Chicagoans who want to weigh in on the Chicago Police Department’s plans for a new and improved gang database have until Saturday to have their say, while seniors who own small trucks and recreational vehicles would get a break on a city sticker under a plan that advanced Thursday.

Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot is 10 days away from inauguration day, and has already begun preparing Chicago taxpayers for bad news.

Shortly after she was elected, Lightfoot said the city was facing a more “dire” budget gap than she expected and warned Thursday that the city faces a “much more substantial” pension challenge than the public has been led to believe.

Lightfoot’s first budget — generally introduced in October — will arrive on her new desk drenched in red ink: a roughly $250 million structural budget gap and a $276 million bill for the city’s pension funds.  

With that in mind, The Daily Line invited one of Twitter’s most prolific pension watchdogs to come on the Aldercast podcast to discuss why journalists and politicos should not refer to it as a pension “crisis,” or expect Springfield to save the day and spare the city from making tough decisions.

Amanda Kass is the associate director of the Government Finance Research Center at UIC’s College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs. The Columbus, Ohio native with degrees in geography and international studies joined the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability in 2011 to research Illinois public pension systems.

“I actually had no idea what I was getting into at the time and I came in the summer of 2011, so it was kind of peak politics around Illinois’ pension systems,” Kass said. “It was right after the Tier II legislation had been signed into law and I had no clue what I was getting myself into at all.”

Technical difficulties prevented a broadcast-quality recording, so we’ve opted for a Q&A format, edited for length and clarity.

If you could go back to 2011 Amanda and 2011 legislators, what would you tell them?

I would tell 2011 Amanda don’t do anything differently, it’s going to be great. I think I would tell the legislators don’t bother passing any of these pension laws, because the Supreme Court’s just going to strike them down. I don’t think anybody would have listened to me. I think a lot of them knew that it was likely that legislation that they passed that cut benefits was going to get struck down by the state Supreme Court, but I think the politics of it was that they had to do something.

We’re just a couple weeks away from Lori Lightfoot’s swearing in — did you get the impression during the campaign that she understood the magnitude of Chicago’s budgetary and pension issues? There was a ton of talk during the campaign about corruption, Ed Burke, but not as much on pensions, not as much on budget.

If I take a step back and don’t think about her specifically, I think it would be difficult for any candidate to fully understand the finances of the city of Chicago. I don’t think the finances are that transparent or accessible to people working outside of City Hall. I think the pension issue and the kind of finances of the pension systems was well known. My sense was that her campaign staff and her understood this problem, but I don’t think anybody wanted to talk about it, right? Because they’re going to have to talk about, how are they going to raise revenue to make the pension contributions? Nobody who’s running for mayor is going to sit there and say hey, I’m going to raise your property taxes.

Give us a snapshot of where Chicago is pension-wise and budget-wise.

The pension systems, there’s four, one thing that people often don’t understand is that the City of Chicago itself is in charge of just four pension systems. There are other pension systems in Chicago and Cook County that impact Chicago residents, but they’re not in the purview of the city government. Those four systems, collectively, are about 30 percent funded, meaning that for every dollar of a pension liability there’s about $0.30 in the bank to pay that liability. The kind of financial condition of the systems ranges.



The first budget that Lori Lightfoot has, she’ll have to come up with $270 million to meet the ramp that we’re on.

That’s another important component — the four different pension systems, each of them has a five year ramp period. The city’s required contributions to the pension systems is a fixed dollar amount. This is a really bad idea, actually.

Why?

Because in theory, the way that you would want to have a government fund its pension systems is that the annual required payment would be a function of the unfunded liabilities, a plan to pay those down and the cost of benefits earned by the current employees in that year. So it would be determined each year by actuaries. Fixed dollar amounts are just that – they’re fixed dollar amounts. So if the unfunded liabilities increase or decrease, those fixed dollar amounts aren’t increasing or decreasing in tandem. So the city has these five year ramp periods, and then after those five year ramp periods is when it goes to funding the pension systems based on that calculation of paying down unfunded liabilities and the cost of benefits. So this means what the required contribution will have to be for the first budget year of Lori Lightfoot’s mayoralty is an estimate right now. Same for the Labor and Municipal.



So ideally, every year some actuary would be coming back to the city saying, ‘Hey, here’s what you should actually be paying us to get to the level where we need to be.’ And we’re aiming for 90 percent funding?

