Alternate Reality: New Chicago City Council Leaders List Their Priorities – Wirepoints

By: Mark Glennon*

This sure is enlightening. Check out the priorities of new leaders in Chicago’s City Council.

Illinois Answers Project spoke with the eight aldermen who were elected to second terms this year and are now leading committees for the first time. That project is part of Chicago’s Better Government Association, and the aldermen’s stated priorities appear in this illuminating, two-part column.

Surely, ideas to address crime, failing schools, broke pensions and taxes are among the priorities mentioned most often, right?

No, not a single mention of any of that by any of them. Those words or any synonym for them barely appear in any of their answers on priorities. The sole exception is on schools from Ald. Jeanette Taylor who chairs the Committee on Education and Child Development. But all she offered was about education transparency — more meetings and data. “It’s about being transparent and honest, and saying what we can and cannot do to reimagine education for everybody.”

Nor is there a single mention of an ideas to make Chicago more friendly toward employers.

And for the problems they do want to address, there’s almost no substance in their answers. Calls for more meetings, “conversations” and the like were most frequently among their priorities by far.

Here’s some of what they did list as priorities:

Ald. Maria Hadden, Committee on Environmental Protection and Energy, says “the role of my committee will be facilitating a space to have those conversations” about creating a Department of Environment. “And also, we cannot keep poisoning our constituents.”

Ald. Andre Vasquez, Committee on Immigrant and Refugee Rights, wants to focus on hosting regular hearings with updates on the city’s response to its migrant crisis, and “We need to be talking about how we’re going to get long-term revenue streams” for migrants,” he says.

Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, Committee on Housing and Real Estate, wants more housing assistance, foreclosure relief and “we need to have a conversation about [tax-increment financing] and how the TIF program must be funding more housing initiatives in our communities,” he said.

Ald. Jeanette Taylor, Committee on Education and Child Development, plans this summer to host a series of subject matter hearings. “I want to do evening meetings at different city colleges and different schools,” she says, “just so that people can get used to government actually working for them and being part of their community.”

Ald. Daniel La Spata, Committee on Pedestrian and Traffic Safety, said “I definitely want to help [the Chicago Department of Transportation] in exploring and expanding their automated [bike lane blocking] enforcement pilot in the downtown area. And then there are ideas that have not yet been shaped into ordinances, like the Bike Grid Now campaign, and thinking about how that can go from a great idea to something that we’ve actually operationalized.”

Ald. Michael Rodriguez, Committee on Workforce Development, said the committee needs to keep pressing forward to advance labor rights in Chicago. “We’re looking at getting away from ‘sick’ and having it cover paid time off, potentially by looking at hours that workers can accumulate to earn time off. We want to right-size it to today’s economy, expanding workers’ rights,” he said. “Out the gate, I’m prioritizing paid leave and a rideshare ordinance to make life better for Uber and Lyft drivers.”

Ald. Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez, Committee on Health and Human Relations, wants to prioritize an ordinance she apparently hasn’t figured out yet. “My main issue is [the] Treatment Not Trauma [ordinance proposal], which is a comprehensive piece of legislation that is going to take some time to figure out, so it will probably be done in phases and take a lot of research and negotiations. We’re going to need multiple hearings to hear from experts and talk about best practices,” she said. “There’s a lot of other [proposals] we’re hopeful that we’ll be able to discuss, like Peace Book, public bathrooms, Indigenous People’s Day…,” she added.

Oh, and she wants “to have more frequent meetings, for sure.”

Ald. Matt Martin, Committee on Ethics and Government Oversight, was the exception who offered some substance, listing three matters he’d like to address: creating regular subject matter hearings about inspector general reports, changes to the city’s lobbying regulations involving nonprofits and legislation for publicly financed elections. He also wants quicker inspector general appointments to avoid vacancies.

In fairness, many of the problems the aldermen mentioned are real and their answers focused on their own committees’ missions, but surely their priorities should reflect the overriding problems that have crippled the city, like crime, failing schools, broke pensions and taxes.

*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.