This week Cook County Clerk David Orr announced that residential property taxes in Chicago will increase by an average of 10% for upcoming tax bills. That sounds like a big increase, but compared to other municipalities, the amount of property tax Chicagoans are paying on average is still less than other parts of Illinois. But expect the picture to get worse, since we should expect significant additional property tax increases with every coming year in the foreseeable future.

Clerk Orr’s 2016 Property Tax Report puts the big 10% Chicago increase number right at the top of his email press release. But then, buried in an attached PDF document, are some other interesting numbers. Like the fact that on average, Chicago’s 10% average increase will mean about $363.15 more per homeowner. That kind of money hurts, but it’s not devastating. Another buried tidbit is especially interesting:

“On average, the 2016 property tax bill for a home with a market value of $200,000 would be:

• Chicago: $3,505.62


• North suburbs: $4,544.80


• South suburbs: $6,566.73”

So maybe things aren’t so bad in Chicago. But why such a big difference between city and suburban taxes? It’s because suburban residents are generally taxed at a higher rate, especially those in the South Suburbs, because there’s so little commercial and manufacturing property to share the burden and bring in sales taxes to local governments.

I don’t want to lessen the impact of these increases. After all, as a Chicago homeowner, I’m not looking forward to an increased property tax bill either. But the gap between what Chicagoans pay in property taxes versus what suburbanites and everyone else in Illinois is an oft-cited fact for those who say Chicago has “room” for more taxes.

We should get ready for that room to be occupied in the coming years, due to three big expenses Chicago will soon have to shoulder. First, City Council already approved a gradual rise of property taxes through 2018 (and likely beyond) in the 2016 budget. In order to pay for the police and fire pensions, City Council approved stepped property tax increases through 2018, and the pension payment schedule they approved in 2016 essentially guarantees increases through 2054.

Second, Chicago Public Schools are de facto bankrupt and are operating with a $1 billion structural deficit. While CPS CEO Forrest Claypool and Mayor Rahm Emanuel continue to call for additional state spending, there should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that a significant portion of CPS’ annual deficit will have to be made up by increasing local property taxes–the only significant way Illinois schools legally can raise revenues.

Finally, as Police Board President Lori Lightfoot says in my podcast interview with her this week, the price tag for reforming the Chicago police department is tens of millions of dollars per year. I think she’s undercounting, since the dozens, if not hundreds of people needed to manage the reform effort (Lightfoot says Los Angeles’ reform process employed close to 200 people), the new police academy desperately needed, and new equipment for and extensive training of existing officers will all cost some serious money.

The picture is getting clearer: Chicago is going to have to raise taxes in a big way in the near future just to keep pace.

Later this month, we’ll begin to see if Mayor Emanuel and his new budget director, Samantha Fields, see that picture too, as the city’s Comprehensive Annual Finance Report (CAFR) gets its annual late June release. The CAFR provides the city with a first bite at the budget apple, as it assesses how everything worked out in the last fiscal year. The report doesn’t suggest new spending, but it can give a hint of where the city thinks its real financial problems lie.

In the meantime, enjoy the summer weather!

Lobbing a new volley in a six-month campaign to pass a city ordinance supporting low-wage airport workers, the SEIU Local 1 has launched a negative mail campaign against Ald. Pat O’Connor (40), targeting likely voters in the Andersonville, Lincoln Square and North Park neighborhoods.

The Joint Committee on Administrative Rules gaveled through a 55-item agenda in Chicago in just 20 minutes Tuesday, but not without a brief discussion about how new laboratory contracts would affect unionized workers at the Illinois Department of Public Health.

As Chicago’s schools struggle with de facto bankruptcy and our police department reform slows to a crawl, it’s important to remember that Mayor Rahm Emanuel has never been accused of being an ideological man. Throughout his career he has focused on obtaining and consolidating power, rather than the application of power for the purpose of ideological achievement.

This isn’t to say Mayor Emanuel lacks political values, because judging from his record, he clearly adheres to general progressive principles such as promoting public welfare programs and using government to improve lives. But leaders guided by ideology use their core beliefs to guide decision-making. Over time, their decisions illustrate their ideology.

Now that Emanuel is midway through his second term, he’s had enough time to settle into a mode of thinking, so I’d like to suggest three examples that illustrate his focus on power, rather than ideology.