Yep, for the four pension systems, the aim is 90 percent funded in different years. I think it’s 2055 for Police and Fire, 2058 for Labor and Municipal. The other important thing is the payment schedule to get to 90 percent is really backloaded. So in dollar amounts the city’s contributions are going to increase every year from now until 2055 or 2058.

Lori Lightfoot’s first budget, which would be prepared in September and passed before the fiscal year begins on January 1, calls for this big, seemingly big push up, this $270 million, and there’s another one in 2022, and it’s more than a billion over the first four years of her term?

One, I think the $270 million, we want to put that in context of the city’s budget. The city’s overall budget is about $10 billion. When we’re thinking about the city’s overall budget, $270 milion, even though that’s certainly a lot of money to me, is not insurmountable in a $10 billion budget. It is still something where they’re going to have to come up with the money to make the payment. The pension contributions are a more visible cost than other elements of the city’s budget. I think one question I’d like to get a better handle on is, what other aspects of the city’s budget are going to be increasing from year to year? And what’s the cost of those? And does the city have the revenue to make those payments?

<span data-mce-type="bookmark" style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" class="mce_SELRES_start">

Right. The first year projected gap for Lightfoot is also about $250 million. She said it was more dire than she originally anticipated because we’re going to have all these expected new costs – a new police contract a new fire contract, and because it already expired, there’s going to be some back pay involved. That’s another one of the big costs that she’s going to have to consider.

Yes, point at the data — again, these are current estimates — the city in 2017 contributed about $1 billion to its pension systems. Let’s just go out to 2025. The estimate right now is that the city will have to put in about $2.3 billion. So in less than ten years it increases by about a billion and a half.

That is a lot of money. We’re no longer looking at $270 million as a small percent of the city’s budget, we’re looking at more than a billion on top of dramatic, historic property tax hikes in addition to water and sewage fees and a new 911 surcharge.

Yes, it is a lot of money. I think we don’t project out revenue in the same way we do the required pension contributions. I think we’d want to say, if we can, project out all the other things that are a part of the city’s budget to get a real sense of what is actually the potential kind of gap that it’s going to be. The other component is the city underfunded its pension systems for decades, and so we weren’t recognizing the full cost of city operations for a really long time. Unfortunately, the taxes people were paying weren’t covering actual costs of the services they were using.

Walk us through a little bit of the history of how the city got away with underfunding its pensions for so long.

The city’s required contributions are actually dictated by state law. Until fairly recently, the state law basically said that the city’s contributions were a multiplier of what employees contributed. If a municipal employee put in a dollar to its pension system, the city maybe put in a dollar or $1.50. Those contributions were fixed multipliers, meaning that they didn’t change as unfunded liabilities changed, as the cost of benefits changed at all. So they’re completely divorced from the actual finances of the pension system. As you can imagine, this becomes a problem when unfunded liabilities arise and you have no way to contribute to pay down that unfunded liability. It is a problem that just snowballs and grows and grows and grows and grows. And then we have the recession, and it grows astronomically larger.

What are some misconceptions or 101 things we should review before we talk more about it?

I think that the challenge facing the city today is not a pension problem, I think it’s a budget problem. I think we should be talking about the issue in the context of the city’s overall budget and overall finances. Why do I think it’s not a pension problem? I think of a pension crisis as a situation in which the pension system is going to go insolvent, meaning that it is going to run out of assets and checks to retirees are going to get halted. That was the scenario that was facing the city’s pension systems until legislation was passed fairly recently that changed the city’s required contributions. So now there’s a funding plan for all four of the pension systems that will eventually, over many decades, restore the fiscal health of the pension systems. So now the challenge is how is the city going to come up with the revenue to make those required payments?

Isn’t that a crisis though? That the money isn’t readily there?

But the money’s not readily there for many other aspects of the city’s budget, right? The money’s not readily there, necessarily, to — pick whatever aspect of the budget is your interest. Is it an economic development initiative? Is it mental health? Is it public safety? Any aspect that is of interest in the city’s budget, the money’s not there. I don’t think it’s a crisis, because a crisis denotes something that’s acute and immediate. I don’t mean to say that they’re not a problem or a challenge, but I don’t think it’s an acute crisis in the same way that it would be if the pension systems had gone insolvent and the checks to retirees were literally halted.

We are moving closer to a couple potential revenue streams Chicago has wanted for a while. Some kind of gambling – maybe sports betting, maybe a casino, maybe video, poker, video gambling like we have in the suburbs – and also recreational marijuana. What are your concerns or your warnings for these new aldermen and this new mayor about either source of revenue?

