted to make villains out of the city’s biggest employers. But his proposal sends the bill to everyone else.

Fixing Chicago’s structural budget problems will require a grand bargain. Labor gives up some positions, pay raises and benefits. And the city raises some new revenue, which overwhelmingly goes to paying down debt faster and ending the borrowing for operating costs. That would be closer to a “fair share” budget for everyone.

The council has until Dec. 31 to pass a budget. They’d be wise to start from scratch.

In the news

I joined the Mincing Rascals podcast on WGN Radio to discuss Johnson’s budget, last week’s piece on Hilario Dominguez, and more (Apple Podcasts, Spotify). My “green light” recommendation: Nathan Fielder’s “The Curse” (2023).

Allegations against former Chicago Teachers Union political director Hilario Dominguez have become central in the race for school board president.

Dominguez is facing off against school board member and former CPS principal Jessica Biggs and trial attorney Victor Henderson for the presidency in the Nov. 3 elections.

A report from the Chicago Public Schools inspector general released Friday sheds new light on those allegations. The office found insufficient evidence to substantiate them and closed the case. But the 34-page report says far more than the headline his campaign has been promoting.

Here are five things to know.

1. The report says the alleged victim’s account is believable, realistic and not outlandish.

The former CPS student was 17 in the summer of 2017 and a paid intern at The Resurrection Project, where Dominguez, then 24, was a youth supervisor. She alleges two incidents. Alone with him in his car on a work errand, he asked her something along the lines of, “What type of guys are you into?” A week or two later, in a hallway at the office, he grabbed her around the waist, lifted her off the ground and swung her side to side with their bodies pressed together.

The inspector general’s office wrote that she “described the two incidents during her OIG interview in a believable manner, and she articulated the emotional distress she felt at the time.” It called her descriptions “realistic and not outlandish.”

The investigation “did not find that one party was significantly more credible than the other.”

So why no finding? The office cited no identified witnesses, the passage of nearly a decade, and the fact that her account to investigators covered less than what The Resurrection Project’s 2018 records described. And even if the incidents happened, it said, Dominguez’s conduct may not have been sexually motivated. It may have been “an ill-advised matchmaking effort or attempt to relate to her as a mentor.”

2. The report says Dominguez’s alleged conduct “would not be acceptable behavior for a CPS staff member” and would violate today’s Boundary Standards.

“To be clear, Dominguez’s alleged conduct — asking [her] about her dating preferences on one occasion and physically picking her up, holding her body against his, and swinging her from side to side on another occasion — would not be acceptable behavior for a CPS staff member,” the report states.

“Currently, such conduct would violate CPS’s standards for staff/student boundaries … even if it was not sexually motivated.”

Those standards didn’t apply here only because CPS hadn’t adopted them yet. They were published to staff in January 2018, months after the alleged conduct. Dominguez also wasn’t a CPS employee at the time, though he worked for the district before and after.

Is he a CPS employee now? The report’s first footnote says that on Oct. 9, CPS told the inspector general that Dominguez “is still on a ‘special leave’ relating to his position with the [redacted].”

If this is union leave from his job at CPS, it’s the same arrangement Mayor Brandon Johnson has used. As I wrote last year, Johnson remains on union leave from the classroom, accruing seniority. A June 2023 internal CPS memo from the district’s chief talent officer flagged his employment status as a potential conflict of interest in his dealings with CPS.

A school board president who is also a CPS employee on leave would raise the same questions.

3. The Dominguez campaign is misrepresenting what the report says

Before the report, Dominguez’s lawyer Larry Suffredin called the allegations “proven false.” Suffredin is a paid lobbyist for CTU.

Dominguez posted a short outcome letter from CPS’s Title IX office on his campaign website under the headline “Office of Inspector General Clears Hilario in Full.”

The report says something different. It found insufficient evidence under a preponderance standard, not that the events didn’t happen. It found the alleged victim’s account believable and neither party more credible. And it said the conduct she described would be unacceptable for any CPS staffer today. It also says, to be fair to Dominguez, that “there has been no determination that Dominguez crossed boundaries.”

The young woman put it this way in a statement: “While I am disappointed in the failure of this report to affirmatively verify my experience, it certainly does not exonerate Hilario Dominguez, or ‘clear him in full,’ as he claims.”

4. At least one of his major backers recognizes the report is not definitive.

Dominguez’s top financial backer is the Chicago Teachers Union, where he formerly worked as political director. The primary entity CTU is financing to promote its endorsed school board candidates is called Our Schools PAC.

I received a text last week from Our Schools PAC in support of candidate Debby Pope in District 2B, so I asked about the OIG investigation into Dominguez.

“It’s impossible to know for sure what actually happened,” the staffer acknowledged, “and it’s not uncommon for investigators to fail to address the harm experienced by survivors.”

This is in stark contrast to how the Dominguez campaign described the allegations, and the report.

5. The dynamics of this case warrant an independent investigation

As I wrote last week, the district’s structure invites doubts about the inspector general’s independence.

Johnson appointed CPS Inspector General Philip Wagenknecht effective Jan. 14, 2025, one day before the power to appoint that office passed from the mayor to the school board. The office reports to a school board where Johnson appointed the majority, including the president. Johnson, like Dominguez, is a former CTU organizer whose campaigns are bankrolled by the union. He has said “I support Hilario Dominguez,” and he publicly called on the office to resolve the investigation quickly.

The national standard for inspectors general asks offices to consider “whether there is anything about their situation which might lead others to question their independence.” This case clears that bar easily.

Wagenknecht says politics played no role. “No one outside this office has influence over how OIG investigations are handled, and there were no external efforts to influence this matter,” he said Friday. The mayor’s office says it never contacted the inspector general during the investigation.

But calls for an outside review are growing.

Sixteen City Council members called Thursday for an independent investigation, saying in a statement: “The Mayor’s hand-picked CPS Inspector General rushed a finding to meet the deadline he publicly demanded, sending a devastating message to every girl weighing whether to report abuse.”

Mayoral candidates Matt Brewer and Susana Mendoza, and at least eight school board candidates, called for an independent investigation last week: Michelle Pierre (1B), Kyna Lenhof (2B), Pete Gonzales (3A), Ellen Sherratt (4A), LaPamela Williams (5A), Isaiah White (6A), Jesus Ayala (7A) and Patrick Watson (10B).

New board has an opportunity to start fresh

Whoever wins on Nov. 3, the new school board should take up a question this case has raised. Right now, the CPS Law Department represents the board, the district’s departments and, by default, the inspector general’s office. This creates conflicts of interest. As I wrote last week, school boards in Denver, Miami, Austin and New Orleans have their own counsel. Chicago’s board should, too.

The new board will have plenty more on its plate when it’s seated in January. The Chicago Policy Center’s CPS Excellence Agenda offers a platform for that work, including research-proven reading instruction, zero-based budgeting, a 14-vote requirement for all new borrowing and opening full bargaining sessions with the Chicago Teachers Union to the public.

Holding the district accountable starts with how it handles allegations like this one. It should not end there.

A former Chicago Public Schools student sent a letter to the CPS inspector general last week.

“I experienced sexual grooming behavior by a former CPS employee and supervisor, Hilario Dominguez, in 2017 at the Resurrection Project,” she wrote, according to the Chicago Tribune.

When she was 17 years old, she alleges Dominguez asked her what kind of men she liked and later lifted her up by her waist. “My breasts, my legs, everything was pressed against his body,” she said. “I froze.”

Dominguez is the former Chicago Teachers Union political director turned candidate for school board president. And he denies these allegations, which have dominated headlines in the run-up to the Nov. 3 school board elections.

Less discussed is another part of the same letter from the alleged victim to the inspector general’s office: “I am writing to share my anger, frustration, and disappointment, but most importantly, the deep sense of injustice I faced as a result of your poor conduct in relation to this investigation.”

The office’s governance structure calls into question its ability to impartially investigate these serious claims against Dominguez.

Candidates for school board, and Mayor Brandon Johnson, should be saying so.

Potential conflicts of interest in investigating allegations against Dominguez

The current CPS inspector general, Philip Wagenknecht, was appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson in January 2025. And the IG’s office reports directly to the Chicago school board, where Johnson has appointed the majority of members, including the board president.

Johnson, like Dominguez, was formerly a political organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union. The union and its affiliates are the top financial backers of their respective campaigns.

“I support Hilario Dominguez,” Johnson said in a press conference when asked about the allegations.

Dominguez’s lawyer, Larry Suffredin, has called the allegations “proven false.” Suffredin is a CTU lobbyist.

Wagenknecht is certified by the Association of Inspectors General, whose “Green Book” is the national standard for state and local IGs. There several standards from the book that are relevant in this case (emphasis added):

• Appearance of independence: “The inspector general and OIG staff should consider not only whether they are independent and whether their own attitudes and beliefs permit them to be independent, but also whether there is anything about their situation which might lead others to question their independence.”

• Placement: “The OIG’s location in the governmental structure should allow it to exercise independence in fact and appearance from operations, programs, policies, and procedures over which the OIG has authority.”

• Independent counsel: “The OIG should have on staff, or have access to, legal counsel to advise the OIG, independent of the agency or jurisdiction subject to the OIG’s oversight.”

The board resolution on Wagenknecht’s appointment includes provisions allowing him to seek outside counsel in cases where conflicts of interest may arise.

Board members should support that.

Who’s calling for an independent investigation?

At least eight school board candidates have either called for an independent investigation of this matter or called on Dominguez to step out of the race:

• District 1B: Michelle Pierre

• District 2B: Kyna Lenhof

• District 3A: Pete Gonzales

• District 4A: Ellen Sherratt

• District 5A: LaPamela Williams

• District 6A: Isaiah White

• District 7A: Jesus Ayala

• District 10B: Patrick Watson

And at least two mayoral candidates have called for independent investigations.

• Matt Brewer: “The mayor should insist on an independent, transparent investigation and make clear that protecting students comes before protecting a political ally.”

• Susana Mendoza: “The mayor and the CPS IG have lost our trust on this matter. I urge Mayor Johnson, the CPS Board and the City Council to call for an independent investigator on the serious allegations involving Mr. Dominguez and the IG’s handling of the investigation.”

The Dominguez allegations raise other legal questions

The potential for conflicts of interest in this case extends beyond the inspector general’s office.

The same lawyers provide services to Chicago school board members and all of the district’s departments. That means if Dominguez were to win election, the CPS law department might need to represent him in the IG’s investigation. But those same attorneys are the default counsel for the IG’s office, as well.

Regardless of the election outcome, the newly elected Chicago school board would be wise to hire independent board counsel reporting to the board, rather than sharing legal resources with the district (and the IG’s office) as a whole.

This is a common practice in other large school districts across the country.

In August, Denver’s school board voted to hire outside counsel to avoid potential conflicts of interest in negotiating a new contract with the superintendent. School boards in Miami, Austin, and New Orleans each have their own counsel, too.

In the news

Brandon Johnson vetoes debt limit: Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson on Friday vetoed an ordinance requiring a 30-vote supermajority in City Council to borrow money. No big city has fewer borrowing limits than Chicago. And no big city has a lower credit rating, either. The council needs 34 votes to override Johnson’s veto. The ordinance passed with 32 votes, but there were three absences.

Illinois House makes history with city charter hearing: State Rep. Ann Williams, D-Chicago, announced the Illinois House Executive Committee will hold a subject matter hearing on a city charter for Chicago: Tuesday, Oct. 13 at 10 a.m. in the Bilandic Building.1 Chicago is the only major city in the country without a charter, which functions like a constitution and serves as the city’s foundational governing document. This will be the first public hearing of its kind in at least a century.2

Election update: Have you requested your ballot for Chicago’s Nov. 3 school board elections? Join more than 3,000 Chicagoans who have requested their ballot here.

