Progress Illinois

Is accountability so sparse in the Chicago Police Department that even a recommendation by the superintendent isn't enough to get an officer fired by the Chicago Police Board? Based on the latest research (PDF) by the non-profit Chicago Justice Project (CJP), it seems so. Here's what the organization examined in their report:

[T]he Chicago Justice Project (CJP) examined ten years of the Board’s decisions in cases for which the Superintendent of the Chicago Police Department sought the termination of either sworn officers or civilian employees. We included the cases involving civilian employees for comparison purposes. Our study covered 310 cases over the course of a ten-year period starting in January 1999 and ending in December 2008.

Over this period, CJP identified 248 instances in which the superintendent recommended that a particular officer get the ax.  The mayoral-appointed board, however, only fired only a fraction (37 percent) of these cops. In most of the remaining 63 percent of cases, the board didn't retain the officer in question on the grounds that they were unfairly accused. Rather, they agreed with the superintendent's conclusion, but chose to handed out less severe punishments, such as suspension.

The big mystery is exactly how the ten-member board arrived at those decisions.

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The Congress Hotel employees have been striking for over six years. In the coming days, a huge batch of their fellow Chicago hotel workers may join them.

At 8 p.m. last night, employees at five area hotels run by the Starwood Chain -- the Westin Michigan Avenue, the Sheraton Chicago Hotel and Towers, the W Lakeshore, the W, and the Tremont Hotel -- voted by an overwhelming majority to authorize a strike. The workers, represented by UNITE-HERE Local 1, are not walking out on the job just yet. But the vote gives union negotiators the green light to call a work stoppage or a boycott if contract negotiations don't progress, a major escalation in a campaign that's already featured a dramatic civil disobedience.

It's been eight weeks since UNITE-HERE's three-year contract covering workers at 30 downtown hotels expired and the two sides are still not close to reaching a compromise. Like their comrades at Hyatt -- one of the city's other big chains -- Starwood is claiming poverty, citing the recession as the reason they can't boost pay or benefits for its employees. Furthermore, in an attempt to cut costs, they are requesting that employees work 120 hours a month in order to qualify for health insurance, a move union officials say would disqualify almost half of their workers from coverage.

There's no doubt that the recession depressed tourism last year. But hotels seem to be on relatively sturdy financial ground;

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A week after Mayor Daley unveiled his bad news budget -- which relies on skimming $370 million from asset reserve funds to help plug a $520 million deficit -- aldermen began hearings on the city's finances this morning. Over the past five years, Chicago has collected upwards of $3 billion for privatizing several major public assets: specifically, the parking meters, downtown garages, and Skyway.  But due to the bad economy and the resulting drop in revenues, the Daley administration has tapped all but $730 million of the reserve funds.  But rather than own up to the fact he has been using these privatization deals as a crutch, the mayor has instead indicated that he is open to hawking additional public assets. "Everything is on the table," he told the Tribune editorial board last week, including the water and sewer systems.

On FOX Chicago Sunday this week, Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd Ward) warned that if Daley is allowed to ram through another parking meter-style deal, the city would be "in big trouble." Moreover, he pointed out that the ongoing privatization talk is emblematic of a bigger problem. "[The city] needs a new influx of ideas and policies," he told co-hosts Jack Conaty and Dane Placko. "The old way of doing things no longer works." Watch it:

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After his administration received unprecedented criticism for leasing off Chicago's parking meter system, one might think Mayor Daley would cool it on the privatization schemes.  Instead, he appears to be looking for more public assets to sell off to the highest bidder. The Tribune reported yesterday that the same type of consultants who cooked up the parking meter deal (and profited off it) are now "tempting him" with "a menu of options."  "It whets your appetite," Daley told the paper's editorial board, "the things they see that we don't see." He went on say, "Nothing is off the table ... Everything is always on the table."

So there it is. Daley and consultants re already working the numbers behind closed doors. The scenario sounds reminiscent of the 75-year parking meter lease project that was rammed through the City Council in just two days, costing taxpayers upwards of $1 billion in potential revenue losses.

Today, the Sun-Times Fran Spielman ticks through the possibilities, concluding that there are five "viable" options: Midway Airport, O'Hare Airport, trash collection, the water system, and the sewage system.  The mayor has already attempted (unsuccessfully) to unload Midway. O'Hare is bogged down under loads of debt.  Meanwhile, the City Council has already put the kibosh on the trash proposal.  So it would seem that the water and sewer systems would be the most likely targets.