#1 – Emanuel’s Dealings With DOJ On Police Reform

The first is the most recent: Last Friday’s end-of-the-workweek announcement that the Emanuel Administration would be shucking its promise to seek a consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice for police reform. Instead, we’re told Chicago will seek an “agreement” with DOJ to install an independent monitor with no enforcement power.

While the agreement reportedly (called so because it has not been released to the public) provides the DOJ with the power to force changes at CPD, it is a ridiculous assertion, since the DOJ official who would oversee the agreement, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Tom Wheeler, one of the authors of North Carolina’s “bathroom bill”, seems to have little interest in minority communities.

Emanuel’s team has justified their decision to seek a contractual agreement with DOJ by saying it would be just as good as a court-enforced consent decree, and DOJ wouldn’t sign off on a consent decree anyway. Yet, another city that eschewed an consent decree for an agreement like Cincinnati, which former CPD deputy chief Charles Ramsey cited as an example Chicago should follow, include other enforcement mechanisms that give community groups legal powers to make police department changes during the reform process.

Looked at in isolation, it’s a head-scratcher of a political move on Emanuel’s part. Chicago’s black community, which can make or break a mayoral reelection campaign, is demanding police reform, and black leaders I’ve spoken to say Emanuel totally lacks credibility on the issue. Rather than hand over authority to a court-appointed monitor with enforcement power, Emanuel is proposing a system where he maintains all control, so that only he is able to affect change. And so far, change has been coming slowly.

#2 – Emanuel And The Elected School Board Debate

The second example is Emanuel’s record on an elected school board. Two versions of the concept have each passed the Illinois House and Illinois Senate. The concept is perilously (for Emanuel) close to becoming reality. Although Gov. Bruce Rauner has said he opposes an elected school board, the idea of snatching power away from the mayor of Chicago could be a mightily attractive idea to many downstate Republicans. Enough votes could be rustled just to tweak Emanuel’s nose, under the right circumstances.

Yet Emanuel has had minimal public engagement with supporters of an elected school board, even to just hear them out. A more constructive approach would be for him to recognize that many Chicagoans believe the existing mayor-appointed school board is flawed, and use that to shape a solution more to his liking.

But he hasn’t done that. Instead he’s resisted giving up any power. So he’s getting boxed in by a growing political movement that just might actually take from him all school control, leaving him with crumbs.

#3 – Emanuel And The Teachers Union

Finally, there’s Emanuel’s relationship with the Chicago Teacher’s Union: It has been needlessly antagonistic. One could argue that Emanuel and CTU occupied opposing camps, starting with the 2012 teachers strike, fueled by the 2013 school closings, and solidified by last year’s contract negotiations. But now that’s in the rearview mirror. So, what stands between them when both are fighting for the same end–stable funding for education.

CTU says it won’t take Emanuel seriously until he identifies $500 million more in annual city revenues to fund schools. Considering CPS has had a roughly $1 billion annual operating deficit for the past three years, this is not as crazy a number as it sounds. But instead of engaging with CTU and its union allies to find creative solutions in Chicago and the state legislature, Emanuel and CPS CEO Forrest Claypool have shut out CTU, choosing instead to go it alone.

Why is a power struggle even necessary here? Isn’t the art of politics about co-opting and compromise?

Unlike years past, where tax receipts flowed from a horn of plenty and Democratic allies controlled state government, Chicago is now under pressure from multiple angles. What’s called for in these circumstances are finesse and coalition building. It also means sharing power with new allies, in order to win successes.

A pair of panels held before a full hearing room in Chicago for an ICC policy session Wednesday on adding small cell networks and preparing for 5G cellular infrastructure demonstrated a significant divide between carriers and municipalities on how to build out needed infrastructure, while all sides agreed that 5G technology will be a must-have upgrade.

Copies of Presentations from Panels

Small cell, or “micro cell”, networks serve much smaller areas than existing macro cell towers, measuring their coverage area in hundreds of feet, rather than miles, as with macro towers. These small cells, which would become the bulwark of coming 5G technology, would increase coverage in crowded urban areas as well as off-load data demands on macro cells with current 4G technology. 5G technology, which is not expected to be deployed for at least 2-3 years, would offer increased data speeds and lower latency (or response time) but is limited by shorter coverage areas than 4G technology.