Chicago is home to a “pay later” political culture.

As a result, it has the lowest credit rating of any big city in the country. And it is the most financially stressed big city in the county, according to a recent Reason Foundation report.

A new analysis from the Chicago Policy Center shows why this isn’t surprising: no other city makes it so easy for local lawmakers to borrow money.

Encouragingly, City Council last week voted to put a speed bump in place for new borrowing deals, voting 32-15 to require a three-fifths vote (30 alders) to issue debt, up from the current simple majority requirement (26 alders).

But Mayor Brandon Johnson is crying foul.

No other big city places fewer limits on borrowing

In February 2025, Chicago City Council approved an $830 million bond deal 26-23, after Mayor Brandon Johnson cast a tiebreaking procedural vote to advance the measure.

The deal’s severely backloaded payment structure—the city makes no payments on the debt for the first two years, then interest-only payments until 2045—more than doubled the cost of the borrowing, to $2 billion.

This deal and the way it happened would not be allowed in any other major city.

Some notable differences emerge when comparing Chicago’s lack of safeguards with other major cities:

• In nearly every big city (12 of the 15 largest by population), all new general obligation debt requires voter approval. This requirement typically lives in the state constitution, with some cities placing additional rules in their charter.

• In Los Angeles, San Diego and San Jose, new borrowing requires two-thirds voter approval. And sending that question to voters requires a two-thirds vote of the city council.

• In New York, the mayor alone can authorize borrowing, but the state constitution dictates how much the city can borrow, what the money can be used for, and how fast it must be repaid.1

Chicago has none of these safeguards.

Even if Johnson were to sign the ordinance establishing a three-fifths threshold for new borrowing, Chicago would still be the only one of the 15 largest cities where politicians alone can approve a deal like this, with no voter approval and no limits on how it’s repaid.2

That context makes the reaction from Johnson and his allies all the more difficult to take seriously.

Johnson signaling he may veto the new debt limit

A deep sigh.

That was Chicago Ald. Pat Dowell’s response on the Fran Spielman Show when asked about Mayor Brandon Johnson’s reaction to the Council’s vote on the new debt limit.

The mayor compared the Council’s measure to the Three-Fifths Compromise. Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gate wrote in reference to the debt limit, “The anti-Blackness that no one is covering is so striking to me.”

Dowell chairs the Finance Committee and was among the majority of Black alderpersons who voted in favor of the higher vote threshold for new borrowing.

“You know I’m not going to respond to it,” she said of the criticism. “We approved the housing and economic development bond of $1.5 billion under the old structure and not all that money’s been used. So I believe we should have fiscal restraint, and this is the way of ensuring that happens.”

Dowell is right. And her remarks call to mind a speech from Ald. Anthony Beale last year on the Council floor.

“We are headed toward a cliff,” he said.

“Now yes we’ve made some bad decisions in the past. And if you’re not willing to admit we’ve made some bad decisions in the past, shame on you. But let me just tell you this, when you know better, you do better … We’re not making those bad decisions anymore.”

The mayor should know better.

Big cities need lawyers.

For more than a century, Chicago’s top lawyer has been chosen by the mayor and has served at the mayor’s pleasure.

But is that structure serving Chicagoans well?

With last week’s resignation of Chicago’s corporation counsel, it’s a timely question. And a new report from my colleague at the Chicago Policy Center arguing for an elected city attorney shows why it’s worth asking.

How did Chicago lose its elected city attorney?

Today, Chicago’s top lawyer is called the corporation counsel.1 The mayor picks this person, the City Council confirms them, and the mayor can fire them at will.

The corporation counsel runs the city’s Law Department, which houses about 270 attorneys who represent the city in lawsuits, negotiate settlements, and advise the mayor, the City Council and city departments.

But for more than half a century, Chicago also had an elected city attorney. This office handled lawsuits against the city, hired its own staff and reported to the City Council every year on every case the office was handling.2

That all changed in 1905.

The Illinois General Assembly passed a law asking Chicago voters to approve an amendment to the state’s Cities and Villages Act. This amendment abolished Chicago’s elected city attorney and handed its duties to the corporation counsel’s office, alongside several major changes to city government, including (among others):

• Extending the mayor’s term from two years to four.

• Giving the mayor power to release anyone jailed for violating a city ordinance.

• Making interest earned on city funds belong to the city, not to the treasurer or other officers holding the money.3

• Barring Chicago aldermen from holding other federal, state or city civil offices.

Voters approved the question: 102,360 yes (70%) to 43,851 no (30%)

But there were two major problems with this vote.

First, the electorate was entirely male. Women did not win the right to vote in Chicago city elections until 1913.

Second, voters saw essentially no information about what they were voting on. The ballot question was both oddly worded and extremely vague:

For the Adoption of the Act to Amend an Act Entitled, "An Act to Provide for the Incorporation of Cities and Villages." Yes ▢ No ▢

The Chicago Eagle newspaper described the gambit this way:4

The extending of the mayor’s term from two to four years was accomplished at the polls on Tuesday.

But it was accomplished by the most barefaced trickery ever attempted at a Chicago election.

Outside of some of the editors of some of the daily papers, and some deep-dyed villain as yet under cover, no one in Chicago was in favor of this outrageous scheme.

The official ballot bore no reference to it.

The nefarious plan was hidden under a statement on the “little ballot” that purported to “amend an act relating to cities and villages.”

Many people believed that this was the new charter talked of so much by our reform newspaper tom-cats.

They dared not submit the proposition clearly to the people.

So in short, Chicago’s politically powerful succeeded in abolishing the elected city attorney’s office.

But they did so by ignoring women and tricking men.5

Controversies in the corporation counsel’s office

Worries that a mayor-appointed corporation counsel will put the mayor’s interests ahead of the city’s aren’t new. They go back more than a century.

A 1903 story in the Chicago Tribune, “His Own Work Condemned by Corporation Counsel,” shows the problem.

At the time, the corporation counsel’s office drafted ordinances for aldermen. The Council would often pass those ordinances unchanged, but then the corporation counsel would advise the mayor to veto them as “not properly drawn.”

The explanation from an assistant corporation counsel was that ordinances drafted for the Council were “unofficial.” But when the mayor asked for an opinion, “our action is official.”

There has been no shortage of controversies since.

My colleague Gerrin Alexander’s new report for the Chicago Policy Center details several recent examples:

• The Anjanette Young raid: In 2020, the Law Department, then run by a longtime friend of Mayor Lori Lightfoot, tried to block a TV station from airing body-camera video of police handcuffing an innocent, naked woman during a wrong-house raid, and sought sanctions against her attorney. The corporation counsel resigned amid the uproar.

• ShotSpotter: When the City Council twice voted to rein in Mayor Brandon Johnson’s cancellation of the gunshot-detection contract, the Law Department sided with the mayor, arguing the Council’s ordinance violated the separation of powers. That left aldermen in a bind. Under state law, the corporation counsel is “the legal adviser of the city council.” Aldermen threatened to sue, but repeated efforts to give the Council independent counsel have stalled.

• The “gift room” scandal: In 2025, then-Inspector General Deborah Witzburg told aldermen the Law Department “selectively acts in opposition” to her investigations when they could embarrass city leaders, including her probe of the mayor’s gift room.

And it’s not just a Chicago problem. In 2024, New York City’s top lawyer was pushed out after raising concerns about her department defending then-Mayor Eric Adams in a sexual misconduct lawsuit.

What an elected city attorney could do for Chicago

Before 1905, Chicago’s elected city attorney defended the city against lawsuits from people injured on its broken streets and sidewalks.

Today, the lawsuits look different. In 2025, Chicago taxpayers spent nearly $259 million resolving police misconduct lawsuits, more than five times the Law Department's entire budget. The city also paid a record $36 million to private lawyers to defend those cases.

The mayor runs the Police Department. The mayor also hires, and can fire, the lawyer who defends it in court. That lawyer negotiates the settlements that aldermen are asked to approve.

An elected city attorney would answer to voters instead. That lawyer would be freer to say plainly when the same kinds of cases keep costing taxpayers, and to push for changes that would stop them.

An elected city attorney could also:

• Take a harder look at bad deals: An appointed lawyer has little incentive to challenge contracts signed by the boss. An elected one could independently investigate deals such as the 75-year parking meter lease. In San Diego, the elected city attorney helped void the city’s lease deal for an office building after uncovering a broker’s conflict of interest.

• Referee fights inside City Hall and give aldermen straight answers: When the mayor and Council disagree, the city’s lawyer shouldn’t work for one side. An elected city attorney wouldn’t have to worry about how the mayor might react to a legal opinion before giving it to the City Council.

• Stop running interference for the mayor: An independent lawyer would have less reason to slow-walk inspector general investigations that could embarrass the administration.

Electing a government’s top lawyer isn’t unusual. In 43 of 50 states, including Illinois, voters elect the attorney general. Los Angeles, San Diego, Columbus, Ohio, and Milwaukee elect their city attorneys.

The elected city attorneys in those cities say independence is the point.

“They’re not my boss,” Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein told the Chicago Policy Center of his city’s mayor and council. “The voters are my boss, but [the mayor and the council] are my client.”

Former Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer said being elected frees the office to give honest advice: “One isn’t concerned that the advice one gives might lead to losing one’s job.”

The problem with Chicago’s corporation counsel isn’t about any one person. It’s structural. A lawyer the mayor can fire will always face pressure to protect the mayor.

How Chicago can create an elected city attorney’s office

On Feb. 23, 2027, Chicago voters will weigh in on a nonbinding question asking whether the City Council should have its own independent legal counsel.

When aldermen put that question on the ballot, Mayor Brandon Johnson argued the Council couldn’t create its own counsel without permission from the state. State law does name the corporation counsel as the City Council’s legal adviser. That’s exactly why the structure needs to change.

The correct answer to that nonbinding ballot question is yes. But voters deserve a binding vote on the office itself.

The Illinois Constitution lets home-rule cities such as Chicago change how their officers are chosen, but only with voter approval. There are two ways to get the question on the ballot:

• The City Council puts it there. Aldermen can pass an ordinance placing a binding referendum before voters.

• Chicagoans put it there themselves. Residents can gather petition signatures to force the question onto the ballot.

If voters say yes, Chicago would elect its city attorney alongside the mayor, clerk and treasurer, in nonpartisan elections with a runoff if no candidate wins a majority.

In 1905, Chicagoans gave up their elected city attorney on a ballot that didn’t say so.

This time, the question should be clear.

In the news

Using schools for politics: Thank you to Chicago Public Schools board member Michilla Blaise for taking down a political advertisement filmed inside a CPS school, which spurred an ethics complaint from the Chicago Policy Center. We’ll continue to monitor use of CPS property and resources for political purposes as early voting begins this week for Chicago’s historic school board races. Case in point: we filed another ethics complaint last week regarding Board Member Aaron “Jitu” Brown’s apparent use of CPS resources for political activity.

Mincing Rascals: I joined John Williams, Eric Zorn and Marj Halperin on this week’s Mincing Rascals podcast to talk about President Donald Trump banning CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, mayoral candidate Bill Quinlan’s lawsuit against several mayoral candidates running for other offices, and Chicago’s school board elections (Spotify, Apple Podcasts). My “green light” recommendation: the Music Box Theater’s screening of Babylon (1980) on Sept. 27 and Sept. 29.

Public school advocates back opting in to federal tax credit: Stand for Children Illinois, which self-describes as “anti-private school voucher,” is urging Gov. JB Pritzker to opt Illinois in to the federal tax credit scholarship program, with a new policy brief on how the scholarships can fund tutoring, after-school programs and career training for public school students. I’ve written about why opting in would benefit Chicago public school students, specifically.

