Ald. Gilbert Villegas (36) and IPI Chicago Policy Center Executive Director Austin Berg are pictured at the Chicago Charter Symposium on Monday, March 24, 2025. [Jess Plowman/Chicago Policy Center]

Civics nerds, good government advocates and some members of City Council attended a symposium at Northwestern University School of Law Monday morning to hear about the push for Chicago to establish its own charter, an endeavor that bills itself as at least part of the solution to some of city government’s recurring issues, such as dysfunction and corruption.

The symposium was organized by the Illinois Policy Institute’s Chicago Policy Center.

Chicago is unique among major American cities in not having a charter. The city has limited home rule authority, allowing it to pave its own path in many ways, but it’s otherwise governed by the state constitution, state statute and its own municipal code and rules. 

Some think a charter would fill in the gaps left unaddressed by that combination of laws and procedure and create a framework for city government that’s impervious to being changed based on who’s in power following each election. Additionally, some advocates say it could create a more co-equal form of government with more cleanly laid out limits.

Austin Berg, executive director of the Chicago Policy Center, told attendees a charter should not be thought of as a “panacea” with the power to magically fix all the ills that afflict municipal government.   

Instead, Berg and other speakers Monday described the purpose of a charter as an explicit declaration of the structure, authority and limits of the city government as well as how power is divided among the positions within government. 

Attendees at Monday’s symposium included former Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, former 46th Ward Ald. James Cappleman, and multiple current alderpeople, including three committee chairs. 

Alds. Matt O’Shea (19), Silvana Tabares (23), Felix Cardona (31) Gilbert Villegas (36) and Andre Vasquez (40) attended. O’Shea chairs the council’s aviation committee; Villegas chairs the economic, capital and technology development committee; and Vasquez chairs the immigration committee while also co-chairing the Council Progressive Caucus. 

Mitch Holzrichter, a lawyer for Mayer Brown specializing in local government, said there’s two ways to look at the existence of a Chicago city charter depending on what you are asking. If the metric is the existence of a structure for the city government and rules, those exist through a combination of state law and the city’s own municipal code. But in terms of an overarching, guiding framework derived from a greater authority — be that the state or the people — Holzrichter said Chicago lacks that. 

The process for creating a charter would begin in Springfield. The General Assembly would have to pass a law creating the process by which Chicago could craft a charter. Oftentimes, a charter commission made up of either elected or appointed members, but independent from current leaders in government, drafts the document before it’s put to voters to approve via referendum. 

As for why a charter would be sought over reforms to city code or other law, Raphael Sonenshein, former executive director of the charter revision commission in Los Angeles in the 1990s, said the key is durability.

Sonenshein said while laws, rules and ordinances can be easily changed or repealed based on the whims of the majority in power, a charter is meant to be more or less a constant over decades.  

“There’s a notion of founding and refounding your community,” Sonenshein said. 

The leaders and wielders of power in city government should not be allowed to make up the rules of how governance works as they go along — as he said so often happens — especially when rule changes and exceptions are carved out as a means of centralizing more power and bypassing traditional checks and balances, Sonenshein added.  

Eric Lane, a leader of New York City’s charter revision commission in the 1980s, said in working on what the amended charter should look like, the commission avoided legislative and policy solutions to the problems New York faced. Instead, he said an effective charter should be concerned with the bigger picture. It’s not about what the government should do legislatively, it’s how it ought to operate, he said. 

Sonenshein summed it up more succinctly, adding that charter crafters should imagine their worst enemies occupying the government structure they are creating rather than their best friends. 

In Los Angeles, Sonenshein said the charter revision effort was aimed at increasing the mayor’s power and weakening a very powerful city council. The effort would likely play out differently in Chicago, where the mayor wields much more power than the council. 

A Chicago charter effort would also be different than Los Angeles’ and New York’s because those cities were reforming existing charters rather than creating something new. 

State Rep. Kam Buckner (D-Chicago) has introduced House Bill 3656 to help kickstart the process to create a charter commission, and he authored a Chicago Tribune op-ed several weeks ago arguing why it would improve Chicago government. Buckner had been slated to attend and speak at the symposium but had to cancel last minute due to his involvement in state budget negotiations Monday. 

Instead, Villegas, another proponent of a city charter who called for one on the floor of City Council late last year, spoke about his support and participated in a question-and-answer. 

Villegas, who joined the council in 2015, said he was surprised to learn about the mayor’s power over committee assignments and the budgetary process after he was elected to the council and indicated that those two things are among the reforms he’d like to see addressed in a potential city charter. 

Most of Monday’s speakers stressed that while charter-making itself is a process about structure and rules, the process of getting the charter approved would undoubtedly be a political one. Public awareness and education would be important, as would encouraging various civic groups and elected officials at the state level to get onboard, speakers said. 

Lane said one of the ways public support was garnered and retained in New York was the hosting of scores of public meetings. 

Berg told attendees next steps should include outreach to state lawmakers to inquire about their support for a charter.