A federal grant program that helps cities combat violent gangs and curb illegal guns will be the subject of Tuesday’s Public Safety Committee meeting.

The Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce sent letters to the members of the Cook County Board and Board President Toni Preckwinkle Friday afternoon calling for a pause on implementation of both the county’s paid sick leave and sweetened beverage tax until January 1, describing implementation of the former as “piecemeal” and the latter “a mess”. The Preckwinkle administration says it has no intention of doing so.

I don't think Team Emanuel has a plan for getting Chicago Public Schools on its feet. Call it a hunch, because I don’t have anyone on the record to say that’s the case. But we have watched two years of hemming and hawing from Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his administration about funding CPS operations, and not much has changed in that time.

Last May we learned that the district would only have $24 million on hand at the end of their fiscal year, June 30, and that the schools would start their year with a $1.1 billion deficit. The solution involved a series of cuts, including to classroom services, some borrowing, and some money from the state. But then the state backed out of part of its funding package, due to a veto from Gov. Bruce Rauner, so CPS borrowed more money and made more cuts.

And still, CPS didn’t address its structural deficit problem, which after 2017’s cuts, is well over $500 million, maybe closer to $1 billion, analysts tell me. CPS also hasn’t come up with a solution to pay down its significant debt, which this month will rise to $8.1 billion. That’s more than 50% larger than the district’s $5.4 billion annual budget.

If you’re a Daily Line regular, you’ve read all of this before. I’m sorry for subjecting you to a repeat. But the details are just so mind blowing, it’s worth a reminder. (Also, another plug to our recent podcast episode: The CPS Funding Saga. It’s essentially an audio history of the rhetoric on CPS by the administration over the past three years and the confusion it has created among aldermen who are essentially kept in the dark.)

As Chicago’s schools lurched through its budget crisis, we’ve heard three solutions from Team Emanuel: borrow, make incremental cuts, and hope Springfield will give us some money.

The close of Springfield’s Spring Session without a budget deal (for the third year in a row!) should make it pretty clear: We’re not going to see anything from the state anytime soon. And then, Gov. Bruce Rauner really put the nail in the coffin Thursday when he told the Sun-Times he wouldn’t support and education funding bill that included $300 million for CPS. “The amendment on there really amounts to an unfair-to-Illinois-taxpayers bailout of CPS,” he said.

We know now: Rauner is committed to his plan of freezing property taxes, and other aspects of his Turnaround Agenda, and he’ll hold the budget hostage until he gets it or is voted out of office. As a result, we may not see a state budget or state money for CPS until after the November 2018 elections.

So what’s Team Emanuel’s solution?

Except for a promise to start school on time next September, we don’t know. Last week, before the Spring Session ended, Emanuel told reporters, “If you think in the final seven days I’m going to tell Springfield everything I’m going to do while they’re negotiating an education budget, you’ve got to get yourself another negotiator. That’d be the dumbest thing you can do.”

But now session's over, and we still don’t have a solution.

Back in April, aldermen who saw the writing on the wall–that the city is going to have to raise taxes and then make payments to CPS to keep it going–but were rebuffed by Team Emanuel for a briefing, started coming up with their own funding solutions. Some of the solutions, like a head tax and raiding unused Tax Increment Financing funds have majority support in Council. But unless Finance Committee Chairman Ed Burke (14) calls a vote (which he won’t without the mayor’s say-so) the ideas will never see daylight.

Then last week, members of the Progressive Caucus filed an order demanding outgoing Budget Director Alex Holt, CFO Carole Brown, and Treasurer Kurt Summers open up the books and show how much the city has in its TIF, Rainy Day, and investment holdings.

Not a peep from Team Emanuel in response.

When I spoke to Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jesse Sharkey last month, he said he can’t take Mayor Emanuel seriously until he “commit[s] to raising half a billion dollars for the schools,” through local tax increases. The idea seemed shocking and radical to me at the time, but now, just a month later, I’m beginning to think it’s maybe the only solution available.

 



Aldermen on the city's Committee on Health and Environmental Protection lightly questioned officials from the Department of Fleet and Facility Management (2FM) and ComEd executives on Smart Meters and cybersecurity Thursday, pushing a hearing on President Donald Trump’s proposed cuts to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency so late in the day that only three aldermen remained.

In 2016, fifteen aldermen on the City Council received income from an outside job, two aldermen had a family member contracted by the city, and one alderman owned eleven pieces of property. That information was revealed this week as aldermen rushed to file their annual financial interest statements with the city. All were required to submit the responses to the Board of Ethics by May 31.