Chicagoans are about to make history.

Mail-in ballots start hitting mailboxes this week for the city’s first-ever fully elected school board. Voters will select local school board members across 20 districts, plus a citywide board president.

Order your ballot

Frederick Douglass High School, which Chicago Policy Center analysis found is the emptiest big-city school in the nation, has become a flash point in the campaign.

But Douglass is only the most extreme example of the district’s challenge with empty schools. It’s not alone. Chicago Public Schools operates 158 schools that are at least half empty, according to Chicago Policy Center research.

Among these 158 schools where enrollment is 50% or less of ideal capacity:

• The median share of students proficient in math is 9%

• The median share of students proficient in reading is 22%.

• There is an average of one full-time employee for every five students.

• More than 43,700 students attend these schools, 14% of total CPS enrollment.

Research has long shown under-enrolled schools struggle to provide the breadth of academic courses and extracurricular opportunities available at larger schools, which was echoed in a recent CPS analysis from ProPublica and Chalkbeat.

Dollars spent on empty desks are dollars that aren’t available for student enrichment. And with CPS enrollment down 122,000 students since its 2002-03 peak, the district needs to ensure its facilities are operating in students’ best interests.

But how?

California has a framework for school consolidation

Consolidating schools is far from simple. But CPS doesn’t need to start from scratch. And it doesn’t need to repeat the same model pushed by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel to close 50 schools in 2013.

For more than a decade, the California Department of Education has maintained a Best Practices Guide for Potential School Closure. The framework includes six chapters with detailed guidance on community engagement, measurement, decision-making, implementation, transitioning surplus property, and special considerations for districts under financial distress.

The Chicago Policy Center’s CPS Excellence Agenda calls for Chicago’s new board to convene a Blue Ribbon Commission to run such a process. Most importantly, this commission would establish an ongoing framework for optimizing school facilities for student success, including core principles of school utilization, neighborhood coverage, and model school staffing.

And the state could help. Illinois in 2025 passed a new law allowing the State Board of Education to award grants to school districts that embark on reorganization feasibility studies. Districts can receive up to $16,000 for studies examining factors like school capacity and building closures.

Today, CPS has no real framework for addressing the problem of under-utilized schools.

But with the school board election approaching, where do the candidates stand?

Where do candidates for school board president stand on school closures?

WTTW asked candidates for school board president whether the district’s drop from 430,000 students in 2000 to 316,000 students in 2026 could necessitate consolidating schools.

Chicago Teachers Union political director Hilario Dominguez said he would not close any schools as president. Indeed, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and the CTU have argued the solution to schools like Douglass is simple: adopt the Sustainable Community Schools model. But this model doesn’t inspire confidence. Eight CPS high schools joined the first cohort of Sustainable Community Schools in 2018. And the results are in. Unfortunately, proficiency and enrollment have continued to decline at those schools, while spending and absenteeism are up.

The remaining three candidates—former CPS principal and current board member Jessica Biggs, attorney and Urban Prep Academies board member Victor Henderson, and former board member Sendhil Revuluri—did not take school closures off the table. But each stressed community involvement was paramount.

Other cities are tackling this challenge head-on

As Stateline reported last week, CPS is far from alone when it comes to declining enrollment.

Marguerite Roza, director of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab, calls it “the big shrink.”

“When there are fewer young people, obviously it’s going to change the shape of public education,” she told Stateline. “As more and more schools are existing that are half empty, some downsizing needs to take place for them to live in their current financial structure, and districts are really loath to do that.”

But districts across many big cities are still taking action:

• The Minneapolis school board is considering closing as many as 16 schools.

• The Philadelphia school board approved the closure of 17 schools after experiencing a 12% drop in enrollment over the last decade, and launched a Facilities Data Dashboard to help “develop recommendations on which buildings to maintain, modernize, co-locate, repurpose, or close.”

• San Antonio schools commissioned a study on building capacity in 2023 and have since voted to close 15 campuses, repurposing four.

• New York City closed two schools and merged 16 schools in recent years, while opening 28 new schools.

• In Columbus, a Community Facilities Task Force made recommendations to the school board, leading to board approval of five school closures or consolidations beginning in the 2026-27 school year. The board recently voted to close four more — including two elementary schools running under half full.

Every child in Chicago’s 158 half-empty buildings is a child whose school cannot offer what a full school offers.1 That’s because the district has never built a process for matching buildings to the students it actually has. But other cities have.

The 21 people voters choose this fall will decide whether the next decade looks like a plan, or another decade of drift.

In the news

CPS board member runs political ad featuring school facilities, students: I filed an ethics complaint with CPS following what appeared to be improper use of school facilities and students in paid political advertising by CPS Board Member Michilla Blaise. You can see the ad here.

Pritzker says Chicago election timing is voter suppression: Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker told WGN’s Tahman Bradley that Chicago’s February election timing suppresses voter turnout. Pritzker is correct. Chicago Policy Center research shows municipal election timing reduces Chicago voter turnout by 40% in local elections. Here’s why Chicago holds elections in February.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson will officially announce his re-election bid this afternoon following the Chicago Bears’ season opener.

But when it comes to fighting corruption in city government, the mayor has fumbled the ball.

In fact, the Johnson administration has not led the passage of a single significant ethics reform during his nearly four years in office, according to Chicago Policy Center analysis—a glaring oversight in a city still known for its pay-to-play political culture.

Johnson’s ethics record

Chicago Tribune reporter Jake Sheridan asked Johnson in 2025 what he thought of his administration’s record on ethics reform.

“The ethics or ethos of our government can’t just be simply mired in our conversation around the potential for corruption,” Johnson said.

“Ethics is about how we equitably distribute government in a way that everybody can feel proud of.”

This is a narrow view of ethics—limited to equity in government services rather than whether elected officials place loyalty to the law and ethical principles above private gain, avoid conflicts of interest, and refuse to use public office for personal benefit—the baseline definition under federal ethics law.

In this context, the mayor’s ethics shortcomings are not surprising. They include:

• Working to kill an ordinance restricting lobbyists’ political giving, which City Council later passed over his objections.

• Failing to fill the vacant chair of the Chicago Board of Ethics for over a year, a problem compounded by the resignation of the board’s executive director in August. “The mayor could install a permanent chair today if he wanted to,” Ald. Matt Martin, 47th Ward, told WTTW. “Transparency and accountability have been delayed for too many critical ethics matters … It’s disappointing that ethics is not a priority for the administration.”

• Blocking investigators’ access to city property and city records as part of the “gift room” controversy.

• Refusing to fire top advisor Jason Lee as recommended by the inspector general’s office, which found Lee did not cooperate with an investigation into a complaint that he threatened to withhold public safety services as a strong-arm tactic to whip votes in City Council.

• Failing to recuse himself from billion-dollar negotiations with his former employer and largest campaign contributor. Chicago Public Schools Chief Talent Officer Ben Felton wrote he was concerned about a potential conflict of interest in the mayor’s dealings with CPS due to the fact that the mayor is still technically on leave from a CPS job. Felton claimed to have raised the issue with then-Deputy Mayor of Education Jen Johnson (like the mayor, also a former Chicago Teachers Union official) four times between May and June 2023. The mayor not only declined to resign from his CPS position, he heavily involved himself in negotiations between CPS and CTU.

• Appearing to leverage the nonprofit World Business Chicago as a campaign apparatus, drawing scrutiny from state Rep. Curtis Tarver, D-Chicago, among others.

On the positive side, the mayor appointed a serious watchdog, David Glockner, to lead the office of inspector general following the departure of Deborah Witzburg. And City Council did pass an ordinance strengthening the independence of the inspector general’s office in 2025, but only after the administration resisted, tried to delay, and ultimately accepted it in a weakened form.

Johnson is not unique among Chicago mayors in facing ethics controversies. What stands out among his modern peers is Johnson’s ambivalence toward passing meaningful reform.

Lori Lightfoot got City Council to unanimously pass an ethics reform package in 2019, empowering the inspector general to investigate City Council committees and banning aldermen from outside jobs that conflict with city business. Rahm Emanuel pushed through what his administration called the most comprehensive ethics reform in more than a decade in 2012, replacing the entire Board of Ethics and adding a code of conduct for all city employees and officials.

So as the 2027 mayoral race kicks off in earnest, what would a commitment to ethics reform look like today?

An anti-corruption platform to run on

The most powerful reform to make Chicago city government less prone to corruption would be in changing the administrative, parochial responsibilities granted to City Council members.1

The current ombudsmen-like system encourages the abuse of aldermanic offices for personal benefit. And the council’s lack of term limits, gerrymandered maps, and voter suppression through election timing don’t help, either.

Short of that, candidates for mayor can champion four reforms to tackle corruption:

1. Put all the IGs under one roof: Chicago is home to five different inspectors general, including one for the city, one for Chicago Public Schools, one for the Chicago Housing Authority, one for the Chicago Park District, and one for the City Colleges of Chicago. They all have wildly different powers, rules, and funding, which makes effective watchdog work difficult. Chicago should consolidate all those offices under one roof akin to New York City’s Department of Investigation, or DOI.

2. Overhaul the Board of Ethics: Chicago should overhaul its Board of Ethics in the image of New York City’s Conflict of Interest Board, which provides ethics training, fields ethics complaints, and serves as an ethics counsel. The DOI serves as the board’s investigative arm.

3. Elect the Corporation Counsel, or take it out of the mayor’s office: An independently elected city attorney would owe their loyalty to voters rather than the mayor. This is how Los Angeles, Columbus, San Diego and San Francisco operate. Short of making the corporation counsel an elected position, the role could report to a city administrator—a position that is already supposed to exist in Chicago. Chicago’s Municipal Code requires the mayor to appoint an administrative officer (essentially a city manager) who must be confirmed by the City Council. This position, created in 1954, is designed to “supervise the administrative management of all city departments” and provide coordination across agencies. But no mayor has bothered filling it since Jane Byrne. Reviving this long-dormant position—and having the corporation counsel report to it rather than directly to the mayor—would help create the independence necessary for real oversight.

4. Increase access and transparency in City Council: It’s not uncommon for City Council to vote on legislation that has not been publicly posted. The full text of all agenda items should be posted four business days in advance of any City Council meeting, as recommended by the Better Government Association, Civic Federation and the League of Women Voters of Chicago.

Mayoral candidates would be wise to remember that the success of any agenda depends on residents’ trust in city government.

That trust won’t improve on its own.

In the news

Voter suppression through election timing: The Last Ward readers know Chicago is the only major city to hold its municipal elections in February. Better Government Association President David Griesing penned a Chicago Tribune column on this topic, “If we held city elections on the same day as national elections, it would strengthen democracy.”

The disjointed election calendars have tangible negative impacts. “The actual effect is a decimated turnout at elections,” said Austin Berg, executive director of the Chicago Policy Center … “It’s not just Chicago. This is a statewide problem, and you get some turnout numbers in municipalities outside Chicago where I don’t even know if you could call them elections.”

Effingham County in southwestern Illinois saw turnout numbers of 16%, 14% and 13% over the last three municipal elections, Berg noted. And St. Clair County saw rates at 16% or lower in the last four election cycles.

But the political tide is shifting, with cities across the country switching to holding local elections when people vote for state and federal offices, too.

Food fight: Chicago Magazine joined the conversation on why you can’t start a Chicago-style hot dog in Chicago with Ed McClelland’s great piece, “Why Does Chicago Hate Food Carts?”