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During Mayor Daley's budget address yesterday, we listened closely to see if he would make any mention of Chicago's other budget: the $1 billion in taxpayer dollars currently sitting in off-the-books tax increment financing (TIF) accounts. To no one's surprise, the mayor glossed over how this mayoral "piggy bank" -- which last year siphoned off $552 million from local taxing bodies like the schools and parks -- factored into his long-term thinking about the city's finances. That's because the mayor already has his own quiet plans for handing out the public funds, according to documents (PDF) obtained by the Reader's Ben Joravsky and Mick Dumke. They explain the significance in their new, must-read cover story:

[T]he money's supposed to be used to subsidize economic development in depressed communities that would otherwise receive no investment. But according to aldermen, and as the TIF documents we obtained show, the program is used to help clout-heavy developers and corporations, pay for basic infrastructure and services without the public oversight given the official budget, and strengthen the political position of the mayor. [...]

By moving more necessary expenditures into the secret budget that he ultimately controls, the mayor also wields even more power over every public entity, from the City Council to the public schools to the Park District. At various times at least half a dozen aldermen have told us that mayoral aides pressure them on key votes—such as the ordinances for funding the Olympics or moving the Children's Museum to Grant Park—by either promising to give their wards more TIF dollars or threatening to take TIF dollars away.

Bingo. While we have no way of tracking which TIF projects successfully deliver an economic boost and which don't, we do know this: The TIF system allows Mayor Daley to curry favor with Chicago's corporate elite while keeping the City Council in lock-step with his agenda.

In recent months, we've repeatedly highlighted how tens of millions of dollars from the downtown TIF accounts are regularly used to subsidize the renovations of swanky new corporate offices in the Loop.  It's infuriating to watch these giveaways (United Airlines secured $50 million from the city in just the past two years) at a time when Chicago faces a $520 million budget shortfall.  During an appearance on WFLD's Good Day Chicago this morning, the Better Government Association's Andy Shaw used our favored term for this ongoing practice: "corporate welfare." "We are subsidizing wealthy developers and all kinds of people who are friends and cronies of the administration when our taxes are sky-high," he said, holding up a copy of Joravsky and Dumke's article. "And this is wrong because we need transparency here." Watch it:

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Yesterday on WBEZ's Eight Forty-Eight, Tribune business columnist David Griesing came on to discuss a timely issue: the incentives used by the City of Chicago to lure large corporations to downtown office buildings.  This is a topic we've written about regularly over the past year, as we've watched MillerCoors, Willis Holdings, United Airlines, and numerous other large companies receive hefty taxpayer handouts from Mayor Daley in return from moving their respective headquarters or operations centers to the Loop.  At a time when the city is deep in the red and considering painful cuts to services, the ongoing corporate welfare is hard to swallow.

At one point in the WBEZ segment, host Richard Steele asked Griesing whether the hundreds of millions we've forked over to these corporations "is worth it at the end of the day."  Griesing's answer: "Well it depends on who you're asking."  (Read his full response at the end of the post.)  But what Steele should have actually asked is this: "How do we know if it's worth it?"

Indeed, when the ink dries on the each of these deals, the debate in the press inevitably surrounds the cost-per-job estimates and the various long-term revenue projections stemming from the agreement. But what's missing is any method for examining the previous contracts. No one digs into the earlier relocations to see whether they fulfilled expectations and were ultimately worth the public investment. Instead, we're greeted with a perpetual refrain: "Trust us." "We know what we're doing." "Trust us."   

In the context of the United deal earlier this month, the Reader's Mick Dumke hit the nail on the head:

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Another year, another Chicago Transit Authority "doomsday" scenario. Newly appointed CTA chief Terry Peterson is scheduled to unveil his agency's FY 2010 budget today and the details don't look promising. Facing an estimated $300 million deficit, a legal ad placed in the Tribune this morning says that the basic fare for trains and Lake Shore Drive express bus routes will jump $.75 while bus riders will be required to fork over an additional $.25 per ride. Nine bus routes will also be eliminated while 41 others will experience reduced hours.