Industry experts on both the first and second panels testified that data demands and wireless device growth has been exponential and is expected to continue to be for the foreseeable future. Today there are 395 million wireless connections in the U.S., more than there are residents. Americans used 25 times more mobile data in 2015 than they did in 2010. In Illinois there are 2.3 million local phone subscriptions, 2.6 million VOIP, and 13.8 million mobile subscribers. In 2015 there were only 12.8 million Illinois residents.

The first panel, focusing on physical network infrastructure needs, was the most contentious of the day, as Sprint Corporation Director of State Government Affairs Ken Schifman touted last month’s passage of SB1451, The Small Wireless Facilities Deployment Act, which directs standardization of municipal permitting for small wireless cells, use of municipal utility poles and a standardized payment schedule for municipal pole use. Because industry needs to build out

Testifying later, Patrick Hayes, from the Illinois Municipal League, expressed his strong opposition to SB1451, “Communities are offended by this bill because infrastructure is imposed on their stuff,” said Hayes. While Chicago’s demand of “$1,000 per light pole” to install small cell antennas is on the high end of the cost spectrum, “industry’s response of $20 per year, per pole is just way too low,” said Hayes.

The industry position would result in overwhelming municipalities with permit review, would shift management of pole locations to industry, and could result in a “taking” since the industry would gain access to a public good, municipal-owned poles, without municipalities maintaining the right to refusal. “Is there a path to no, for industry?” said Hayes.

Commissioner John Rosales, a Gov. Bruce Rauner appointee, then asked Schifman during the panel’s question and answer period, “Why in the best practices section of your presentation, why did you feel you had right to use municipality poles, but in the past 4G build out, you created your own poles?”

“Because the cells need to be closer to where people are,” for 5G technology, Schifman said, avoiding the question of whether or not industry is proposing a taking of a public good.

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.

After three hours of both pro and con testimony from 104 people Monday afternoon, the City Council Zoning Committee passed by voice vote a zoning change from a B1-1 to a B3-5 and a planned development for a proposed storage facility at 5150 N. Northwest Hwy. in the Jefferson Park neighborhood. While the five-story project from LSC Development was nominally about a storage, the testimony, protests and a press conference held earlier that afternoon was much more about neighborhood resistance to increased density, accusations of racism and old battle lines redrawn for the 2019 45th Ward Aldermanic campaign.

In separate briefings to aldermen and reporters Friday, Chicago CFO Carole Brown presented a plan for Chicago Public Schools to borrow more money from banks to keep classroom doors open through the end of the school year and to make a $716 million teachers’ pension payment by June 30. The borrowing plan, presented without any CPS leadership participation, allows the city to avoid raising taxes, sweeping TIFS, or asking aldermen to vote on either.

The school system plans to borrow $389 million against expected state grant payments that have been delayed by the state’s two-year budget impasse. Banks will only fund 85% of the $467 million grants due to CPS through Grant Anticipation Notes (GANs), at an interest rate expected to be between eight and nine percent, Brown said in briefings to aldermen. The rate won’t be known until the borrowing is complete. The school district previously had $600 million in Tax Anticipation Notes (TANs) it could borrow against, but those are paid off and won’t be used, Brown said in her reporter briefing.

Aldermanic Briefing Materials

Before the new round of short-term borrowing is completed, CPS will have used a $950 million line of credit and have issued $6.8 billion in long-term debt. State statute caps CPS borrowing at 13.8% of the Equalized Assessed Value, the total property tax value of a district, at any one time. In 2016, that number was $9.8 billion. Counting the current debt and the new borrowing, CPS will have $8.1 billion in total debt, coming close to the district’s limit.

While CPS started the school year with a drastically low $86.2 million in cash, Brown says CPS will finish its fiscal year on June 30 with about $30 million on hand. Though,  Emily Bittner, a CPS spokesperson said in an email to reporters, “CPS continues to work through its finances and does not have a final updated cash balance projection.” Experts suggest a good practice cash balance would be closer to $250 million for an organization its size, with a $5.4 billion annual budget.

How We Got Here

The school system began the 2016-17 school year with a $1.14 billion deficit, but plugged the budget hole with a series of cuts, cash taken from Tax Increment Financing (TIF) surplus and a series of grants from the state approved by the General Assembly in October. But that plan was laid to waste when Gov. Bruce Rauner vetoed a $215 million state grant, charging that promised pension reform was not delivered.

Read: The CPS Funding Saga: How Much Money Is Due And When?