Our dearth of street food vendors is hardly the biggest problem facing Chicago, yet it feels emblematic of the city’s inability to get out of its own way with overburdensome regulations. “We’ve had a merchant culture in the past, like Maxwell Street,” says Austin Berg ... “The current status quo is a de facto ban. We have a political culture that emphasizes who you know, and food cart vendors are at the bottom of the economic ladder”

…

The pro-immigrant sentiment that has swept Chicago in the wake of ICE raids offers an opportunity for the city to reembrace its roots. After all, as Berg of the Illinois Policy Institute points out, Vienna Beef, which he calls “the foundation of the Chicago-style hot dog,” began as a hot dog stand at the 1893 world’s fair, operated by Austro-Hungarian immigrants Emil Reichel and Samuel Ladany. Today, such an operation would be illegal.

Major housing study leaves out Chicago: Researchers from Princeton and the University of Chicago published a great new study comparing 60 major U.S. cities on their speed to permit and build new housing. But Chicago was conspicuously absent, because it couldn’t comply with the researchers’ public records requests. I asked Ald. Gil Villegas, chair of the City Council’s zoning committee, for his response:

"It's disappointing that Chicago didn't make this list due to a bureaucratic barrier. I have long championed having these routine paperwork procedures replaced with technology, so we could signal predictability to investors. I will continue to push this administration to modernize their process as to make it easier for developers to build the housing Chicago desperately needs.”

CPS downgrade threat: S&P Global Ratings revised Chicago Public Schools’ credit outlook to negative last week, citing the Chicago Teachers Union’s undue political influence over the school board and the board’s vote to assume $150 million in additional state revenue that is unlikely to appear. This means the district has at least a 1 in 3 chance of a downgrade in the next year. Here’s more on the school district’s vote to go broke on purpose.

Empty schools: WGN’s Ben Bradley completed a deep dive on the most under-enrolled schools in Chicago, finding 13 schools that are at least 80% empty. The Chicago Policy Center found in August that Frederick Douglass Academy is the emptiest big-city school in America. The solution: Convening a Blue Ribbon Commission for CPS facilities planning.

On Aug. 17, the Chicago Teachers Union filed a lawsuit naming me and two co-defendants, alleging defamation.1

You can read it here.

Below are three thoughts in response, and two things you can do about it.

1. This lawsuit is an obvious attempt to silence valid criticism and dissent. I stand behind my reporting 100%. In the footnotes, you can find each piece published in The Last Ward that is mentioned in the lawsuit.2

2. My team and I will continue reporting on the inner-workings and consequences of the union’s political machine. Chicagoans, including rank-and-file teachers frustrated by CTU’s leadership, deserve nothing less.3

3. My sincere thanks to every journalist, friend, colleague, reader — and especially, every Chicago teacher — who has reached out personally with words of support.

Here are two actions you can take to support me and our team.

First, you can make a tax-deductible donation to the Illinois Policy Institute, which will help cover costs associated with this lawsuit and the Chicago Policy Center’s work to make Chicago home to the most effective, accountable, and trustworthy big-city government in the nation.

MAKE A DONATION

Thanks to the generous support of individual donors, every dollar raised up to $250,000 will be matched 1:1, doubling your impact.

And second, if you live in Chicago, please take a moment to request your mail ballot for the November school board election here.

This is the first time in city history that residents will decide on a fully elected school board. And the last time until 2042 that all 21 seats — every district seat plus the citywide presidency — are on the same ballot.

Onward. And thank you.

In the news

Wall Street Journal Editorial Board: The Chicago Teachers Union Sues Its Critics

The Chicago Teachers Union is deeply unpopular, but rather than engage in soul-searching, it has taken a page from Donald Trump and filed a defamation lawsuit.

Chicago Tribune Editorial Board: The growing political isolation of the Chicago Teachers Union

Speaking of bullying, CTU on Monday filed a defamation lawsuit against the Illinois Policy Institute, a frequent critic of Davis Gates and the union. Named in the complaint was IPI Vice President Austin Berg, who has broken much reporting ground on CTU’s fraught relations with some of its own members and has been an articulate voice on television, podcasts and radio on the politics of public education in Chicago. The final defendant is the Liberty Justice Center, a nonprofit legal outfit with a libertarian point of view.

Mincing Rascals 8.19.26: CTU suing IPI (Apple, Spotify, YouTube)

The Picayune Sentinel: The Chicago Teachers Union sues think tank critics

WGN Radio: Eric Zorn: CTU lawsuit against Illinois Policy Institute is ill-advised

Mincing Rascals 9.2.26: Flock cameras, Chicago crime, Lake Ontario, Mayor Johnson’s future (Apple, Spotify) My “green light” recommendation: The Siskel Film Center’s retrospective on Andrei Tarkovsky, running through Sept. 30.

Guaranteed income programs are all the rage in Chicagoland.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot spent more than $30 million sending $500 a month to 5,000 Chicago households. In 2025, Cook County became the first county-level government in the nation to make a guaranteed income program permanent, putting $7.5 million toward the effort. Springfield is budgeting for a state pilot of its own. Evanston is also running a small pilot.

Mayor Brandon Johnson has been among the idea’s most enthusiastic backers.

In June 2023, weeks into the job, he told conference attendees learning about Cook County’s program that “we are ushering in a more dynamic, prosperous economy by giving people a guarantee that their lives have meaning.”

In May 2024 Johnson relaunched the city’s guaranteed income advisory group and joined Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, a national coalition. “When I said I would ensure the city uses these federal recovery dollars to invest in people,” he said, “this guaranteed income program is exactly what I meant.”

But does this program work?

Lucky for Chicago, the best evidence for answering that question was collected here.

Evidence from a groundbreaking study

The Quarterly Journal of Economics just published the employment results from the largest randomized trial of unconditional cash in American history.

Here are the basics of the study design:

• Researchers ran the experiment in north central Texas (10 counties) and northern Illinois (nine counties including Cook).

• The study included 3,000 low-income adults, ages 21 to 40. The average household income of participating adults was $29,900 a year.

• A group of 1,000 adults received $1,000 a month from November 2020 through October 2023.

• The control group of 2,000 adults received $50 a month.

And here’s what the study found, for those adults who received $1,000 a month:

• Their earnings (outside the stipends) fell by $1,900 a year, compared to the control group. Household earnings fell by about $3,200.

• Labor force participation dropped 4.2 percentage points.

• There was no improvement in the quality of jobs they held (on measures like wages, stability, or preferred hours).

• There was no improvement in degree attainment.

• There was no improvement in time with children.

• After seeing reported well-being rise in the first year, that measure faded to become indistinguishable from the control group in years two and three.

• A companion paper on health found short-lived improvements in stress and food security in the first year that faded, and no lasting effects on physical or mental health.

None of this is a verdict on the people who got the checks, of course. And no single study settles a question forever.

But this is the largest and most rigorous test anyone has run, it was run partly here, and it found the opposite of what Chicago politicians are promising.

A better path forward

The impulse behind guaranteed income programs makes sense. More than 167,000 Chicagoans live on $21 or less a day.

But there is a far better use of this cash than simply cutting checks: eliminating poverty traps inside the current system.

A typical single-parent household receiving child care assistance in Cook County can be severely punished for taking a raise at work, for example.

Researchers at the University of Chicago’s Inclusive Economy Lab, working with the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and the Illinois Department of Human Services, modeled what happens when a Cook County adult with two children takes a raise from $54,000 to $55,000.

That $1,000 raise triggers a $25,000 cut in child care benefits.

“One penny over the amount, and you fall off – so it’s like falling off a cliff,” one Cook County child care provider told the Illinois Answers Project.

Benefit cliffs like these are trapping Chicago families in cycles of dependency. And it’s not a small problem. Research from the Center for Social Development at Washington University suggests 710,000 Illinoisans have taken at least one negative action to avoid losing benefits (turning down a raise or promotion, working fewer hours, declining job offers or refusing to build savings).

Instead of further expansion of guaranteed income programs, local leaders should advocate for identifying and fixing benefit cliffs. The child care assistance program has a simple fix, for example: state lawmakers only need to change the eligibility phase-out for child care assistance to a gradual step-down rather than a steep drop-off. And pilot programs for fixing benefits cliffs in Massachusetts and Ohio offer models to test in Chicago.

Chicago now has the best evidence available, gathered here, on whether unconditional cash moves people out of poverty. It does not.

Meanwhile, there are Chicago families standing at the edge of a cliff. And they’re not asking for a check. They are asking to be allowed to take a raise.

We should let them.

For decades, Springfield insiders told the same joke about House Speaker Mike Madigan.

“There’s only two ways he’ll leave office: In handcuffs or a casket.”

Indeed, Madigan held the speakership for 36 years. He held his seat as a state representative on Chicago’s Southwest Side for 50 years. He was, by all accounts, the most powerful state politician in U.S. history.

Residents paid a high cost for the machine Madigan maintained. Whether in the state’s unprecedented explosion of public debt, gerrymandered maps, autocracy in the Illinois House, or the culture of corruption fueled in part by his property-tax appeals business and dual role as party chairman.1

I spent years reporting on these costs, culminating in a feature-length documentary called “Madigan: Power. Privilege. Politics.” The film drew millions of views online, thousands of in-person screening attendees, and more than 200 references in traditional media. Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown called it a “must-see” for those involved in Illinois politics.

But Madigan never spoke of it. And never responded to a request for an interview.

He let his lawyers do the talking, instead.

Months after the film’s release, I was served a subpoena to produce any documents related to my interactions with Jason Gonzales—a subject featured in the final chapter of the documentary.

Gonzales had taken on the impossibly difficult challenge of running head-to-head against Madigan in the Democratic primary. He was the speaker’s first real opponent on his own turf since 1975. The demographics of Madigan’s district had changed dramatically since then, from a working-class Irish-American enclave to a working-class Mexican-American enclave. So in order to protect his seat against the insurgent Gonzales, Madigan recruited two “ringer” candidates on the same ballot who happened to have Hispanic last names: Joe Barboza and Grasiela Rodriguez.2

Gonzales sued Madigan for deploying this tactic. And Madigan saw that lawsuit as an opportunity to send a message.

I was ordered to sit for a deposition with Madigan’s lawyers. But the morning it was set to happen, a judge quashed the subpoena.3

I never heard from Madigan again. With two exceptions.

The first came after publishing the book I co-authored on Chicago government for Southern Illinois University Press, “The New Chicago Way: Lessons From Other Big Cities.” A local political figure told me Madigan had inquired about the findings of our chapter on the governance of Chicago’s convention complex, McCormick Place. I found it admirable that a man of Madigan’s age, experience, and stature was still personally gathering intelligence on public policy minutiae. Especially from his critics.

The last was an indirect reference. And it happened to be one of Madigan’s final quotes in public life.

“Some individuals have spent millions of dollars and worked diligently to establish a false narrative that I am corrupt and unethical,” he said. Weeks later, his own caucus ousted him as speaker and he stepped down as a state representative.

Madigan did not leave Springfield in handcuffs. And he didn’t leave in a casket. Rather, he was forced to leave office by his peers, who for the first time feared their constituents and federal investigators more than Madigan himself.

Soon after leaving office, Madigan was indicted on corruption charges. A jury found him guilty on 10 counts, including conspiracy, bribery, and wire fraud.

He currently resides at a minimum-security federal prison camp in Morgantown, West Virginia.

Chicago city government is seeing an exodus of financial talent.

City budget director Annette Guzman announced her resignation earlier this month. That followed resignations earlier this summer from the city’s CFO and deputy CFO.1

It’s coming at a bad time. The city just completed a critical investor presentation and is entering a highly contentious budget season ahead of the February 2027 municipal elections, all as its credit rating teeters on the edge of junk status.

