Gapers Block published from April 22, 2003 to Jan. 1, 2016. The site will remain up in archive form. Please visit Third Coast Review, a new site by several GB alumni. ✶ Thank you for your readership and contributions. ✶
America's big cities (and major metropolitan areas) are the laboratories of policy, if states are the laboratories of democracy. In metro areas and cities, universities, professional organizations, and trade associations and economic alliances are capable of exerting outsize influence and try to implement to approaches to social and economic problems that, again, are more easily identified and addressed because of high population concentrations in relatively small geographic areas.
Tell the nation! Draw near all ye with David Brooks columns bookmarked for other than hate reading purposes: Chicago and America's big cities have achieved post-partisanship! The very post-partisanship our President talked about on the campaign trail. As the post-partisanship machine takes firmer hold of our cities, it will move upward, capillary-attraction speed, to the states, until finally--finally!--we achieve the post-partisanship paradise pundits prattle on and on about.
Welcome to part two in our ongoing series on the mayor's millionaire's club, in which we pore over the mayor's daily appointment schedule with the aim of shedding light on how the mayor prioritizes his time--and his far-reaching connections...
[O]nce again, we found that his days were loaded with rich guys, campaign donors, powerful contractors, union busters, charter-school supporters, City Hall insiders, aldermanic brownnosers, and other favor seekers.
But during these three months Emanuel found time for another type of visitor: major funders of conservative attacks on President Obama. As such, the mayor's calendar offers a glimpse of what passes for bipartisanship in Chicago--and shows the ways in which wealth and access, at least as much as party identity or ideology, have come to command the attention of politicians, leaving everyday people out of the conversation.
Meanwhile...
As a whole, appointments with neighborhood groups or community leaders were largely missing from the mayor's schedule. [Amisha] Patel [Director of the Grassroots Collaborative] says her group's requests for a meeting with the mayor have been ignored. She notes that Emanuel continues to find job subsidies for profitable corporations and developers at the same time he's cutting library hours, neighborhood services, and public-sector positions. "Let's talk about job creation but let's do it in a full way."
In fact, like many up-and-coming Republican stars, the mayor has shown a willingness--some would say an eagerness--to take on organized labor, especially the teachers union. He's also an avowed supporter of charter schools, paying them about as many visits, and arguably more attention, as he does regular public schools.
Post-partisanship means staying away from the organized (and thus cantankerous) disaffected and powerless, and hew to the already powerful and wealthy who must know what's best.
If this were just a Chicago phenomenon, it may be dismissed as yet another quirk of Chicago's sui generis politics.
It's not though! Phew, right? Post-partisanship lives to fight another day! In the form of...
During oral arguments on the Affordable Care Act, Justices asked the challengers of the bill if they wanted to see a return to the "Lochner era." The bill's challengers strenuously denied this was their aim. The term refers to the era of Supreme Court jurisprudence after the turn of the last century, when the Court repeatedly struck down state statutes regulating workers hours, overtime pay, child labor, and the like, on the grounds that they violate a nebulous "freedom of contract." The name refers to the case Lochner v. New York, a case striking down a New York statute setting wages and conditions for bakers and confectioners. The Lochner era was characterized close judicial scrutiny of legislatures' determination of social ills and the best means to address them. In other words, the Justices were concerned that striking down the ACA would set a precedent of lack of judicial deference to legislatures' political judgment.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel's recent proposal to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana sparked wide debate in the media. The Chicago Tribunequestioned it, Ben Joravsky of the Chicago Reader called for full legalization, and Whet Moser of Chicago Magazine questioned whether legalization in Chicago was really possible.
Those of us who live in city neighborhoods know that Chicago is politically corrupt. There are figures in our neighborhood's history like former Ald. Fred Roti of the old 1st Ward who fixed a murder case and did the mob's bidding at city hall before going to prison. In Ravenswood on the North Side, there is the famous residence of former governor, now inmate, Rod Blagojevich whose spectacular court case has just concluded. Nearly every Chicago neighborhood has its famous rogues -- some with colorful nicknames like Bathhouse John Coughlin and Hinky Dink Kenna.