Read: After End of Fiscal Year, Bigger Problems Await CPS

In response, CPS enacted a series mid-year cuts, but it was not enough to close the gap. In April, CPS announced that the state was late paying $467 million in “categorical” block grant funds, money to paid to local school districts to cover programs like special education, transportation and early childhood education costs.

While CPS might still have had enough cash on hand to get through to the end of the school year, the $716 million teachers’ pension payment, due by June 30, overshadowed everything else.

Where’s Claypool?

There was no senior CPS leadership present for neither the reporter nor aldermanic briefings Friday, flaring aldermanic tempers after weeks of demanding to see CPS leadership. Instead, city CFO Brown led the briefings, often referring reporters and aldermen to “talk to CPS about the specifics” when she did not have answers.

“Aldermen are pissed!” said one staffer who attended a briefing.

“It got very angry,” in the meeting, said Ald. Scott Waguespack (32) after he attended a briefing with Brown. “Aldermen going on about ‘Where is Claypool?’ There were lower level staff, [but] not a one spoke. They said [CPS CEO Forrest] Claypool was working hard and couldn’t be there.”

“To me it shows that the mayor is in charge, and we’ve known that from day one. We’re glad that the mayor is making it clearer than ever, and that he owns it,” said Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35) after attending a briefing.

Others were less concerned. “I can’t think of any reasonable [funding] alternative,” said Ald. Joe Moore (49). “They tell me it took so long to come up with a plan, because they wanted to make sure they could sell the bonds. Apparently they can. It’s unfortunate because it just drives CPS further into debt.”

While the Chicago Public Schools is fighting to keep its doors open for a full school year, its next fiscal year, beginning July 1, is sure to be as financially difficult, if not more. For the 2017-18 school year, board members will need to find a way to adequately fund a system while addressing a multitude of growing financial pressures amidst declining student enrollment.

Happy Saturday!

Earlier this week I drove to Springfield. What I did there was less important than what I experienced: Warm air, sunny skies and the unmistakable smell of late spring, early summer. Birds tweeted, and the scent of lilacs served to remind me that we’re heading into the time of year when living in the Midwest is pretty great.

So if you’re going to be in Chicago this weekend, make sure you take a walk, ride a bike, or maybe set up a radio outside and barbecue. Talk about baseball or nothing at all important so you can absorb the greatness of living in this place we call home. Because for the next five months, it is the best city in the world.

1. Mayor Shuffles His Leadership Team

Maybe Fridays are a good day for announcing personnel changes, since it gives everyone the weekend to settle down with the changes.. So, Mayor Rahm Emanuel teed up a few people for new offices.

• Randy Conner is the new Commissioner of the Chicago Department of Water Management, replacing Barrett Murphy, whom the Sun-Times reports was fired because he tolerated a culture of racism.


• Samantha Fields is the new Budget Director, replacing Alexandra Holt, a 20-year veteran of City Hall..


• Rosa Escareno is the new Commissioner of BACP, replacing Samantha Fields. Escareno was Deputy Chief Operating Officer, working for COO Joe Deal.

The mayor also announced four-year reappointments for Inspector General Joe Ferguson and Chief Procurement Officer Jamie L. Rhee.

It’s important to note that with all of the leadership changes among mayor staff over the last two years, it’s almost entirely internal promotions, with very few hires from outside–never mind recruits from outside Chicago. Yes, we can homegrow good people here, but now and then, shouldn’t we expect an inspired person that wants to work in city government for a change?

2. However Much CPS Owes, They Don’t Have It

No matter how you look at it, funding for Chicago Public Schools is a complete disaster. Yes, CPS has been running a structural deficit and cooking the books for years to cover it up (my favorite move, using 14 months of revenue to pay for 12 months of operations in 2014), but those problems have been magnified many times over by state government’s total gridlock.

As you’ve read here before, CPS was counting on a $215 million bailout package passed through the state legislature in October with a bi-partisan vote. But, surprising everyone, Gov. Bruce Rauner vetoed the spending. In response, CPS laid administrators off and made $104 million in mid-year cuts. It still wasn’t enough to fill the gap.

Aldermen, anticipating they’ll be asked to bailout CPS with city money (CPS and the City of Chicago are two separate units of government), started agitating for specific details on how much CPS owes and when.

In response, city CFO Carole Brown announced Wednesday afternoon that the state is late in making $467 million in grant payments.

Wait, what? How much?