Of course, staff turnover is not unique to Chicago city government.

What is unique: How little public finance expertise lives outside the mayor’s office.

A short bench of financial talent

Chicago is not equipped to implement structural changes in its budget, make good budgeting decisions, or even independently analyze budget numbers outside of the mayor’s office.

For starters, Chicago is the largest American city with neither an elected financial watchdog nor a city manager.

San Diego is the next largest American city without an independently elected financial watchdog or city manager — but it has other meaningful guardrails Chicago lacks. The offices of the independent budget analyst and the city auditor both report to the San Diego City Council.

Notably, those offices exist in their current form because of a scandal. The SEC sanctioned San Diego for securities fraud in 2006 after the city failed to fully disclose to investors the scope of a $1 billion shortfall in its pension fund and retiree health care obligations. In response, local voters approved an amendment to San Diego’s city charter that made changes to how the city’s core financial offices were structured and governed.

Chicago is the only major American city lacking a city charter. But leaders don’t need to wait for one to improve our financial IQ. Here are three things City Council could do today:

1. Expand the responsibilities of the city treasurer to more closely resemble those of a CFO or comptroller, based on similar offices in New York, Los Angeles, and Houston. Or create a new elected office altogether with those responsibilities. (See: Why Chicago’s city treasurer is a waste of an elected office)

2. Create more budget brains in City Council: Expand and professionalize the existing City Council Office of Financial Analysis, in line with peer cities. And standardize committee staff who too often spend their time on constituent services for committee chairs.

3. Pass an ordinance that guarantees City Council access to all financial information held in the executive branch, as recommended by the Civic Federation.

The mayor also has a role to play here.

One thing the mayor could do today: Fill the position of city administrator, which could help implement the budget and lead a zero-based budgeting process. Chicago mayors have left this position vacant since 1954, despite the Municipal Code of Chicago demanding the mayor “shall appoint” the officer, who must then be confirmed by City Council.

A few resignations shouldn’t be able to hollow out a big city’s financial IQ.

Building budget brains outside the mayor’s office is the easy fix. And there has never been a better time to start.

In the news

School board slate: I joined ABC7 to discuss the Chicago Teachers Union’s chosen slate of candidates for the November school board elections. Watch here.

Mincing Rascals: I joined the Mincing Rascals Podcast on WGN Radio to discuss the recent Wisconsin primary elections, the Chicago Air and Water Show, and more (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube).

School board passes advisory referenda: The Chicago Board of Education passed two non-binding, advisory referenda last week that will appear on your November ballot. This is another example of how Chicago stops voters from deciding what matters.

George Will on the Chicago Teachers Union: The great George Will cited The Last Ward on Frederick Douglass Academy in his column: “Chicagoans are getting fed up with the city’s teachers union.”

The Chicago Board of Education this week voted to pass a budget the district’s own CEO and CFO said was unbalanced.

Why?

The roll call offers a clue.

Of the eight members who voted against the budget or abstained, all were seated via competitive elections. But of the 11 members who voted yes, all but one were seated via Mayor Brandon Johnson’s appointment power.

The budget originally proposed by CPS CEO Dr. Macquline King balanced out in part through a combination of modest staff cuts and furloughs.

King’s restraint makes sense in a district that is currently a national leader in empty schools and junk bonds. Chicago Public Schools has added nearly 10,000 staff and $4.2 billion in new spending since 2019, despite enrollment dropping by more than 45,000 students over the same time period.

But board members backed by Johnson and the Chicago Teachers Union rejected King’s plan. Instead, they passed a nearly $10 billion budget that reversed some of those cuts by assuming an additional $150 million in state money out of thin air.1

King’s team was clear at the board meeting that this reckless budgeting would hurt the district’s reputation in the eyes of lenders, leading to higher borrowing costs or shutting the district out of the market altogether.2

That risk is especially serious as Cook County’s property tax delays are forcing CPS to borrow money immediately to fund teacher paychecks, which are scheduled to go out on Sept. 4.

King’s office told CPS families this unbalanced budget would jeopardize the start of the school year by threatening the district’s ability to borrow.3 In response, Johnson-backed board members sent King a scolding letter in which they claimed the budget was balanced and advised King to alter her communications with families. Meanwhile, CTU celebrated the vote.

But King was immediately proven right.

S&P Global Ratings Managing Director Jane Ridley said the district’s reliance on $150 million in unlikely funding shows the board did not address its “underlying structural imbalance.”

“The first thing we look at when evaluating a local government’s budget is whether it’s structurally balanced, and it’s clear from the budget approved yesterday by the Chicago Board of Ed that CPS continues to face a structural deficit,” Ridley said.

This budget vote was akin to setting the district’s house on fire and hoping insurance pays out. And that was by design.

Budget chaos is the point

During last year’s school budget fight I highlighted remarks from Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates on how the union wields political power.

“You have to create the crisis by which the boss…the government can no longer ignore you,” she said to an audience at the Netroots Nation conference.

Indeed, CTU leadership believes fomenting financial distress at CPS can create leverage to demand more money from Springfield.

Board member Michilla Blaise justified it this way in a Facebook post following the vote: “If we can’t come up with it, we will put all the layoffs and dead programs at the governor’s feet.”4

Blaise was appointed to the school board by Johnson and is running for election this November with CTU’s backing. We discussed district finances on WTTW’s Chicago Tonight in May.

My response to Blaise’s argument that the district’s financial woes can be solved through additional state aid:

I do want to talk about resources. I think it’s important to note that there has been a lack of a realistic plan to get additional resources from the state. Per-pupil spending has doubled over the last decade. It’s now $32,000 per student per year. But if we want to talk about those resources it’s important to note that City Hall has the worst relationship with Springfield of any mayor of the last 50 years. They have not been able to put forth a credible plan to get Springfield to move on this issue.

There are also hundreds of millions of dollars on the table for public school students in Chicago today if the state would just follow the example of Colorado Gov. [Jared] Polis and New York Gov. [Kathy] Hochul and opt into a new federal tax credit for education donations. That would send hundreds of millions of dollars to public school students in Chicago. But the Chicago Teachers Union and indeed Board Member Blaise have voted against that proposal. I think that is unconscionable. We need to get resources in the hands of students through private tutoring, services for students with special needs, [and that] can all be funded through private donations if we opt into this program.

Ironically, the CTU’s ruling caucus—the Caucus of Rank and File Educators, of which Gates is a member—formed in 2008 as a reading group focused on Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine,” a book that popularized the phrase “disaster capitalism.”

The book’s main argument is that bad actors take advantage of crises to push unpopular policies.

State lawmakers should refuse to be bullied by interests creating crises on purpose.

A better path forward

For the first time in city history, Chicagoans will be able to elect all 20 members of the school board and a board president in the Nov. 3 election.

And those board members have the opportunity to meaningfully improve the district through proven reforms that have worked for public-school families in other big cities. Those reforms can be found in the Chicago Policy Center’s CPS Excellence Agenda.

Make sure you receive your ballot to vote in that election here.

In the news

I joined the Mincing Rascals Podcast on WGN Radio to discuss the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Rahm Emanuel’s presidential ambitions, city-owned grocery stores, and more (Apple Podcasts, Spotify). My “green light” recommendation: Sherman’s March (1986 film).

Chicago City Council last week finalized six questions that will appear before Chicago voters.

But do those questions actually matter?

Let’s take a look.

All six measures are non-binding, meaning they are essentially poll questions.

Media coverage on these questions highlighted how Mayor Brandon Johnson’s preferred non-binding referendum—asking voters to weigh in on whether the state should pursue a “millionaires tax”—failed to make it to the ballot.1 And in response, how Johnson berated City Council members.

Compare that political food fight to what New York City voters will decide on their ballots this November.

The day after Johnson’s push officially failed, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s charter revision commission (dubbed the Commission on Government Efficiency, or COGE) voted to put five binding propositions before voters that make changes to the city’s governance structure.

If approved, those structural changes will lead to faster approval for outdoor dining permits, streamlined city contracting, accelerated bike lane construction, a simplified building permit regime, and clear goals for the city’s rainy day fund.

In short: voters’ choices will actually matter.

Chicago discourages democracy

Lacking real options on the ballot is a symptom of a larger problem in Chicago. No other big city does more to discourage democratic participation in local government.

Here are five examples:

1. The rule of three: Non-binding questions can be useful. But in Chicago, they crowd out valuable ballot space. That’s because state law sets a “rule of three” in city elections, meaning only three referenda can appear at any one time.2 Lawmakers can use the rule of three to box out citizen-initiated referenda. So it’s no surprise Chicago voters haven’t decided a single issue on the ballot via citizen initiative in modern history.

2. Severely gerrymandered wards: Chicago politicians can pick their voters. Chicago City Council members, in concert with the mayor’s office, draw their own districts to reward friends and punish enemies.

3. February elections: Chicago is the only big city in the country that holds its municipal elections in February of an odd year. This timing suppresses voter turnout by 40%.

4. No city charter: Chicago is the only big city in the country without a charter. That means there is no mechanism nor civic culture for charter revision. Across the country, big-city charter revisions routinely offer voters the opportunity to decide serious governance matters.

5. Poor selection of elected offices: Chicagoans elect one citywide office that truly matters: the mayor. The other two citywide offices (clerk and treasurer) have very little authority. Unlike other big cities, Chicagoans do not elect an independent city attorney or chief financial officer.

And that final point isn’t just a city problem.

Chicagoans are now seeing the consequences of a similar dynamic at the county level on their property tax bills.

Too many cooks in Cook County

I joined WGN’s Ben Bradley this week for his story on Cook County’s failed property tax modernization effort.

The county has spent more than $63 million over the last decade attempting to update its property tax system. But that system is still broken. And delayed property tax collections are costing local governments tens of millions of dollars in short-term borrowing costs.

A new Cook County inspector general report found mismanagement of the project was a “perfect storm,” in large part due to the politicization of what should be purely bureaucratic offices.

From Bradley’s story:

The inspector general concluded that the transition to the new technology was imperiled by the conflicting agendas of elected officials and by a lack of cooperation from some officeholders…

The Chicago Policy Center‘s Austin Berg says the tech trouble is the perfect example of having too many cooks – or in this case, politicians – in the kitchen.

“Cook County needs an assessor. We need a board president. We need a clerk, but those don’t necessarily need to be elected offices that are completely separate and independent,” Berg said. “We saw here the result of that, just being a complete mess in trying to do something the county really needs.”

In the news

Quigley backs charter: U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Chicago, is running for mayor. He recently published a lengthy, detailed essay on why Chicago needs a city charter: “I Want to Be Mayor and I Want Mayors to Have Less Power.” Highly recommended.

The emptiest big-city school in the nation: I joined Good Day Chicago for a deep dive into last week’s edition of the Last Ward, which found Frederick Douglass Academy High School is the emptiest big-city school in the nation.

On the numbers:

The math is not math-ing. More full-time employees than students [and] almost double the number of classrooms as students at Frederick Douglass Academy. These statistics to the common person in Chicago are just shocking. The reason is that Chicago Public Schools has no framework, that is public, for what happens: what are the minimum standards for enrollment and performance at a school, and what are the high-bar standards that would trigger replication of a school? We lack a framework for both. In absence of that framework all we have in Chicago is a moratorium on school consolidation. So we don’t have a real plan. We simply have a big sign that says “no.”

On how empty schools hurt the district’s ability to get more resources:

The school district is in a position where it is increasingly needing to go to the state for additional resources. Imagine you’re a state lawmaker and a lobbyist comes to you saying we need more money for Chicago Public Schools. How can you feel good about that decision when you have a school spending $93,000 per student per year and it’s only 3% utilized. The emptiest big-city school in the country. It hurts the district’s ability to advocate for itself at the state level.