The usual story has been that big bad Chicago is corrupt but the suburbs are examples of clean, honest, effective government whose citizens are not troubled with the graft and corruption that plague the evil city. Next week, with University of Illinois at Chicago colleagues and students, I am releasing an Anti-Corruption Report that proves that popular image false. In February, we released a report showing that Chicago is the most corrupt metropolitan area in the country and Illinois is one of the most corrupt states. This time we zero in on the suburban ring around the Chicago.
We found that since the 1970s there are more than 60 suburban villages, towns, and counties around the city with more than 100 convicted corruption felons in the last two decades alone.
Distinctive patterns of corruption in the suburbs include officials with ties to organized crime, nepotism and patronage; police officers aiding criminals; kickbacks and bribes to public officials; large economic developments profiting officials along with their families and friends; and outright theft of public funds. Corruption in all its various forms impacts many local governments throughout the metropolitan region.
For example, corruption in Cicero goes back to the days of Al Capone and famously includes Frank and Betty Loren-Maltese (Cicero's mayor just released from prison). In Rosemont the Stephens family seems to control nearly all government contracts and Rosemont was not allowed to have a casino because of mob ties.
Throughout the region there have been nearly two dozen mayors along with several dozen police chiefs and other policemen convicted of various corruption schemes. Racketeering, extortion, the sale of police badges, protection of drug dealers, and protection rackets are more common in the suburbs than most people realize.
Many contracts and businesses in the suburbs have bribery and corruption as part of business expense. And large economic development projects like Toyota Park, the home of the Chicago Fire soccer team in Bridgeview, have provided lucrative contracts to political family members and more than $170,000 in campaign contributions from vendors and contractors to Bridgeview's Mayor and State Senator Stephen Landek's various campaign funds.
Altogether there are 1,200 separate taxing bodies in the Chicago Metropolitan Region with 540 in Cook County alone. And many of these smaller units of government have had large amounts of money stolen from them outright, including $500,000 from the Dixmoor Park District which oversees only one tot lot. The new champion of corruption from further downstate is the comptroller of Dixon, who is currently charged with stealing $53 million. Ironically, Dixon is the home of the fiscally conservative President Ronald Reagan.
In our anti-corruption report, which will be available online after June 25th here, we detail the crimes in the more than 60 suburbs and recommend ways this public corruption can be cured. We also point out that corruption is costing us taxpayers in Illinois at least $500 million a year.
One starting point in fixing all this is to recognize that corruption is not just a Chicago problem. The culture of corruption is an Illinois problem. While some individual suburbs may be exempt from this epidemic, many suburbs are not. Those of us in the neighborhoods have to hold our aldermen, city government, and other local officials accountable and enact reforms like those proposed by Mayor Emanuel's Ethics Reform Task Force. But our friends in the suburbs need to recognize their problems and demand reforms by both local and state governments if corruption is to be cured.
Privatization has been accelerating at break-neck speed (and in ludicrous ways) the last thirty years or so, in part because of the decline in government revenues and the general growth of the neoliberal consensus that assumes the profit motive brings with it ideal efficiency. It is also an efficient means of weakening the labor movement, because employees of a government contractor are covered by a different, considerably weaker, set of labor laws than employees of a state actor.
But privatization isn't new; in fact, privatization of public services was quite common back in the day, and by back in the day I mean ancient Rome.
The late Roman Republic grew quickly as a result of conquests and voluntary ceding. There was no time to inculcate Roman civic values and grow the necessary institutions to ensure administration along Roman lines. Instead, what the Roman Senate, Consuls, and other governing bodies did to guarantee the provisioning of necessary public services and the gathering of taxes was to contract powerful local men, called Publicans, to provide these services and gather these taxes.
The Publicans in turn grew immensely wealthy with these government contracts, and thus were able to flex significant political muscle in Rome itself, through the buying of tribal leaders in elections and the funding of foreign adventures for ambitious soldiers and politicians. It was a textbook rent-seeking loop.
