More conservative alderpeople say the city’s lawyers and their colleagues are too eager to settle cases before trial, and it encourages those guilty of criminal wrongdoing to sue the city in the hopes of an easy payday. However, progressive members of the City Council see the expense as perhaps the most visible cost of the decades of scandals, misconduct and brutality that have engulfed the Chicago Police Department.
A largely unasked question is becoming glaring: Is Illinois doing all it should to use artificial intelligence to make government cost less and work better? So far, the evidence says no.