On the mayor’s preferred solution:

Mayor Brandon Johnson and the Chicago Teachers Union, when faced with questions about under-enrolled schools like this, they point to a model called the Sustainable Community Schools model, which is more about providing additional staff and additional wraparound services at schools. The problem with that model is at the eight high schools that have used [it] since 2018, we see proficiency is down, enrollment is down, absenteeism is up, and spending is up.

On our CPS Excellence Agenda:

We’re calling for a Blue Ribbon Commission [on facilities planning] from the newly elected school board in November that can actually build a framework for how we properly use our facilities to better serve students.

City housing debate: Housing reform is a key component of the Chicago Abundance Agenda. Veteran City Hall reporter Fran Spielman convened a fantastic housing debate last week between Zoning Committee Chair Ald. Gil Villegas (36th Ward) and Chicago Housing Commissioner Lissette Castañeda.

Frederick Douglass learned to read in secret.

He understood from a young age that literacy was, in his words, “the pathway from slavery to freedom.”

But at Frederick Douglass Academy High School in Chicago, the school is so under-enrolled that Illinois cannot publicly report how many of its students read proficiently. There simply aren’t enough tested students to publish the results without risking their anonymity.1

Douglass Academy has 47 classrooms built to serve 1,008 kids. But only 27 students are enrolled there.

At 3% utilization, it is the emptiest big-city school in the country, according to Chicago Policy Center research.2

Meanwhile, CPS personnel records show Douglass currently employs 28 full-time staff members.3

In a district that once served nearly 600,000 students and now serves 312,000, and where one-third of school buildings sit at least half empty, Douglass illustrates the consequences of poor facilities planning: fewer opportunities for students and higher costs for taxpayers.

Empty schools harm students

If a student in Illinois misses more than 10% of school days in a year, they are considered chronically absent. At Douglass, 100% of seniors are chronically absent.

And while the state couldn’t report test scores for the most recent school year, not a single 11th-grade student at Douglass could read or perform math at grade level in the 2023-2024 school year.

This isn’t due to underfunding. In the 2023-24 school year, Douglass spent $93,000 per student.

The real issue is simple: Research has long shown that very small high schools struggle to provide the breadth of academic courses and extracurricular opportunities available at larger schools.

An analysis published by ProPublica and Chalkbeat found the level of under-enrollment at CPS schools like Douglass deprives students of clubs, sports, and other extracurriculars critical to a healthy learning environment.

So what should district leaders do about it?

Addressing empty schools

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and the Chicago Teachers Union have argued the solution to Douglass’ problems is the Sustainable Community Schools model.

But the results are in at eight CPS high schools that have used this model since 2018: proficiency and enrollment have continued to decline, while spending and absenteeism are up.

Today, 47 Chicago schools are operating at one-third capacity. That’s double the number the district faced in 2013 when it closed 50 schools.4

But Chicago is hardly alone.

Declining enrollment in big-city districts across the country has forced leaders to rethink their facilities planning to better meet students’ needs:

• The Philadelphia school board approved the closure of 17 schools after experiencing a 12% drop in enrollment over the last decade, and launched a Facilities Data Dashboard to help “develop recommendations on which buildings to maintain, modernize, co-locate, repurpose, or close.”

• San Antonio schools commissioned a study on building capacity in 2023 and have since voted to close 15 campuses, repurposing four.

• New York City closed two schools and merged 16 schools in recent years, while opening 28 new schools.

• In Columbus, the Community Facilities Task Force made recommendations to the school board, leading to board approval on five school closures or consolidations starting in the 2026-27 school year.

It’s past time for Chicago to start planning smarter.

A better path forward

The Chicago Policy Center’s CPS Excellence Agenda provides a Day 1 work plan for Chicago school board candidates hoping to win their elections this November.

One key recommendation: Convening a Blue Ribbon Commission for CPS facilities planning, which should:

• Assess the current facility footprint.

• Establish an ongoing framework for optimizing school facilities for student success, including core principles of school utilization, neighborhood coverage, and model school staffing.

• Set a consistent minimum standard for schools in terms of enrollment and performance, as well as a consistent “high bar” standard that triggers school-model replication.

• Compare CPS’ capital financing ability to other large districts.

The name Frederick Douglass should stand for the expansion of educational opportunity, not the preservation of an empty building.

Chicago students deserve the opportunities his legacy demands.

In the news

I joined the Mincing Rascals on WGN this week to discuss Chicago policing, the Illinois secessionists, and more (Apple Podcasts, Spotify).

Chicago Public Schools has produced some of the world’s brightest stars.

But candidates for the November school board elections—the first fully elected school board in Chicago history—face a raging storm within the nation's fourth-largest school district.

On Nov. 3, Chicagoans will elect 20 school board members and a citywide board president. Consider:

• CPS has a junk credit rating, and is the largest junk-bond issuer of any municipal government in the nation.

• Math and reading outcomes for CPS fourth graders declined faster than any peer district from 2017-2024.

• When asked to grade Chicago schools on how well they prepare students, just 17% of Chicagoans give the district an A or a B.1

• CPS serves 316,000 students today, down from a peak of nearly 600,000.2

All Chicago families deserve to enjoy the highest-performing big-city school district in the nation. But that requires a school board capable of governing with conviction and confidence on Day 1.

Thankfully, CPS board members don’t have to invent a turnaround model from scratch. Drawing lessons from school districts across the country, the Chicago Policy Center compiled the CPS Excellence Agenda, built on three pillars:

1. Academic excellence

2. Financial excellence

3. Board excellence

Candidates should begin with the question that matters most: Are students learning?

Academic excellence at CPS

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said he would grade school performance on spending, not outcomes. But 78% of Chicagoans believe the main goal of public schools should be preparing students to be good citizens, to go to college, or to get a good job. Student outcomes are the defining measure of a thriving school district.

Board members should:

1. Require CPS schools only use instructional materials aligned with research-proven methods, such as the Science of Reading, which was the basis for the Mississippi Miracle.

2. Require more specific interventions at the district’s lowest-performing campuses to ensure student academic improvement, such as the Accelerating Campus Excellence (ACE) program, which is transforming student outcomes in Houston and across Texas.

3. Support a policy to renew high-performing charter schools no later than January (at least six months before contracts expire), giving families certainty and aligning with national standards.

Financial excellence at CPS

A district that can’t manage its own budget will eventually lose the right to manage anything else. And the first step to getting out of the district’s financial hole is to stop digging.

Board members should:

1. Transition to zero-based budgeting (ZBB) by Fiscal Year 2028, where every central office department, network office, and school must justify each line item. San Francisco schools use ZBB, as required by California law. In Philadelphia schools, ZBB recently identified $100 million in savings.

2. Pass a resolution calling on Springfield to require a state fiscal note and state pre-payment for any pension sweeteners that impact local school districts, as recommended by Mayor Johnson’s Financial Future Task Force.

3. Mandate a 14-member vote for all new borrowing: CPS currently requires only 11 votes for borrowing when included in the budget, but 14 votes at any other time. Given the district’s extreme debt load, there should be one standard.

4. Pass a resolution urging Illinois to opt in to the federal education donation tax credit to generate at least $100 million per year in additional funding to support services for CPS families, as New York and Colorado have done. This is especially important for CPS students with special needs.

Board excellence at CPS

If newly elected school board members expect excellence from the CPS central office, principals, teachers, school staff, and students, they must also hold themselves to a high standard of professional excellence.

Board members should:

1. Convene a Blue Ribbon Commission for CPS Facilities Planning,3 which should:

   1. Assess the current facility footprint.

   2. Establish an ongoing framework for optimizing school facilities for student success, including core principles of school utilization, neighborhood coverage, and model school staffing.

   3. Set a consistent minimum standard for schools in terms of enrollment and performance, as well as a consistent “high bar” standard that triggers school-model replication.

   4. Compare CPS’ capital financing ability to other large districts.4

2. The board has an opportunity to set a new standard for fairness and transparency in negotiations on CTU’s collective bargaining agreement, which begin in less than two years. This includes:

   1. Focusing negotiations on wages, benefits and conditions of employment (the traditional subjects of bargaining) and what is best for students.

   2. Considering changes to state law to increase board independence in bargaining.

   3. Using the zero-based budgeting process to identify any changes that are hampered by the collective bargaining agreement, and changes that are not.

   4. Opening up all bargaining sessions to the public (only presentations were open in 2024).

3. Adopt a policy requiring board members to complete annual continuing education in school finance and governance, (e.g. Georgetown Edunomics Lab offers a Certificate in Education Finance) with completion publicly reported and enforceable by fines/suspensions.

What Chicago voters should know

Without a clear plan entering office, new board members will be forced to react to several immediate crises and interest groups with outsized power.

That’s an outcome Chicago students can’t afford.

To ensure you receive a ballot for the November election and all future city elections, click here.

A Juneteenth celebration in Roseland ended in a mass drive-by shooting that left at least 14 people wounded.

It was the most horrifying moment in a stretch of violence that has pushed Chicago’s 2026 homicide count 8% above last year’s pace. Backsliding on what had been, until recently, an encouraging trend.

Days later, Mayor Brandon Johnson signed Executive Order 2026-3, establishing the Mayor’s Office of Gun Violence Reduction.

Here’s the problem: Chicago already has at least eight overlapping entities with some claim to police accountability or public safety coordination. And this executive order adds three more: the Office of Gun Violence Reduction, an Interdepartmental Gun Violence Reduction Cabinet, and a 17-member Gun Violence Reduction Advisory Council.

The executive order runs 11 sections and more than 1,500 words. But nowhere does it provide clear lines of authority between the new office and the bodies already in existence.

In fact, it gives the deputy mayor of community safety—who leads the mayor’s existing Office of Community Safety—a second, new role as executive director of the gun violence reduction office.

The root cause of Chicago’ public safety challenges has never been a lack of political bodies.

It’s the city’s failure to back professional solutions.

Chicago isn’t solving enough murders

Richard Day’s essential analysis last week at A City That Works shows the cost of Chicago’s poor police governance.

Fewer than one-third of homicides committed in Chicago in recent years have resulted in timely prosecution, compared to more than 80% in New York City.

Closing that gap requires witnesses willing to come forward. And witnesses come forward when they trust officers working their neighborhoods. So how does the city build trust?

Chicago doesn’t need to look far for answers. In fact, the analysis is done.

A 770-page workforce allocation study and a 167-page community policing assessment published earlier this year provide clear recommendations to improve community policing, such as beat integrity, consistent supervisory relationships, and ensuring officers have time for police work beyond chasing the radio.

But Chicago lacks the governance structure to quickly implement and monitor progress on these recommendations. In part because there are too many cooks in the kitchen. Compare that to Los Angeles, a city 50% larger than Chicago, which manages its police department through one primary, civilian-led body: the LA Police Commission.1

Chicago’s political instinct on public safety, every time something goes wrong, has been to add a body. The result is a city with a laundry list of public safety entities but just one in three murder cases ending in a prosecution.

Building a safer Chicago requires the bravery to break old habits, pick our heads up, and look around.

In the news

Mincing Rascals: I joined WGN Radio’s Mincing Rascals podcast to discuss the new Office of Gun Violence Reduction, the World Cup, and more (Apple Podcasts, Spotify).

More funding for Chicago students: Chicago public school families stand to gain at least $100 million a year in new education resources if Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker opts into a new federal tax credit program. I joined Patrick Pfingsten on WMAY to discuss.