The privatization craze may be leading to similar results in the U.S. (hopefully without the foreign adventures, although, you know; military-industrial complex). Stories have been popping up with increasing frequency indicating that privatizing the provisioning of public goods is creating wealth, but not, as it were, provisioning public goods any more efficiently.
First, here's Paul Krugman on the privatization of the prison industry--he touches on several of the key points, so I'm quoting at length:
One Day Longer. That's what they say on the picket line when you ask when a strike will end. The dedication to the cause continues on until a just contract can finally settle a dispute between employer and workers. For nine years now, workers from Congress Hotel in Chicago have walked the picket line in a struggle for fair wages, benefits, and working conditions.
By now most of the workers have moved onto others jobs but remain invested in the fight. They spend an hour or two before and/or after work on the picket line and come home to their families. You may ask a common question, why?
"I hope it helps them," said Imelda Martinez, a former Congress Hotel housekeeper. "We fight for our benefits, for fair pay, and justice."
Martinez has struggled to balance family life, work at another hotel, and the strike. Her son served in the Army and did a tour in Iraq. She hopes the strike will end one day on a positive note.
Workers in other Chicagoland hotels know a fight is also coming their way. Just weeks after Unite HERE Local 1 and Congress Hotel celebrate a tenth anniversary, the union will be embroiled in contract negotiations with the other hotel chains. Mark your calendars now. August 31, 2013.
The fight pushes on not for a few dozen service workers at one hotel but for a city full of service workers. Workers that ensure a clean place to stay for the entire tourism industry that Chicago needs. A unionized workforce provides rules to keep employees safe as much as it provides guidelines on keeping rooms clean. Nonunion places overwork their employees and push housekeepers to clean a room in 15 minutes or less. Disgusting if you ask me.
Chicago housekeepers were making just $8.83 an hour when the strike began but now earn $15.70 an hour, according to Unite HERE.
"The sacrifice the strikers have made to go out on the line daily speaks to not only their dedication, but to the intense belief these individuals have for what they're doing," said Henry Tamarin, Unite HERE Local 1 President, in a statement. "The strikers know third dedication to the boycott will help working families now and in the future."
In 2003, the Congress Hotel tried to freeze employee wages, eliminate healthcare benefits, and demanded the ability to outsource the work done by union employees. It was a power grab that the workers refused to allow as they walked out on June 15, 2003.
"[The hotel owner] doesn't want to pay anything. We have to keep fighting. Every time it is the same thing but we want to get a contract. We've been fighting for eight years. We are not going to give up and say alright we lost," declared Guadalupe Perez in an interview last fall.
Chicago-based rapper, Young General, performed his song dedicated to the efforts of the strikers. He teamed up with Columbia College students to produce the music video below:
Taking the opportunity to go out of lockstep, the Montana Supreme Court upheld a state statute forbidding corporate expenditures on elections or political questions, sourced in the destabilizing political power held by the state's old mining interests going back to its territorial days. The parties challenging the statute appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court on the grounds that the statue conflicted with the Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC. The case was to be decided without additional briefing or oral arguments. To the question of whether states could regulate corporate spending independently, the Court, in a per curiam decision, let out a disinterested nyope, consisting of about three sentences of legal reasoning:
In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, this Court struck down a similar federal law, holding that "political speech does not lose First Amendment protection simply because its source is a corporation." The question presented in this case is whether the holding of Citizens United applies to the Montana state law. There can be no serious doubt that it does. Montana's arguments in support of the judgment below either were already rejected in Citizens United, or fail to meaningfully distinguish that case...The judgment of the Supreme Court of Montana is reversed.
Any hopes states had of passing their own uniquely tailored legislation to keep corporate cash out of state and local elections just diminished a little bit. Justice Breyer, joined by the liberal and moderate justices Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan, dissented.
The media is reporting, occasionally breathlessly, on the "standoff" and "contest" between the Board of Education--a proxy for the Mayor, who appoints it and controls it--and the Chicago Teachers Union, the democratically-elected collective bargaining representative for 24,000 public school teachers.