I would really want to scrutinize any revenue estimate attached to any of these proposals. The other thing to know is that the revenue from a Chicago casino would already be dedicated to the police and fire pension systems. That’s not going to be revenue that the City Council and mayor can use for other areas of the budget. Casino money’s already spent.

What about marijuana?

The logistics of setting up recreational marijuana and then actually having the tax revenue comes in for it – there can be quite a long lag time between when a law is passed and when revenue actually starts being collected. For example, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle passed the sugary soda tax, and I think from when the commissioners approved that to when revenue started getting collected was somewhere between six and nine months. That’s for a product that was already legal, on the market.

The other question is would the city be able to implement its own tax on recreational marijuana or would it be a state only tax? The state’s already facing its own financial challenges. If recreational marijuana is legalized and taxed at the state level, I think it’s an open question of is any revenue even going to filter down to the local governments.

What are other limitations this new mayor and the new City Council have in terms of raising revenue to pay for pensions? I think the one thing we always look at is property taxes, the one automatic thing the mayor and City Council can do to get revenue.

Raising the property tax levy is a political hurdle. Logistically, in terms of implementation, the property tax levy is the easiest target for the city, but I think the politics of it are complicated. We’ve got a new assessor who is implementing a new assessment system. It’s not totally clear yet how that’s going to impact people and businesses. Then you also have some areas of the city that are really hot real estate markets, so the values in those areas have already increased. That’s all still to be shaken out.

The city’s bound by home rule, so the city can only implement taxes that it’s authorized by state law to implement. The city, for example, can’t implement a city income tax because of the state constitutional provision. I’m going to be very unpopular, but I think the easiest thing for the City Council and the new mayor to do is to raise the property tax levy to make the 2020 payment.

We saw Mayor Emanuel attempt to do a rebate program that was not particularly popular. And the other issue is that people are generally okay with their taxes being raised if they feel like they’re getting something in return. These are just going straight to pensions rather than city services.

The property tax, there’s no good way around it, unfortunately residents have enjoyed services at a below-cost level for decades, and that kept their property taxes low, and unfortunately now revenue’s having to be raised to pay for unfunded liabilities. These are services people enjoyed and used in the past.

So we’ve been under-taxed for decades and now we’re playing catch up?

Yeah. I think if we think about the unfunded pension liability somewhat as a function of the full cost of city services not being realized, then yes.

So if it’s not a pension crisis would you describe it as a budget crisis?

I think the crisis word is just generally unhelpful in trying to craft thoughtful, robust public policy. I think labeling something as a budget crisis or a pension crisis creates a kind of frenetic energy of ‘Oh my gosh, we have to do something, we have to do anything, and we have to have done it yesterday, so we just need to do whatever.’ I think it leads to really bad pieces of legislation getting passed. I’d say there are budgetary challenges and problems, but I don’t think they’re insurmountable and I don’t think that they’re an immediate crisis.

I think it’s probably very boring, but to say let’s go steady, let’s be very careful, let’s do robust analysis, and to be honest and figure out what are we trying to fix, and what the scope of the problem is and how long it will be to dig itself out. The city’s financial challenges, underfunded pension systems, are long-term problems. The City Council, the new mayor are not going to be able to pass an ordinance tomorrow that’s going to at the snap of a finger turn everything around.

What role do you think TIF reform should play in this new Lightfoot administration? There’s a lot of attention on it because of the 78 and megadevelopments that might be benefiting from TIF to pay for infrastructure. What would you tell Lori Lightfoot about TIF?

Good luck.

Good luck because Chicago has such a massive program?

The politics around TIF are fairly heated. I’d say one, kind of good luck in trying to understand all the different TIF districts that are in Chicago. What are all the projects those TIFs are financing? How do some of these newer TIFs differ structurally from the already existing TIFs? And understanding the politics of TIF –  why are different groups opposed to TIF? Is it financial reasons? Transparency? Are they just kind of opposed to it to be opposed to it?

You and Daniel Kay Hertz have written about it… if we got rid of a bunch of TIFs would we be able to solve our pension crisis– our budgetary issues?

Our short answer is mostly no. You can read our blog for the wonky details, but one of the complications is that TIF projects go to fund projects for Chicago Public Schools and the city’s infrastructure. One complication is some of these projects are for things that absent TIF, the city or Chicago Public Schools would still want or need to do. In that way it benefits CPS or the city.