Waiting for Superman: Civic Federation President Joe Ferguson invoked Chicago’s “waiting for Superman” syndrome in an excellent Crain’s piece on how City Council can govern itself more independently and effectively.

Digital asset transaction tax: I wrote last week on why Illinois’ new tax on digital asset transactions hurts Chicago. State Rep. John Cabello has now filed a bill to repeal the tax. Tell your state lawmaker to support the repeal here.

The canyon of LaSalle Street grew dark.

Thunder clapped. The wind howled. Amber-orange street lamps flicked on. And lightning flashed against the facade of the Chicago Federal Reserve, bouncing off its six-story Corinthian colonnades of Indiana Limestone.

But inside the Chicago Board of Trade, nobody looked up.

It was 2:30 in the afternoon. Markets wouldn’t close for another half-hour.

At an options trading firm on the fourth floor, dozens of traders sat glued to their monitors, clicking keys as quickly as rain hit the pavement.

Many of these traders were recruited to Chicago from faraway lands. Among their ranks were math olympiad champions, chess grandmasters, and physics professors.

But Frank was different. He grew up on the Southwest Side and started as a pit runner at the Board of Trade when he was 14 years old. He carried a thick Chicago accent.

Another thunderous boom rang out through the Loop. Frank turned his head. And he saw the majesty of a Chicago summertime thunderstorm, framed by 40-foot-tall windows.

He shouted out.

“It’s a [expletive] monsoon!”

What made Chicago rich

My first week on the job, Frank told me why those north-facing windows were so massive.

“They built ‘em like that for the grain.”

When the current Chicago Board of Trade building opened in 1930, the “cash grain” market was still important. If a miller wanted to buy a specific shipment of wheat or corn arriving by train, they needed somewhere to inspect physical samples. But incandescent lightbulbs cast an inaccurate color. So like an art studio, the Board of Trade needed north-facing windows with consistent, indirect sunlight throughout the day.

Instead of oil paintings, 36 long tables for grain inspection once sat beneath the same windows through which Frank watched the thunderstorm, 85 years later.

Those tables are no longer needed. And the reason why stands among Chicago’s greatest contributions to the world: it was home to the largest exchange in the West to transform physical grain into a commodity—graded, standardized, and reduced to a number that could be traded, modeled, and hedged.

This solved a trust problem for millions of people. Farmers could lock in a price before the harvest instead of gambling on a bad season. Millers could lock in a cost months before they needed the wheat. And grain merchants could borrow against a shipment without a banker ever laying eyes on it, because the grade stamped on the receipt was trusted as collateral.

It made Chicago rich.

Not just for the traders on LaSalle Street, but also for the immigrants, laborers, and tradesmen the boom employed. It is among the core reasons why from 1870 to 1900, Chicago grew faster than any city in world history.

The grain is long gone from the Chicago Board of Trade. So are pit traders like Frank. But a new generation of innovative financial businesses has been honoring the legacy of Chicago as a modern trading hub. And they are now butting up against a local culture older than Chicago’s trading pits: Illinois politics.

Springfield is threatening the city’s legacy of financial innovation. And the bounty that comes with it.

“First we get the money”

Allies of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson released a report the week of his inauguration in 2023 entitled, “First We Get the Money.” Among $12 billion in tax increase proposals highlighted by the report was a tax on every transaction at the Chicago Board of Trade.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker stepped in immediately to calm fears of a business exodus.

“We have a terrific financial industry in the state of Illinois,” the governor told Bloomberg at the time.

“We all understand that a financial transactions tax simply would encourage them all to … move their servers across the borders of the state to some other state.”

But last week, the governor signed into law a new transaction tax on digital assets. The first of its kind in any state.

New tax on digital asset transactions

Pritzker signed the Illinois state budget last week. It included the Digital Asset Tax Act, a 0.2% tax “on the value of any digital asset exchanged, transferred, or stored on a customer’s behalf by a broker doing business in Illinois.”

Notably, this tax was introduced just hours before state lawmakers passed the $56 billion state budget at 4:13 a.m. on Monday, June 1.1

Industry leaders locally and across the country were shocked:

• “This Illinois law is remarkably bad - it will end up hurting the state, kill jobs and push innovation out of the state.” – Brian Armstrong, Co-founder and CEO of Coinbase

• “This is like taxing changing your bank password.” – Hayden Adams, founder of Uniswap

• “Chicago has a real opportunity to lead in stablecoins / trading infra / programmable payments. There are countless startups and companies in the state creating high $$$ jobs and building the next generation of financial infrastructure. Most people won’t notice a 0.2% tax on a handful of transactions. But if the future is millions of machine-to-machine payments powered by stablecoins, every layer of friction matters.” – Landon Campbell, Chicago tech investor

• “I would like to remind everyone in crypto law that as defined in the bill, this likely covers all forms of digital money, so if IL is not enforcing this against electronic bank transfers, you should sue.” – Austin Campbell, NYU Stern School of Business Adjunct Professor

• “You aren’t taxed if you exchange a stock, bond, or derivative in paper form, but you are taxed if they happen to be recorded on a blockchain? That’s like taxing email.” – Miles Jennings, general counsel for a16z crypto

Illinois commonly relies on “sin” taxes to stitch up budget gaps. Cigarettes, gambling, and alcohol are all politically easy targets for tax hikes. “Crypto” is now among these. The industry has become politically polarized, owing in no small part to members of the president’s family pulling in billions of dollars from it.

But this tax goes far beyond scammy meme coins pushed by politically connected figures. And it goes beyond Bitcoin. It threatens to destroy an ecosystem of financial businesses in Chicago relying on new technology to better serve their customers.2

To an average person, a 0.2% tax seems minuscule. But to Chicago businesses built on facilitating billions of financial transactions using modern technology, it is a monsoon.3

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The tax is only estimated to bring in $60 million. That is a rounding error in the Illinois budget. But because no other state imposes a tax like this, Illinoisans should not be surprised if this costs the state more tax revenue than it brings in, as businesses in this space decide to invest their time and talent elsewhere.

Unless something changes.

What you can do to stop the digital asset transaction tax

This tax does not take effect until Jan. 1, 2027. And Illinois lawmakers will return to Springfield for veto session this fall.

The tax will almost certainly be in court before then. But with enough engagement from constituents, Illinois state lawmakers could be convinced to make reforms on their own.

To tell your Illinois state representative to repeal the digital asset transfer tax, click here.

The U.S. men’s national soccer team opened the 2026 World Cup Friday night with its greatest performance in modern history: a 4-1 drubbing of Paraguay.

But the tournament is a spectacle Chicago won’t be part of.

And the former mayor who made that call wants you to know he was right.

“We were on the front end of the bad side and the back end of the good side,” Rahm Emanuel told The Athletic.

“I said, ‘I don’t know what any other mayor or governor is doing, but do you expect me to treat the Chicago taxpayers as the dumb money at the table? You’ve got to be kidding me!’”

He wasn’t wrong. Emanuel read the deal correctly.

Here’s the problem: The call was his alone to make. And it’s only a matter of time before another deal, forged in secret with private interests, comes along.

Decision made in secret

The specific clause that broke the deal, according to the former mayor: FIFA insisted the contract include the right to demand a dome be built over the open-air Soldier Field.

When Emanuel told them to remove that clause, FIFA replied they never exercise it but couldn’t take it out.

“So I said there is not a chance I am going to have you directing me on a $50 million-$100 million expense to the taxpayers. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” according to Emanuel. “You can’t have something in there that leaves the city and the taxpayers exposed, where (FIFA) gets to decide it and I have no vote in it.”

The former mayor is right. This was a bad deal that could have committed Chicago taxpayers to hundreds of millions in open-ended obligations.

But it was being evaluated, negotiated, and ultimately rejected entirely within the mayor’s office.

At the time, Ald. Scott Waguespack called on the Emanuel administration to release the complete terms of the FIFA proposal and provide projections on the financial impact — noting pointedly that there had been “no discussion outside of the fifth floor.”

That Emanuel made the right call is worth crediting.

But the governance structure that allowed him to make that call unilaterally is the same structure that has produced some of the worst financial decisions in Chicago history.

A pattern Chicago keeps repeating

Consider the city’s pattern of poor deals with private entities for their use of public infrastructure:

• Parking meters: In 2008, Mayor Richard M. Daley rammed the 75-year parking meter deal through the city council in 72 hours, costing Chicago billions.

• Olympics: In 2009, Daley reversed his promise that Olympic hosting wouldn’t cost Chicago taxpayers a dime, signing a contract with the International Olympic Committee that put the city on the hook for any losses — with at least $1.75 billion in exposure.

• NASCAR: In July 2022, Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a three-year deal handing NASCAR the streets around Grant Park. Aldermen representing the wards affected by the deal were “purposefully and specifically excluded from any discussion” before the contract was signed, and only learned the terms when reporters obtained the document via FOIA. One alderman noted the city would receive less than $1 million from NASCAR for tying up downtown and Grant Park for more than a week — a fraction of what Lollapalooza pays annually for a comparable footprint.

As Ed Bachrach and I wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times, this pattern has a name. The practice of granting private parties the use of public property is called a concession. And Chicago has done a horrible job of managing those concessions:

All concessions involve a tradeoff between the public’s access to their public property and some other public interest. In Chicago, however, there is no mechanism to give weight to the public interest. The private concession almost always wins.

When the concession is conspicuous and egregious, like the parking meters and Grant Park, citizens and journalists ask all the proper questions. Why was this concession approved and others rejected? What were the alternatives? How were the terms determined? Was the public interest taken into account? What is the value of common use?

These vital questions are not publicly answered in Chicago, because they are always too late. The deal is cut in secret. And then, if City Council approval is needed, it is rammed through.

The FIFA host city agreement was on track to follow a similar pattern. No independent review. No public deliberation. Just whatever the fifth floor decides.

A better way to handle concessions

New Yorkers enjoy greater protection over their public assets than Chicagoans. That’s owed to New York City’s Franchise and Concession Review Committee, which:

• Reviews and approves concession terms before they’re final.

• Requires public notice, hearings, and a minimum 15-day comment period for concession deals.

• Publishes annual concession plans that include every concession action planned by every city agency, so the public can see what’s coming before negotiations even begin.

• Is not entirely captured by the mayor: While the commission is primarily made up of mayoral appointees, the independently elected comptroller also sits on the commission. And borough presidents get to vote on deals that affect their communities.

This structure is baked into New York’s city charter. Chicago does not have a charter, and requires a change in state law to adopt one.

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Short of a charter, Chicago City Council should establish a standing concession commission with authority over these kinds of arrangements, requiring public proceedings before deals are signed.

Until then, Chicago’s protection against bad mega-deals is a mayor with good judgment.

That’s what ensured FIFA didn’t take advantage of Chicago.

But next time, private interests could slip a bad deal past the keeper.

In the news

Update on opting in: Readers of The Last Ward know why Illinois should opt in to the new federal tax credit for education donations (“How Democrats can unlock $100M+ for Chicago education without tax hikes”). But the Chicago Teachers Union has urged Gov. JB Pritzker to stay out, calling the program “a scam designed to undermine public education.”

Notably, one of the most prominent voices against private school vouchers, Michigan State University Prof. Josh Cowen, just came out in support of opting in.

“I’m not willing to leave public school families and public school educators alone on the road we’re heading down by telling them there’s nothing in the federal scholarship for them,” Cowen wrote.

Mayoral candidate pushing common sense reforms: Chicago mayoral candidate Liam Stanton published his campaign’s “Common Sense Government Reforms” platform last week, including changing the city’s election timing and creating a city charter.

Teen takeovers: Teen takeovers may be the most prominent public safety topic in Chicago. Political consultant Sabha Abour recently interviewed two young men who have been organizing them — it’s worth your time.