We checked with the Illinois State Board of Education, and yes, it seems that the state is late on a pretty big bill.

Most of what CPS needs to come up with is for a $720 million pension payment due June 30. So how will it pay the difference?

Brown wasn’t saying on Wednesday and no other plans have been released since, but budget officials anticipate a resolution in the coming weeks.

One more thing: As soon as CPS figures out how to pay that big bill on June 30, they have a close to $1 billion structural deficit they’ll have to work out for the 2017-18 school year.

3. North Branch Developers Rev Their Engines

There isn’t a more anticipated development gold rush than the North Branch Industrial Corridor. Wedged between North Center, Lincoln Park, West Town and Wicker Park along the Chicago River’s North Branch, the area was designated one of Chicago’s first Planned Manufacturing Districts in the late 1980’s. As a PMD, the area could only be used for manufacturing purposes, keeping land values down. But, as the neighborhoods around it became tonier, the number of manufacturing jobs in North Branch fell.

This week, the Department of Planning and Development recognized those realities by releasing an ambitious draft framework that attempts to ensure the area will remain home to some jobs, while giving developers plenty of red meat.

[Listen to DPD Commissioner David Reifman talk about some of what’s to come at our March Event.]

The framework limits residential development to only 50% of the area, while planning for interesting ideas like a new riverwalk, a north-south transitway limited to bikes and public transit, extending the 606 walk across the river and adding new “smart” traffic signaling.

The changes announced are likely only the beginning of many changes for Chicago’s 26 industrial corridors. Last April Mayor Emanuel announced plans to reevaluate every industrial corridor and all 14 of the city’s PMDs.

The biggest winners in this PMD do-over by far are developers, especially Sterling Bay, which snapped up the old Finkl Steel site on Armitage, and Tribune Media, which owns the huge Freedom Center printing plant at Chicago Ave. and the river. Tribune Media has been seeking a developer partner. With the new proposed DS zoning, Tribune will be greenlighted to build a series of new residential towers.

Remember the old Illinois Central air rights area? That’s now called the New East Side, with over 15,000 new residents over the last 15 years and the 93-story Wanda Vista tower is under construction.

Expect North Branch to be as transformative as that.

A report issued by the Chicago Inspector General Tuesday reprimanded the city Board of Ethics for lax efforts to identify and keep records of all active lobbyists, making it harder to levy fines for lack of disclosure. The report called for the BOE to issue higher fines to those who fail to properly disclose lobbying activity. The report comes as a follow-up to a scathing March 2016 report, charging that the BOE only relies on public complaints, rather than its own recordkeeping.

That sound you hear are the shouts of joy from thousands of developers, contractors and assorted land use professionals as every last square inch of the North Branch Corridor is prepared for alteration, following Monday night’s release of the Draft North Branch Industrial Corridor Plan. While the plan for the strip along the Chicago River North Branch includes the name “industrial”, the result will be a lotless industrial than it is today, as the 125 page framework calls for converting much of the current Planned Manufacturing District zoning to residential, commercial and open park space.

Mid-afternoon Monday, calls and emails went out from the mayor’s office to aldermen: There will be no briefings this week on how the city plans to bail out Chicago Public Schools to prevent the district from ending the school year three weeks early on May 30.

Happy Saturday!

Friday morning I sat down with Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jesse Sharkey for an extensive interview. We touched on a lot of issues, but there’s five biggies that came out.

1. He Thinks CPS CEO Forrest Claypool Is A “Disaster” But Says He Doesn’t Think He’s Working Hand-In-Glove With Mayor Emanuel

“I think Forrest Claypool deserves no credit. He has been a disaster. And I mean that in all seriousness. Forrest doesn’t know much about schools at all. I think he shows it in many, many ways,” said Sharkey. But when I pressed him on whether or not he and Mayor Rahm Emanuel (who have worked together since the early 1980’s) are planning out the politics of schools, he demurred.

“I think that Forrest Claypool is out of sync,” with the Mayor, said Sharkey. That said, the Mayor has done little, in Sharkey’s mind, to improve his grade from the “F” CTU gave him starting in 2011. But asked a number of ways, he seemed unwilling to unload on Emanuel like he does on Claypool.

2. He Thinks It’s Pointless To Seek State Money Until Local Revenues For Schools Are Increased First

CTU and CPS have a common cause when it comes to getting additional funding from the state, but Sharkey believes CTU should not work with CPS until Mayor Emanuel (and the city’s wealthy) commits to higher city funding first.

