By Ted Dabrowski
In 1975, New York City stood on the brink of financial collapse. Drop Dead City is the gripping, award-winning documentary that captures how an unlikely cast of bankers, bureaucrats, and civic leaders – working without pay and under immense pressure – rescued a city thought to be ungovernable.
Can Chicago’s current and future leadership learn from the 1975 rescue? Join a special screening of Drop Dead City on Tuesday, July 1 at the Chicago History Museum. Full details below.
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Chicago is not as bad off as New York was in 1975, you might think, even if Mayor Johnson has proven more incompetent than anyone expected.
But back up just a few years, before the federal government bailed out blue states and blue cities with billions in federal covid money, and you’ll remember Chicago was in a deep mess.
In 2015, Moody’s first downgraded Chicago to junk. The next year, CPS’ borrowing rates spiked, almost as if the district were a High-Yield bond issuer. The following year, Chicago started selling off the city’s future sales tax revenues – like selling off body parts for cash – so it could borrow at reasonable rates. By 2018, CPS had been downgraded five notches into junk, worse even, than Detroit (see 2018 graphic below). And in 2019, Lightfoot begged for a state takeover of the city’s pensions. Only the federal bailouts halted a financial reckoning.
But the covid era added a whole new set of problems for Chicago. The violent George Floyd riots. A spike in violent crime and murders. The risk of a doom loop. Near-empty trains and buses. Work from home. And a burgeoning illegal immigration crisis. It’s a perfect storm of damning problems.
Now the federal bailouts have run out and all of Chicago’s governments – the city, CPS and CTA – are back to facing near billion-dollar deficits. The transit agency has no budget and no plan. And CPS is stuck with an unaffordable new teachers contract.
The city needs a plan – and hope. It behooves the Chicagoans and Illinoisans who care to heed the lessons of 1975 New York.
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Join The Civic Federation, BGA, and the Chicago Policy Center for a special screening of the documentary Drop Dead City on Tuesday, July 1 at the Chicago History Museum.
- Date: Tuesday, July 1
- Time: 2:30 PM – 5:00 PM
- Place: Chicago History Museum
Audio and summary 
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
Illinois had a chance to elect Rauner a second time. It had a chance to elect Bailey. And now the GOP is fully in the grip of know-nothing MAGA types who seem to be behind a wacky sheriff. They definitely are not in the mood for a Polish heritage academic with banking experience.
Call the undertaker. DOA
Well Jamal or Preckwinkle at the helm will nail the coffin shut.
It’s really sad how NYC and Chicago seem to be in a neck and neck race to a dystopian funk. Just look at their Mayors, Chicago’s Johnson and NY likely Mamdani, could a horror story writer created any worse characters?
Sometimes the pendulum has to swing too far to finally get change. In Chicago, it’s definitely still moving in the wrong direction. Many thought it had already gone too far with Lightfoot. But then we got Johnson. What’s next?
“What’s next?”
Not you.