And here’s what Chicago can learn from Washington D.C.’s successful response to teen trends.

For the first time in 30 years, Chicagoans will vote on a fully elected school board in November.

But who will be on the ballot? Well, that’s a legal matter. Under dispute.

Because in Chicago, securing your name on the ballot can often prove more difficult than winning at the ballot box.

Every election season, lawyers trained in the dark arts of signature challenges spend weeks in the basement of the Chicago Board of Elections, working to kick candidates off the ballot.

This installment of The Last Ward examines the drama surrounding candidates for school board, a legislative plot to rewrite petition signature requirements, the ruthless nature of signature collection, and how one city successfully dismantled byzantine ballot challenges and the rampant fraud that comes with it.

Why more than half of Chicago school board candidates are facing petition challenges

Chicago school board candidates have been passing petitions for months to get on the ballot.

State law sets the rules for gathering those signatures, which candidates had to file with election authorities by May 26.

But on May 30, a curious piece of legislation appeared in the waning hours of Springfield’s legislative session: An amendment to an elections omnibus package, the bill would have retroactively changed the rules about who was eligible to circulate petitions on behalf of Chicago school board candidates.

The package did not pass. But the Chicago Teachers Union lobbied for that amendment, according to Statehouse sources, suggesting that the union had problems with the signatures they gathered for their preferred school board candidates.

Indeed, 28 of the 51 school board candidates are now facing petition challenges, including many of the candidates supported by the union.

Notably, CTU did not file challenges against any candidates. The union even claimed it was unfair to do so. President Stacy Davis Gates said she “wanted to see more people on the ballot, not less.” But that rings hollow, given the union used petition challenges to kick 12 school board candidates off the ballot in 2024, according to Chalkbeat Chicago.1 In fact, the union hired the same election attorney their opponents are using today: Michael Kasper.

The CTU’s push to change the rules retroactively—helping the union’s political machine while hurting those who followed the law—was unfair and undemocratic.

But state lawmakers should change the rules going forward. Here’s why.

The nightmare of signature gathering in Chicago

A Chicago voter seeking to kick a candidate off the ballot files an objection to that candidate’s petition signatures with the Chicago Board of Elections.

There have been more than 2,100 of these filings in Chicago’s municipal elections alone since 1983, according to WBEZ analysis.

Some of the specifics are absurd:

• An average Chicago municipal election sees more than 180 objection filings.

• In 2011, there were more objections filed (428) than candidates (380).

• In 2015, half of candidates who filed faced objections and one-third were removed from the ballot

• In 2019, nearly half of candidates faced objections, and one-fifth were removed.

Each filing typically comes with several hearings in front of a hearing officer, often taking weeks. The officer then makes a recommendation to the election commissioners on whether the candidate has enough signatures to remain on the ballot.

Petition signatures can be ruled invalid for a number of reasons, here are just a few:

• The petition pages weren’t properly bound together

• The petition pages weren’t numbered

• The signer printed their name rather than writing it in cursive

• The signer wrote their address incorrectly

• The signer already signed another candidate’s petition

• The volunteer or paid staffer gathering those petitions was ineligible to do so, making all the signatures they gathered invalid

• The petition circulator did not properly sign their name on the petition page, making that entire page of signatures invalid

No media better describes the dark underbelly of the petition challenge process than City So Real. Director Steve James’ five-part documentary miniseries explores Chicago through the lens of the 2019 mayoral election, and follows candidates into the basement of the Board of Elections.

“I had no idea just how Byzantine and ruthless it could be,” James said.

“Chicagoans, particularly of the political class, love to brag about how tough Chicago is politically. I don’t know that that’s something we should be bragging about… Politics is a tough game no matter where you are, but what makes it tough in Chicago doesn’t necessarily make for great leadership and great governance, because what often comes with that is backstabbing and gamesmanship and corruption.”

Here’s the good news: This is an easy fix.

A better way to get signatures

Chicagoans are familiar with political operatives flagging down pedestrians with clipboards and paper.

But for the last decade in Denver, candidates for office can collect digital signatures on an iPad with an app called eSign. That app automatically checks whether the person entered the correct information and is eligible to sign, and then securely uploads those signatures directly to the election authority.

The results are stunning.

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In Chicago, roughly half of signatures are ruled valid after adjudication. And in Denver’s old paper system, that rate was about 70%. Today under eSign, 97% of signatures are valid.

This change has severely reduced the cottage industry of election attorneys. It’s also cut down on fraud—a common problem among campaigns using paid petition circulators.

“Forging voter signatures on candidate nominating petitions for elected office remains, unfortunately, one of the most common illegal tactics of unscrupulous campaigns or individual petition passers,” according to Chicago-area election attorney Michael Del Galdo.

If a candidate files fraudulent signatures—knowingly or unknowingly—it is unlikely those will be caught without a challenge.

Denver’s system virtually eliminates that problem.

Changing state law

In his 2018 exit interview, Cook County Clerk David Orr put ballot access at the top of his list for needed reforms.

“The Denver Elections product, called eSign, is ready for Cook County,” he told WTTW. “Like Election Day Registration, this can be piloted in Cook County so we can refine it for all of Illinois.”

State Rep. Kelly Cassidy, D-Chicago, filed House Bill 4966 in 2022. The bill would have allowed local election authorities to copy Denver’s example.

It didn’t pass. But lawmakers should revive the effort.

Pass fair rules. Stop the petition scammers. And get more Chicagoans on the ballot in local elections.

In the news

Last week’s edition of The Last Ward examined what Chicago could learn from Washington, D.C.’s response to “teen takeovers.” I joined WGN Radio to discuss those findings (Apple Podcasts, Spotify). Chicago mayoral candidate Susana Mendoza also cited D.C.’s example.

In other news, The Last Ward was first to report Chicago Teachers Union leadership had lost a vote to hike member dues by $8.5 million. We now know the final results of that election: 63% of members voted no, representing a 26-point loss for union leadership.

From dinner table conversation, to City Council debates, to mayoral press conferences, teen takeovers may be the most prominent public safety topic in Chicago.1

Recent high-profile teen takeovers, also known as teen trends, include:

• A November 2025 incident near the Chicago Theatre during the Millennium Park tree-lighting that left a 14-year-old dead and eight others wounded in two separate shootings.

• A March 2025 incident in Streeterville left a 15-year-old grazed by a bullet, with officers logging 12 arrests for battery against police, resisting arrest, and possession of a replica firearm.

• A May 2026 incident on the Near West Side where hundreds of teens gathered ended when an 18-year-old drove his car into five police officers. He is now charged with attempted murder.

Of course, many young people participating in these trends lack consistent access to fun, safe events. And any sustainable response to teen takeovers requires work to address those disparities, including through city-funded programs.

But frustration has been brewing for more than two years on this topic due to a repeating cycle that leaves Chicagoans without resolution:

1. A teen takeover gets out of control, causing disorder and violence.

2. City Council calls for law enforcement reforms to better manage these trends, typically involving curfews.

3. Mayor Brandon Johnson rejects the Council’s push, and highlights the need for city spending on programs for youth.

This cycle lacks curiosity, driven by two simple questions. Beyond investing in youth programs, what law enforcement tools have other big cities used to effectively respond to this phenomenon? And what can our city learn from their experience?

Chicago is not alone in facing teen trends, after all.

Washington’s experience is worth considering.

Lessons from D.C.

In Summer 2025, Washington’s Navy Yard neighborhood became a focal point for the D.C. version of Chicago’s teen takeover problem — repeated large gatherings that spurred violence in one of the city’s busiest dining and nightlife districts.

After a particularly chaotic Independence Day weekend in 2025, Mayor Muriel Bowser and the D.C. Council had seen enough.

Working together, they created a new tool: extended juvenile curfew zones.

Here’s how the zones work:

• A juvenile curfew zone is a defined geographic area where the police chief can impose an earlier, stricter curfew: no gatherings of nine or more minors in any public place beginning at 8 p.m.

• Zones last up to four days and must be declared based on cause: either recent crime in the area or credible intelligence about a planned gathering likely to endanger public safety.

• Police must issue at least two verbal warnings before taking enforcement action.

• Violations are civil infractions, not criminal charges.

Here’s a brief history of how the zones have been implemented so far, and the initial results:

• July 7, 2025: The D.C. Council passed emergency legislation introduced at Bowser’s request (Juvenile Curfew Emergency Amendment Act of 2025). This gave the police chief authority to declare extended juvenile curfew zones, among other changes. In D.C., emergency legislation expires after 90 days.

• Summer 2025: D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith declared seven curfew zones between July and August. The city reported zero violations during active zone hours and hailed the measure as a success.

• Oct. 5, 2025: The emergency legislation expired. And within weeks, disorderly gatherings returned.

• Nov. 4, 2025: In response, the Council passed first reading of legislation keeping the curfew framework alive through April (final passage Dec. 2).

• Feb. 12–April 15, 2026: Once the law took effect, the chief of police declared 14 curfew zones resulting in just seven total violations — a figure the city cited as evidence the tool was working.

• May 5, 2026: The Council passed legislation permanently codifying the police chief’s curfew zone authority. The law will take effect in July after a mandatory congressional review period.

• May 22, 2026: With the temporary act expired and the permanent law still weeks away, Bowser issued a new executive order restoring police authority to declare juvenile curfew zones through June 6, 2026. A gap between June 6 and mid-July, when the permanent law kicks in, may require another bridge order.

Of course, this single enforcement tool is not enough to permanently solve the issue of teen trends.2 But to the extent results can be measured, they are encouraging. What D.C. has shown is that the political coalition for this tool can hold. And it can continue to evolve in response to changing circumstances.

Adopting D.C.-style reforms in Chicago

Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling spent much of his recent appearance at the City Club emphasizing the need to respond appropriately to teen takeovers.

Snelling is not alone. Illinois State Rep. Kam Buckner, D-Chicago, highlighted the issue this way in a recent interview on the Fran Spielman Show: “Accountability is not the opposite of love. Accountability is part of love and we ought to start acting that way.”

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Chicago City Council should consider a three-month pilot program similar to D.C.’s. Results should be reported back to the Council’s public safety committee on a consistent basis. And if it’s working, extend it.

Beyond responding to teen takeovers, two landmark reports point the way to professional excellence in the Chicago Police Department. One of the most stunning findings in those reports is that CPD has no clear, department-wide framework guiding how officers are expected to engage with the public in everyday interactions.

And of course, the city should continue investing in and measuring the outcomes of its youth programming.

As I wrote in City Journal last year, one of the most painful parts of the new Chicago pension sweeteners signed by Gov. JB Pritzker is that they will cost more money in 2026 ($60 million) than the city’s entire summer youth jobs program ($52 million) —ballooning to $753 million a year by 2055.

Despite his support for the youth summer jobs program, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said nothing publicly against those sweeteners as they moved through Springfield.

In the news

The Wall Street Journal published my take on New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s city budget proposal: “Capitalism Delivers for Zohran Mamdani.” The piece highlights how Mamdani’s city budget relies heavily on cuts to pension payments made possible by strong stock-market returns.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board also cited the Chicago Policy Center in their piece on Chicago Teachers Union members’ rejection of a proposed $8.5 million dues hike for politics (“A Union Dues Rebellion in Chicago”), as first reported in The Last Ward.

I joined the Mincing Rascals podcast on WGN Radio last week to discuss a variety of federal, state, and local issues (Youtube, Apple, Spotify).

And I joined Sarah Schulte on ABC 7 to discuss Brandon Johnson and Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates traveling to Rome during the waning days of legislative session in Springfield.