I asked Sharkey this question three different ways: Shouldn’t you be working together to get more state funding for Chicago schools? He refused to say CTU would work with CPS in Springfield until, “the Mayor and the city fathers of Chicago... commit to raising half a billion dollars for the schools in the city to keep the schools from going off a cliff.”

3. CPS’ Constant State of Crisis Is Damaging Confidence In Chicago Schools

Sharkey believes CPS’ continued fiscal woes are eroding the district’s brand, making CPS less attractive to parents, regardless of whatever improvements in test scores or graduation rates are being made. He lays this at the feet of Claypool in particular, since every few months Claypool announces a new financial emergency, leading Chicagoans to constantly wonder how long long the schools have until they collapse. “We’re at an inflection point now,” he says. “It’s produced a crisis of confidence. We’re seeing a trickle of people leaving the system, turning into a stream and now we worry about a flood.”

4. Despite The Financial Problems, Sharkey Thinks CPS Is Improving

“There’s plenty to be proud about with public schools,” he says. “Virtually every teacher I know has their kids in public schools. And that’s something. If you went back 30 years ago, that wouldn’t have been the case.”

Part of the problem in CPS and CTU’s relationship is that the union doesn’t give CPS enough credit when it’s doing things right, he said. “Graduation rates are up. When I first started teaching in Chicago in ‘98, we used to pull our hair about why the freshman class had 800 students in it, why the senior class had 200 students in it. Literally you had that kind of drop-off in a lot our big schools. We know a lot more about that now, we’re a lot better at getting students to complete.”

5. He Really Loves The Idea of An Elected School Board

“You gotta have some democracy there,” he says. He believes that the current school board, which is controlled and named by the Mayor, is disconnected from citizens.

And even though most Chicagoans–those without kids or who have aged out of caring about schools–would likely not pay attention to the school board, there are enough parents in Chicago that would participate, he thinks. “The people who are active in local school councils are the ones who go for report card pick up and are active in the elections. You have high participation in terms of the ones who are in and out of the schools,” and that’s enough he says.

There’s a role for aldermen, too. “Right now, the people who get the phone calls about, ‘there’s a problem in my school…’ are aldermen, and yet those aldermen have extremely little control,” he said. “That’s a problem. Schools wind up being very local issues. People need to have governance that gives them confidence that their democratic voice is being taken into account.”  

Happy Saturday!

This week brought the city’s biggest political announcement of 2017 so far, as well as more terrible, not-so-good news for Chicago Public Schools.

The Torture of CPS Parents

In Roman times, the rack was supposedly applied to the suspected assassins of Emperor Nero. In medieval England, it was used on prisoners in the Tower of London.

In modern Chicago, the rack is used too, but as a mental torture on Chicago Public School parents, who steadily watch their state and city governments pull just a bit more every day, gradually wrenching the system apart, causing them to wonder if there will be a full school year in 2017.

Yesterday, Mayor Rahm Emanuel let some pressure off the rack, when he announced he will ensure Chicago Public Schools will stay open for the rest of this school year, even if the city, not the state, has to pay for it.

At stake is a CPS funding hole of tens of millions of dollars the school system says it needs to keep doors open past June 1, for the last three weeks of the school year. Gov. Bruce Rauner says he won’t sign a bill to pay for it, and the Democratic-controlled state legislature doesn’t have enough votes to sustain his veto.

And so the rack goes: click-click!

Part of the agony is that CPS has refused to release an exact accounting of how much is needed. Maybe as much as $215 million, maybe $124 million is needed. It depends on what you count. It’s hard to be sure.

Emanuel’s move to release pressure came Friday afternoon, after Cook County Circuit Court Judge Franklin Valderrama handed down a crushing blow to the Chicago Public Schools’ suit against the State of Illinois, which claimed the state discriminated against Chicago in how it distributed funding to CPS. Valderrama refused the city’s request for a preliminary injunction against the state and found CPS had not identified any specific mechanisms that caused discrimination.

In other words, the courts aren’t going to step in in time.

Unless the Illinois General Assembly passes a funding bill for CPS with enough votes to sustain Gov. Bruce Rauner’s expected veto, Chicago is going to have to pay for it.

Chicka-click-click!