What deserves a second look from this administration and these aldermen?

I think there could be two fronts on this. One could be — how is information on TIFs presented to the public? Are there ways to improve the transparency and clarity? One of the problems with public finance, often, is things are “transparent” because financial documents are put online or anybody can readily get those documents. But not everybody has been trained in public finance to understand what financial terms are. The information has to not just be transparent, meaning readily available, but made accessible to your everyday resident.

Two, looking at the actual projects and saying kind of structurally – is doing it via the TIF program the best way in terms of transparency in city operation? Why are we doing projects that are ostensibly needed infrastructure projects, why are we doing them via TIF? Could we do it a different way that would make it part of the city’s overall budget and give residents a better picture of the city’s overall activities?

What else would you like to see out of the new City Council?

To have a robust office to analyze legislation and come up with better fiscal notes for the general public.

You’ve been here for all of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s tenure. The city is now facing up to the payments that it needs to make, at least Rahm Emanuel would say we’re through the choppiest waters, we’re on the path to sustainability, we’re in much better shape. Do you buy it? And is his legacy one of facing up to the challenges of our pension problem and our budget problem?

I think that’s complicated. I think I have the luxury of not having to think about the politics of everything and think about how do I get the majority of City Council to vote on something, how to get state lawmakers to pass something. So I should caveat my answer with that. With the pensions, I think yes and no. One of the problems is that changing the city’s funding laws for its pension systems wasn’t done during the first four years. Mayor Daley had commissioned a pension committee to look at that issue and they issued reports in 2010 that were pretty clear that look, the longer this issue festers, the more the problem’s going to grow and nothing was done immediately. I don’t put that all on Mayor Emanuel though, because during Daley’s administration they didn’t lobby to change the funding laws either. A problem with what got passed was they had these five year ramp periods. In the long run, the city would have been a lot better off if it had started properly funding the pension systems immediately, and not putting in these five year ramp periods.

So acting in 2012 rather than acting in ‘15 and ‘16?

Well even acting in ‘15 and ‘16, if they had just not put in these ramp periods and had said –– the financial hurdle between what the city had been contributing to the pension systems and what the city would have had to put in to the pension systems would have been much higher.

Do we know how much?

It would have been substantial. The Anderson Economic Group did a study on this about the overall impact of if the city hadn’t had these five year ramps. One question is, would it have been better if residents had taken one hit? If, fine, the increase would have been larger than what people have experienced thus far, but it was a one time hit, versus what’s been happening of a steady increase in property taxes, increases in the 9-1-1 charge, increase in the water and sewer rate charge and still a $270 million gap is going to have to be filled somehow.



His justification is, “I couldn’t have done that so soon after the recession.” Is that fair?

I don’t know. The other component is that the city had kept its property tax levy fairly flat for decades.

So people might have been able to sustain the hit.

The question is, maybe it wouldn’t have been feasible for him to come into office right away and do it, so maybe it wasn’t feasible in 2012, but 2015, 2016? Again, my quibble is over having the five year, fixed-dollar amount ramps.

What overall grade would you give him on his pension legacy?

That’s confidential.

After property owners blocked it from advancing Thursday, Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi agreed to “clarify” a bill that would give his office the ability to collect operating income and expense data from commercial and industrial properties.

A measure that would give seniors a $65 break on a city sticker for trucks and recreational vehicles is up for a vote at Thursday’s meeting City Council’s Pedestrian and Traffic Safety Committee.

The steady flow of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s cabinet members out the door of City Hall as his term ticks down continued Wednesday, as the meeting to pick a replacement for former state Rep. Melissa Conyears-Ervin was set for May 17.

A bill that would give the Cook County Assessor’s office — and other offices statewide — the ability to collect operating income and expense data from commercial properties ran into road blocks in the House this week, with members doubting the efficacy of the bill after opposition from powerful real estate interests surfaced.

The 80 branches of the Chicago Public Library remain insufficiently staffed to meet the needs of library users and community residents, a follow-up audit released Tuesday by Inspector General Joseph Ferguson found.

With Treasurer-elect Melissa Conyears-Ervin set to be sworn in as Chicago treasurer in less than two weeks, it will fall to a group of Democratic Party insiders from the city’s and Northwest and West sides to pick her replacement in the Illinois House.