 

The committee will first hear from ComEd officials on their annual franchise report and summer preparation at 11:00 a.m. Thursday. The annual briefings are required as part of the utility's franchise agreement with the city and includes a rundown of usage statistics for the year and updates on infrastructure improvements by a team of ComEd representatives and Fleet and Facility Management officials. ComEd’s contract with the city expires in 2020.

Federal grants used for affordable housing, capital projects, and public services operated by Chicago, Cook County and other municipalities are on the chopping block in President Donald Trump’s proposed budget.

With more than two-thirds of the city’s collective bargaining agreements scheduled to expire at the end of June, the city’s Inspector General has identified costly provisions the city should eliminate or amend at the negotiation table.

While the police reform process continues to grind along–including the recent release of updated police use of force recommendations and potential changes to begin community oversight of CPD–there has been a significant amount of turnover in elements of the criminal justice system over the past 15 months. What follows is a status update on major offices and departments and their leaders: who has stayed, who has gone, and what is left unfilled.

Mayor’s Office

Two mayoral staff that played prominent roles in the police reform ordinance the council approved have left the administration. Corporation Counsel Steve Patton exited in February, replaced with Ed Siskel, an attorney in Washington D.C. the city hired as an independent contractor to help the city navigate through the Department of Justice probe.

In April, the administration hired a new Deputy Chief of Staff for Public Safety, Walter Katz, to fill the vacancy left by Janey Rountree in January.

Deputy Mayor Andrea Zopp was also elevated to take on public safety issues. New public safety policy and counsel positions were also added under Zopp (then Katz), filled by Deanne Millison and Brandon Nemec to help supplant another exit–Katie Hill, the mayor’s senior public policy advisor. She is now working for State’s Attorney Kim Foxx.

Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office

Cook County State’s Attorney Foxx was sworn in on December 1, 2016 as the first black female SA in the county’s history, but had changed the conversation on local crime and the prosecution of police officers months before, when it became apparent she’d be replacing Anita Alvarez after the Laquan McDonald video release fallout, and the prosecution of Officer Jason Van Dyke.

Foxx has since been working to raise the profile of the office–filing first-degree murder charges in two police-involved shooting cases “within days, not months, of the incidents occurring,” drafting legislation to allow the state’s appellate prosecutor’s office to review fatal officer involved shooting cases, launching a conviction integrity unit, and endorsing bond reform for the county’s criminal justice system. Her first 100 days report also includes several mentions of face to face meetings with reform stakeholders and advocacy groups.

Chicago Police Department  

After one of the oddest turns in the city’s police accountability saga–the resignation of Supt. Garry McCarthy, installation of interim Supt. John Escalante, the Police Board’s nationwide search for a replacement, and the mayor’s decision to toss out those recommendations–Supt. Eddie Johnson has served in his position now for more than a year. Since March of 2016, Johnson’s focus has centered on quelling crime, though he has heralded the department's “Next Steps for Reform”, opened up the department’s development of new use of force policies for public comment, and is looking to revamp CPD’s community policing program.

The department has also seen some exits and promotions. Anne Kirkpatrick, brought on to oversee reform efforts at the department as the Chief of the Bureau of Professional Standards, abruptly left after seven months on the job to accept a position at the Oakland, California police department. Kirkpatrick was one of the finalists for the Superintendent job put forward by the Police Board that Mayor Emanuel tossed. The newly created position has since been folded under the purview of CPD’s Chief of Bureau of Support Services, Barbara West.

IPRA/COPA

IPRA Chief Administrator Sharon Fairley is one of few mainstays since the beginning of the police accountability overhaul. The current administrator of the Independent Police Review Authority is in the middle of transitioning the office to an organization with broader authority, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability. The official switchover will take place just before Fairley hits the two year anniversary of her appointment: in September of 2015 (Mayor Emanuel tapped Fairley in December). She replaced Scott Ando. Fairley has since hired a First Deputy, Thomas Kim, the former Chief of Investigations for the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) in New York. He will manage COPA’s team of investigators.  

Police Board

Lori Lightfoot has also signed on for the long haul on police accountability–serving several roles as Police Board President, head and de facto spokesperson for the Police Accountability Task Force, and frequent go-to source for those assessing whether police reform changes announced by the mayor and CPD go far enough. Lightfoot has been one of the most public voices calling for further reforms.