And so, reading the tea leaves, Mayor Emanuel announced that one way or another, Chicago citizens will pay the difference. Exactly how, Mayor Emanuel wasn’t saying. But last week aldermen had plenty of suggestions, from TIF money to left over Skyway sale funds, to creating a new head tax.

Gov. Rauner has got to be loving this. He stared down Emanuel, and made Chicago pick up the check, setting a precedent for Chicago to get less state money. That’s a real victory he can take back to every voter outside of Chicago.

But the CPS still has structural funding problems. It’s far more likely than not we’ll have to deal with this problem again next year.

Start cranking it up! Chick-chick-clink!

 

What Now For Kurt Summers?

City Treasurer Kurt Summers’ announcement Wednesday morning had all the elements of a political cliffhanger. The month before, he told his supporters in an email that he was considering running for governor, then followed up with messages asking for their contributions. His quarterly campaign finance reports, released last week, showed expenditures for $31,550 for polling. He made a few contributions to statewide Democratic organizations. The Democratic field lacked an African-American candidate, giving Summers a credible path to winning the Democratic nomination.

Maybe this guy was really going to do it!

But then he didn’t.

Instead, Summers took to the podium, announced his non-candidacy, and brought out candidate J.B. Pritzker to give him a full-throated endorsement.

Deciding to run for higher office is a deep, personal decision. In my past life as a political consultant, I walked through the choices with people deciding to run or not, and watched them agonize over the choice. For those of us on the outside–the watchers, cheerleaders, what-have-you–we can never know what goes through their minds and hearts. Instead, we’re left with the what-might-have-beens.

New York Governor Mario Cuomo’s fueled up plane on the tarmac, ready to take him to New Hampshire in 1991 is probably the strongest image in my mind. But there’s the might-have-been candidacy of Tom Dart for Mayor in 2011 or Lisa Madigan for Governor in 2010 (which lingers now). What could have happened?

Never mind all that. Because Kurt Summers is still a visible politician with a great resume: Chief of Staff to County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, strong private sector finance experience, and now a solid record of improving Chicago’s money management. He’s sharp and has interesting insights on improving Chicago’s economic growth as we heard in our podcast interview last December..

So if not governor, then, what?

Democratic consultants and politicians I spoke to this week were surprised he chose not to run. “What does he have to lose? You run, it goes well, you win. It doesn’t, you endorse someone else and gain a higher name ID along the way,” said one politico who wished to remain anonymous.

Many of Summers’ backers are also Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s backers, like Michael Sachs, who gave Summers’ his private sector finance gig. So it would be a big challenge to run against Emanuel for mayor in 2019.

Illinois has two Democratic U.S. Senators, and the next Senate election isn’t until 2020, and it seems unlikely Dick Durbin would step down then. Even so, three years is a long wait in political time.

“Maybe he can just wait his turn? He’s certainly not in a position to run against Emanuel,” said another Democratic wag.

So, how long is Summers willing to wait?

 

Note: This article originally misstated that the Democratic field lacked a "minority candidate" that is incorrect. Indian-American Ald. Ameya Pawar is a Democratic candidate.

Happy Saturday!

We know you love us. So tell some other people about The Daily Line’s free email list. Please spread the word, and make the better place. Your friends can join our free email list here.

Plan Commission and Affordable Housing

Last week our Claudia Morell reported that a relatively uncontroversial Hyde Park condo development received opposition from Plan Commission members who wanted the project to have more minority sub-contractors and affordable housing units. From her story:

These criticisms are often voiced at the commission’s monthly meetings by a few dedicated members of the public. Oftentimes, their complaints go unaddressed.

But that wasn’t the case Thursday, when some of the more senior members of the mayor-appointed land use body openly discussed their own frustrations with developers they accuse of doing the bare minimum when it comes to minority participation and affordable housing. Even Chairman Martin Cabrera expressed annoyance. “You know, it has gotten to that point where we’re not going to just allow some of these developers to come and continue to develop, but not look at what’s taking place in our city.”

The developer, MAC Properties, underwent a series of blistering questions from frustrated Commission members.

One of the land use board’s newest commissioners, Lucino Sotelo, suggested planned development applications include more detail on hiring and affordable housing plans. “That is what I want to see in all future requests: what are you doing on your own coming in on affordable housing and hiring practices, regulated and unregulated. Because we shouldn’t have to have a conversation about what’s regulated if the right thing is getting done from the onset.”