Keep in mind that these fare changes will be implemented solely to close the 2010 operating shortfall. (The CTA has already filled $122 million of their deficit by requiring non-union workers to take unpaid furlough days and by diverting money appropriated for capital expansion into the operating fund.) Even though ridership is ballooning, the city isn't raising additional revenue to expand or enhance services. And those capital improvements are desperately needed; more than one-third of the existing trains, equipment, and facilities are outdated. Illinois PIRG estimates that it would take $60 billion over 30 years to expand its stressed fleets, extend routes to underserved communities, and perform routine maintenance on the existing infrastructure.

While it's true that the recession has hit the agency especially hard --the CTA gets half of its funding from retail and real estate sales taxes, receipts of which have plummeted -- the city's funding problems are largely systemic. Generating adequate revenue would require reforming the CTA's rigid funding restrictions (most notably the hefty state-mandated "recovery ratio"), rebalancing the state's surface transportation priorities, and devoting existing city resources to projects from which the public benefits. Securing those changes will take a lot of political will, which is tough to come by these days in both Springfield and at Chicago City Hall. Until then, transit commuters across the region will bear the burden.

Over the weekend, the Sun-Times' Fran Spielman summed up the incredible amount of work awaiting Chicago Mayor Richard Daley now that his Olympics obsession has faded:

After spending his political capital on the Olympics at the expense of higher priorities, the mayor has virtually nothing to show for it.

He comes home to face the grim reality of a $520 million city budget gap, a $300 million CTA shortfall and the continuing fallout from the horrific videotaped beating death of a Fenger High School student.

Without the extraordinary booty from a seven-year-long public works project, he'll be forced to find other ways to rebuild the South Side and reward feisty aldermen, corporate chieftains who bankrolled the bid and union leaders whose concessions helped minimize city layoffs.

She goes on to quote former alderman and University of Illinois-Chicago professor Dick Simpson surmising that Daley "may decide he doesn't want to continue as mayor under these circumstances." 

The Olympics loss taken in combination with recent polling indicates that Daley is as vulnerable as he's ever been. Even if he does choose to run for reelection in 2011, it seems likely that someone is going to take advantage of the situation and step up to challenge him.

No one expected Chicago 2016 to get booted in the first round of Olympics bidding this morning in Copenhagen.  But that's what happened:

Chicago has been eliminated in the first round of International Olympic Committee voting, and Tokyo was eliminated in the second roud, leaving Rio de Janeiro and Madrid in the running for the 2016 Summer Games as the voting continues.

Quite a shocker, even for many of those who opposed the bid.  But now it's time to shake it off, move forward, and think creatively about how to make meaningful, long-term investments in this city.  

Here's one place to start.

UPDATE: Some responses to the news.  First, from Rep. Mike Quigley:

Chicago was a world-class city before today’s decision, and Chicago will be a world-class city tomorrow.  Although disappointment hangs in the air, this is not the time for regret, but rather to see opportunity in the incredible work that was done across Chicago over the past months.

We now have the chance to move forward, free of the demands of the IOC, but equipped with plans that can address the real problems Chicagoans face on a daily basis.  Chicago is now armed with an organizing capability never seen before, and an opportunity to continue the momentum and create better schools, more efficient transportation, and safer streets.  

And here's State Treasurer and U.S. Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias:

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Nearly a month after their multi-year contract expired and with no agreement in sight, 6,000 Chicago-based hotel workers represented by UNITE-HERE Local 1 decided yesterday it was time to raise their profile. In a dramatic and peaceful act of protest, 22nd Ward Ald. Ric Munoz (chief sponsor of the city's pending right-to-know notification law), union advocates, and roughly 200 hospitality workers blocked traffic near the Magnificent Mile at the height of rush hour to protest proposed wage and health coverage cuts. Another 700 workers and supporters cheered on as police slowly escorted the sit-in participants to police buses for processing. (Those arrested face minimum fines of $90 for failure to exercise due care by sitting in a roadway.) Watch the dramatic scene unfold:

While the location -- in front of the Park Hyatt, just steps from the Old Water Tower -- succeeded in attracting significant media attention, that was not the only motivating factor. Hyatt Regency is perhaps the largest and most influential hotel operator in Chicago; how they treat their employees effects chains across the city. They laid off 19.5 percent of their workforce between November 2008 and March 2009 and forced the remaining staff to work overtime to cover the lost hours, as employee Francine Jones explained earlier this month.  Now, UNITE-HERE officials say Hyatt is requiring that employees work 120 hours a month in order to qualify for health insurance, which would disqualify almost half of their workers.

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