When the committeepeople who represent the wards that make up the 10th Illinois House District gather at noon May 18, Conyears-Ervin’s husband Ald. Jason Ervin (28), Ald. Walter Burnett (27) and Ald. Scott Waguespack (32) will hold the lion’s share of the votes needed to pick Illinois’ newest state representative.

Burnett said he will back his stepson Jawaharial “Omar” Williams to replace Conyears-Ervin over the more than a dozen other interested candidates.

Williams has been working precincts since he was a teenager alongside the alderman, who has been a member of Secretary of State Jesse White’s political organization for decades along with Ervin and Conyears-Ervin.

“I don’t know of any family business that don’t — I shouldn’t say family business — but if your kids work hard... that’s what I work for, to promote my kids, help my kids if they do well,” Burnett said. “If they’re not deserving of it, they’re not deserving of it. So we’ll see how all the other members look at it and we’ll take it from there. It’s no different than Jason pushing his wife for the state rep spot and pushing her for treasurer.”

Ervin declined to say who he would back to replace his wife as state representative through a spokesman.

Ald. Scott Waguespack (32) said he had not decided whom to support.

Conyears-Ervin, who resigned May 1, said in a statement she would leave the choice of her replacement to the committeepeople.

"I want my replacement to continue fighting for working class families and pushing for increased education and childcare funding," Conyears-Ervin said.

WVON radio morning show host Maze Jackson told The Daily Line in an emailed statement he is also interested in replacing Conyears-Ervin and would strive “to bring economic resources back to the district, and to be an uncompromised vociferous advocate for self-interests of the Black community. I want to get an answer to ‘What’s in it for the Black People?’ in the state of Illinois.”

In addition to Williams and Jackson, Chavonne Carter, an assistant in White’s office; Dwight Lee, an executive in White’s office; Gerard Moorer in U.S. Rep. Danny Davis’ office; and former state Rep. Eddie Winters are also interested in replacing Conyears-Ervin, Burnett said.

Ervin and Burnett backed Conyears-Ervin’s bid for treasurer, and White featured prominently in her campaign’s television spots.

Williams’ mother, and the alderman’s wife, is former Cook County Comm. Darlena Williams Burnett, who is now the deputy chief of facilities for the Chicago Housing Authority. Williams, who has a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice, has been a plumber for 16 years, and has done work for Chicago’s water department, Burnett said, adding that his stepson is “looking at law school.”

Burnett said he “couldn’t go home at night,” if he didn’t support Williams for the spot, but “that doesn’t mean he’s gonna get it.”

Ward	Committeeperson	2018 GE Turnout	Weighted Vote
1	Proco Joe Moreno	1,412	4.46%
2	Tim Egan	3,737	11.81%
24	Michael Scott Jr.	876	2.77%
26	Roberto Maldonado	989	3.12%
27	Walter Burnett Jr.	9,159	28.94%
28	Jason Ervin	5,679	17.94%
29	Chris Taliaferro	6	0.02%
32	Scott Waguespack	5,566	17.59%
37	Emma Mitts	2,375	7.50%
43	Lucy Moog	1,850	5.85%

 

State law requires a replacement to be picked within 30 days of a resignation from the Illinois House.

Conyears-Ervin’s replacement must receive a simple majority of votes of the committee, which will be weighted according to how many votes were logged in her race in the 1st, 2nd, 24th, 26th, 27th, 28th, 29th, 32nd, 37th and 43rd wards in the 2018 general election.

Those interested in replacing Conyears-Ervin can email their resumes to Burnett at [email protected].  

“What we plan on doing is having a general session to allow everyone to present their credentials,” Burnett said. “After that, we’re going to have an executive meeting, then we’re going to choose the state rep.”

Conyears-Ervin was elected to the Illinois House in 2016 running unopposed in the Democratic primary and defeating Republican Mark Spognardi in the general election. She was unopposed in the 2018 election.

Conyears-Ervin replaced former state Rep. Pamela Reaves-Harris, who served one two-year term. Before her, former state Rep. Derrick Smith also served one term beginning in 2012. Smith was ousted by House colleagues after he was charged with accepting a bribe, and was convicted of bribery in June 2014.

Smith was replaced by Winters, a former Chicago Police officer.

Williams and the Ervins are “good friends,” Burnett said.