Typically Plan Commission meetings are highly managed affairs. Often with tens of millions of dollars at stake, developers retain highly specialized land-use attorneys to prepare for and oversee testimony at hearings. As a result, Commissioners’ questions are usually addressed before the hearings begin. It’s rare for them to to seriously object to a project, let alone stop one cold.

Since the Plan Commission approves all planned developments, which essentially covers every major construction project in Chicago, one might think it’s an excellent place for an advocate for affordable housing and minority contracting to effect change. That might be what Sotelo, a marketing executive for Grainger, might have been thinking. But how the Commission is set up makes the reality very different.

A 22-member board, with 10 members appointed by the mayor and 12 others serving ex officio (and most of those are mayoral appointees to other positions, like CTA Board Chair Terry Peterson), the Plan Commission is not designed to be an independent body. Most of the time, only ten or so members come to meetings, with the ex officio members showing up only occasionally.

In the end, the commission approved MAC Properties’ zoning application, with a “reluctant” yes from Searle, and two no votes: Rev. Albert D. Tyson III and Peterson. It was the first time in nearly a year that a zoning application ended on a divided vote.

While a few Commissioners might oppose a project or two, the reality is that there’s little danger of any projects not passing plan commission, so long as they follow the city’s development guidelines and have passed the muster of the Department of Planning staff.

 

Kevin Graham Is Potentially The Most Powerful Person In Chicago

Since his election to lead the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, here and there, we’ve been learning about Kevin Graham and the team he’s bringing into office with him. His number one job–and maybe the only job that matters for the next year or so–will be to negotiate the FOP’s new contract. The current one expires at the end of June. Graham, who is a soft-spoken Northwestern University graduate with 30-plus years on the beat, describes himself as a “hardliner” who wants to defend the rights of police officers.

As I wrote last week, the police contract is at the center of a rift between Chicago’s black community and Chicago police, as well as those who support the police. City Council’s Black Caucus has detailed 14 points they want changed in the contract, which Graham has pledged to defend. As a result, Mayor Rahm Emanuel ends up in a jam, since black voters expect major change and FOP plans to do everything it can to maintain “protections” for cops.

But anything can happen at the negotiating table, and Graham is the biggest wild card in the game. While he clearly wants to support police interests, exactly how does he think is the best way to do that? Is there some kind of side deal Emanuel could cut with Graham and the FOP?

Almost everything about the police contract could be viewed through a political lens. Past contracts have taken more than a year to negotiate. What would happen if the FOP contract was still unresolved during the 2019 mayoral election? If things are dragging along and Graham and the FOP don’t feel like they’re getting a good deal with Emanuel, could they drag it out even further if they think it would help get a more sympathetic candidate elected? And what might it end up costing the city?

While Graham has been keeping a low profile since winning his new job, his actions over the next year will be heard loud and clear across Chicago.

Catching a breather during a two hour stretch of speeches honoring various city employees at Wednesday’s City Council meeting, Ald. Roderick Sawyer (6), Chair of the Council Black Caucus, talked about his group’s ability to influence the vote on the Fraternal Order of Police’s renewed contract.

“I’m not sure we’ve got 26 votes on this at the outset, but we’re a lot closer to it than not,” he said. “You take the 18 members of my caucus, then six progressives, and [Ameya] Pawar said he’s with us, and probably a few other Latinos, then you’ve got a majority.”

Expecting the Chicago Public Schools’ $215 million budget hole to remain unaddressed by Springfield, Ald. Rick Muñoz (22) and other members of the Progressive Caucus met with Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis last Friday to discuss the possibility of tapping into the city’s reserve funds. The city has $500 million set aside from the 2015 Skyway sale and $120 million set aside from the 2008 parking meter lease deal. Munoz’ plan is only one of the many pitched by aldermen to keep schools open for a full school year.

Newly beefed up “party bus” regulations drafted by the Mayor’s Office will be taken up by License Committee at 9:15 a.m. Wednesday morning in Council Chambers. The last minute draft would replace proposed rules approved by the License Committee last week.

Updated rules for the city’s affordable housing, the Affordable Requirements Ordinance (ARO), were released by the Chicago Department of Planning and Development (DPD) in March will bring the 2015 law in sync with changed city development rules, but also set new standards for what is allowable for on- and off-site development. The ARO allows DPD to author and release new rules as necessary. These, billed as “clean up” language by city officials, were largely welcomed by developers and low-income housing advocates alike.