The nine-member Police Board, the body that decides disciplinary cases involving allegations of police misconduct, has had a bit of turnover. John O'Malley (to complete the unexpired term of William Conlon, now Chair of the Chicago Board of Ethics), Steve Flores (to complete the unexpired term of Melissa Ballate), and Eva Dina-Delgado (to complete the unexpired term of Claudia Valenzuela).

Community Oversight Board

A new body composed of community members with some kind of oversight of the Chicago Police Department is still pending. Mayor Emanuel promised a Community Oversight Board, guided by local stakeholders, would take shape in January of 2017, but little has come out of the group in charge, the Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability since it released findings from a series of community meetings in March. A spokesperson for the group, Delmarie Cobb, suggested answers by the end of May, but has yet to release anything.  

Inspector General

Joe Ferguson is still at the helm of the Chicago Office of the Inspector General, and was recently reappointed by Mayor Emanuel to another term. His office is building out its public safety section to audit different police oversight agencies, and added researcher Laura Kunard to head up the endeavor in April. The office is still staffing up, building out a physical space to accommodate new hires, and has released the first bits of data about CPD staffing.

Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7

The union representing the city’s rank and file officers has a fresh President, Kevin Graham, who will lead up negotiations for a new police contract with the city, beginning this summer. A longtime officer in the 19th District on the city’s North Side, Graham promised to protect his officers in contract negotiations, and has already pushed back against Black Caucus demands on affidavits, anonymous complaints, and other items within the contract that they say “makes it easy for officers to lie, and difficult for misconduct to be identified or investigated.”  

The Department of Justice

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was appointed by President Donald Trump to replace A.G. Loretta Lynch in January, which many expected would eliminate the possibility of federal oversight of the Chicago Police Department. In early April, this seemed to be confirmed, when Sessions ordered a review of all consent decrees to follow certain principles, including this bullet point: "Local control and local accountability are necessary for effective local policing. It is not the responsibility of the federal government to manage non-federal law enforcement agencies."

When the DOJ report was released, reporters asked both Mayor Emanuel and Lynch repeatedly about the fate of the city’s “Agreement in Principle” for federal oversight under the new Trump administration. Both assured that career attorneys at the DOJ would follow through, and that the mayor was committed to independently reforming police accountability systems regardless.   

But the DOJ’s local presence, the U.S. Attorney of the Northern District of Illinois, has been filled in the interim by Joel R. Levin since March, when Zachary Fardon resigned. 92 other U.S. attorney posts around the country are similarly vacant, and now, fewer candidates seem likely to step up since the president’s handling of the Russia investigation.

As another Springfield state legislative session closes with the real possibility that Chicago Public Schools may not receive the funding it budgeted for, CEO Forrest Claypool used a sold out City Club luncheon speech Tuesday to double down on his claim that the state is purposefully discriminating against the school district.  

For the second year in a row, Chicago Public Schools has found itself in the direst of financial positions. Having built a budget on expectations of state funding and then spending a year blaming Springfield, CPS is once again faced with with the challenge of finding enough cash to make its annual pension payment and while keeping schools open. When the clock ran out last year and the pension bill came due on June 30th, CPS was forced to borrow $200 million from banks. Last Friday, they announced plans to do it again.

While it’s troubling that the school district is repeating the same budgetary mistakes of last year, the district’s finances suffer from an almost total lack of transparency, as you’ll hear from several aldermen throughout the episode. It opens with an exchange between Ald. Leslie Hairston (5) and Budget Director Alex Holt from October 2015.

A new city agency in charge of investigating Chicago police officers launches September 15,  giving the new oversight office just over 100 days to finish filling 25% of its roughly 140 budgeted staff positions. Codified by an ordinance approved last fall, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) will replace the Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA).

A months-long plot to force a vote on an ordinance that would increase oversight of the Chicago Housing Authority and set specific, annual benchmarks for required public housing units and vouchers fizzled ahead of Wednesday’s full City Council meeting. While the details of why it waned are murky–did the sponsors fumble on purpose or was it poor planning–the timing is not in doubt.

Addressing a federal appeals decision made in January that found the city’s zoning requirements on shooting ranges unconstitutional, the City Council unanimously approved new rules that expand the list of allowed zoning classifications, while keeping a robust community review process in place. Though the item created a stir at last month’s Council meeting, no opposition was presented Wednesday. The same could be said of every other item before the Council.

A small group of aldermen on the city’s Health and Environmental Protection Committee heard testimony Tuesday afternoon on the need for more trash resources and the migration of urban wildlife, but the meeting had low attendance. Chairman George Cardenas (12) said the whole City Council needed a chance to sound off on the issues.