“So I don’t know if Jason’s gonna support him or not,” Burnett said. “Everybody’s still talking to everybody. At the end of the day, whoever takes it is going to have to run and start circulating petitions in August, hurry up and raise money, have soldiers, all of that good stuff. I think someone from our organization would be ready, would have all of that support.”

Last week, my friend & colleague celebrated her last day in the Gen. Assembly. @melissa4chicago is moving on to become City Treasurer & I couldn’t be prouder of her work or more grateful to have had an opportunity to learn from and serve with her. The City is getting a winner! pic.twitter.com/FjthKOlmF1

— Kam Buckner (@Kam_Buckner) May 7, 2019

Conyears-Ervin, who is set to take office as treasurer on May 20, gave her farewell speech on the House floor on May 2. She thanked colleagues for “allowing me to be me,” and grew emotional discussing the future of the Black Caucus. She said she was proud to have been able to nurse her then-6-month-old daughter Jeneva in a special room for mothers in the Capitol.

Conyears-Ervin also thanked her husband for his support.

Ervin himself was appointed to his seat on the City Council by Mayor Richard M. Daley in 2011, won election the following month, and re-election in 2015 and 2019.

Historians attempting to make sense of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s tenure as Chicago’s mayor could do worse than to concentrate on the four events on the mayor’s schedule Monday, precisely two weeks before the buzzer is set to sound on his two terms in office.

A 15.8 percent increase in the number of pothole damage claims filed with the City Council from March through May as compared with the same period last year will force city leaders to dig deep to pay winter’s toll.

The Democratic Party of Illinois’ delegate selection plan for the 2020 presidential election pledges to include more LGBTQ and Millennial delegates as well as those who have disabilities and are members of labor unions and minority groups.

Ald. Roberto Maldonado (26) said Thursday he was back at work after undergoing surgery for a “benign growth.”

Maldonado said his “doctors have granted me a full recovery with no ill effects or long-term symptoms,” according to a Facebook post.

“Thank you for the support and well wishes,” said Maldonado, who had not publicly announced he was ill. “I am glad to be back!”

Maldonado urged 26th Ward residents to get regular checkups and “stay active and make healthy choices.”

Maldonado could not be reached Thursday by The Daily Line. His wife and mother both died with days of each other in late 2016. His wife, Nancy Franco Maldonado, had pancreatic cancer. He has three children.

The alderman will be sworn in to his third full term later this month. His ward includes Humboldt Park as well as parts of Logan Square and West Town.

Maldonado was appointed to the City Council in 2009 by former Mayor Richard M. Daley after serving as a member of the Cook County Board of Commissioners for 15 years.

In February, Maldonado avoided a runoff against businesswoman Theresa Siaw by fewer than 50 votes, according to final results.

The Chicago Board of Ethics fined Ald. Ed Burke (14) $2,000 for exercising improper influence during a heated City Council debate in January 2018 over whether the city should spend $5.5 million to subsidize the new Downtown headquarters for the state’s largest Catholic health system.

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle vowed to redouble her efforts to make the county’s criminal justice system more equitable by ending the requirement for those arrested for crimes to have enough cash on hand to pay their way out of jail.

The county has slowly changed the way its criminal justice system operates during Preckwinkle’s first two terms as part of a collaborative effort with the chief judge, state’s attorney, sheriff, public defender and the clerk of the court.

Preckwinkle’s longtime goal has been to reduce the number of people held behind bars simply because they cannot afford to pay, she said on The Daily Line’s Aldercast, and she supports efforts to abolish the cash bail system.  

[audio mp3="http://thedailyline.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Preckwinkle-Aldercast_mixdown.mp3">[/audio]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download  Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS

“We’ve been at it now for five and a half years, and what we’ve seen is a dramatic reduction in the jail population as a result of our decreased reliance on cash bonds,” she said. “When we started this initiative, two-thirds of the people who came in bond court got a cash bond and one third got released on their own recognizance or electronic monitoring, and now it’s the reverse.”

State Rep. Justin Slaughter (D-Chicago), a former staffer to Cook County Comm. Stanley Moore (D-4), introduced a bill to eliminate cash bond entirely this session. State’s Attorney Kim Foxx backed the measure, which drew criticism from some law enforcement groups who contend it would puncture their budgets and increase crime.  

Asked whether she supported eliminating cash bail entirely, Preckwinkle said, “I think that this is the direction in which I would want to move, yes.”

Preckwinkle pointed to Washington, D.C. as a model. The city eliminated cash bail in the 1990s, and served as county stakeholders’ inspiration when they embarked on reforms in 2013.

Chief Judge Timothy Evans began requiring court staff and judges in the fall of 2017 to ask about a defendant’s ability to pay their bail. Non-dangerous, low flight-risk defendants — as determined by an assessment tool — would be released from custody pending trial. Bail amounts would be set at an amount they could afford.

Adherence to that rule has varied by judge. As recently as February, the Tribune reported of the 5,736 inmates in Cook County Jail, 5,390 has yet to stand trial. Approximately 48 percent could either not afford their bail or did not have a place to live where they could be electronically monitored.

Preckwinkle still has close to two more years as the chair of the Cook County Democratic Party, which was traditionally active in local campaigns but stayed silent on whether to retain judges that serve in county courts. That changed in the 2018 elections.

During the November election the party “took the position that not every judge deserved retention,” for the first time and joined criminal justice reform advocates to urge voters not to retain Judge Matthew Coghlan.

Coghlan was sued by two men he prosecuted for murder in the 1990s. Those convictions were later overturned, and the men say Coghlan worked with disgraced former Chicago detective Reynaldo Guevara to concoct a false case against them. Coghlan was also accused of racially biased sentencing and wrongfully denying hearings.

Aside from ensuring diverse slates in upcoming elections, Preckwinkle said she expects the party to continue to hold judges’ feet to the fire during slating.   

“I think it’s really worthy of note that the Democratic Party took the position that we need to hold people on the bench accountable to being fair to all of the people who come before them in the courtroom, and I anticipate that that will be the case again in the next round, and there will be judges that we do not support for retention,” Preckwinkle said.

As Preckwinkle’s third term gets underway in earnest after her defeat in the mayoral election, officials at every level of government in Illinois are facing various allegations of wrongdoing, criminal investigations or charges — Gov. JB Pritzker, House Speaker Mike Madigan, Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown, State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, Ald. Ed Burke and Ald. Danny Solis and Ald. Patrick D. Thompson.

Preckwinkle paused for a long time after asking if the mounting scandals represented a crisis.  

“You’re listing people, some of whom have — let me back up,” Preckwinkle said. “You know, look, the first thing you should say is people are presumed innocent until proven guilty. The fact that somebody makes an allegation against you doesn’t mean you’re guilty of the allegation.”

“While the litany of things that you just described is surely discouraging, unless and until it results in charges and convictions, it’s simply allegations.”

• Southland struggles — Preckwinkle is also doubling down on efforts to lift the south suburbs, among the areas hit hardest by industrial flight. “We will continue to have a challenge in the Southland of overreliance on residential properties because of the absence of vigorous industrial and commercial sectors in many of these neighborhoods, many of these communities,” she said. A recent Crain’s analysis found Southland homeowners are charged property tax rates at double the rate western and north suburban homeowners face. Preckwinkle did not address questions about how assessment changes from Assessor Fritz Kaegi’s office — which have seen industrial and commercial assessments rise by 82 percent in Elk Grove and 96 percent in New Trier — might hamper efforts to attract new businesses to the Southland. “My view is that the more equity we can inject into the system, the better off we are,” Preckwinkle said.


• Three priorities for Springfield — Preckwinkle will be in Springfield May 7 and May 8 to meet with leaders. Preckwinkle said she will push for a capital bill that “invests not simply in roads in bridges,” but in facilities; a pension clean-up bill; and to ensure that the county gets a piece of the pie if recreational marijuana and sports betting are approved. “We need to look at the records of those who are in jail or have convictions for simple possession, if we’re going to legalize marijuana, we need to do something about those who are detained or incarcerated for drug offenses,” Preckwinkle said.


• County census effort to begin in earnest this month — The county has set aside $2 million for community organizations to do outreach and communication ahead of the Census. That already-uphill climb could be made more difficult if the U.S. Supreme Court allows the Trump administration to include a citizenship question on 2020 forms, Preckwinkle said. Preckwinkle’s administration will release a request for proposals from community organizations to perform outreach within the next two weeks. The newly formed Complete Count Committee will also begin meeting this month. “We have to focus on growth and opportunity, not just downtown but in all of our neighborhoods, in all of our cities, towns, and villages,” Preckwinkle said. “When people believe there’s opportunity for themselves and their children, they’re more likely to stay.”

Another member of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s leadership team has moved on to greener pastures, while officials warned that thousands of Cook County residents could lose their homes if they don’t pay their property taxes.