I watched an interesting debate over the weekend unfold on Twitter between a young academic in education policy and an award-winning teacher and activist. They were arguing about the supposed intractability of teachers and parents over the pro-privatization reforms of groups like Stand for Children and Democrats for Education Reform (DFER). The academic was striking a "reasonable" pose:
You're going to have to compromise. That's politics. There are two sides with competing goals, let's get an agreement.
On Saturday, June 2, Noemi Hernández led a group of over 30 community supporters to confront her former employer at Gislex Bridal, located in the Little Village Discount Mall. Noemi is a member of the Arise Chicago Worker Center who first came to the center with concerns about working conditions at the bridal shop. After talking with Worker Center organizers, they discovered she was owed over $9,700 in wages from her 10 months working at Gislex. Because the store's owner pays its workers $55-60 per day for a 10 hour shift, five days a week, Noemi was earning about $6 per hour, far below the $8.25 minimum wage in Illinois, and no overtime. After Noemi presented a letter from Arise expressing concern about the wages and working conditions at Gislex, the employer fired her. The owner, Maribel Flores, has refused to meet and has not returned phone calls from Arise, prompting Noemi and the Worker Center to hold a more creative action to get the employer's attention.
I posted an excerpt to this City Journal column last week to my Sixth Ward blog. You may have also seen it on YoChicago last week as well. The column was written by former Chicago resident and the author of The Urbanophile blog, Aaron Renn. He wrote about his column on his blog and was interviewed about it last week as well
What I highlighted were his conclusions:
Some of those challenges defy easy solutions: no government can conjure up a calling-card industry, and it isn't obvious how Chicago could turn around the Midwest. Mayor Emanuel is hobbled by some of the deals of the past--the parking-meter lease, for example, and various union contracts that don't expire until 2017 and that Daley signed to guarantee labor peace during the city's failed Olympic bid.
But there's a lot that Emanuel and Chicago can do, starting with facing the fiscal mess head-on. Emanuel has vowed to balance the budget without gimmicks. He cut spending in his 2012 budget by 5.4 percent. He wants to save money by letting private companies bid to provide city services. He's found some small savings by better coordination with Cook County. Major surgery remains to be done, however, including a tough renegotiation of union contracts, merging some functions with county government, and some significant restructuring of certain agencies, such as the fire department. By far the most important item for both the city and state is pension reform for existing workers--a politically and legally challenging project, to say the least. To date, only limited reforms have passed: the state changed its retirement age, but only for new hires.
Next is to improve the business climate by reforming governance and rules. This includes curtailing aldermanic privilege, shrinking the overly large city council, and radically pruning regulations. Emanuel has already gotten some votes of confidence from the city's business community, recently announcing business expansions with more than 8,000 jobs, though they're mostly from big corporate players.
Chicago also needs something even harder to achieve: wholesale cultural change. It needs to end its obsession with being solely a global city, look for ways to reinvigorate its role as capital of the Midwest, and provide opportunities for its neglected middle and working classes, not just the elites. This means more focus on the basics of good governance and less focus on glamour. Chicago must also forge a culture of greater civic participation and debate. You can't address your problems if everyone is terrified of stepping out of line and admitting that they exist. Here, at least, Emanuel can set the tone. In March, he publicly admitted that Chicago had suffered a "lost decade," a promisingly candid assessment, and he has tapped former D.C. transportation chief Gabe Klein to run Chicago's transportation department, rather than picking a Chicago insider. Continuing to welcome outsiders and dissident voices will help dilute the culture of clout.
YoChicago focused on the issues of demographics. Also, at another blog, Newsalert, they point to the issue of "one-party rule."
Give it up for Mayor Emanuel, who, faced with a shortage of public safety resources (which moved the police union to put up a billboard demanding more officers), has come out publicly in support of legislation that would make possession of less than 15 grams (about 0.5 ounces) a municipal infraction subject to fine, but not arrest unless circumstances otherwise warrant them. Mick Dumke of the Reader has done yeoman's work on the issue of marijuana arrests and all the resources they suck up (and the needlessly long rap sheets they generate).
Police Superintendent McCarthy has said that arrests for small quantities of marijuana tied up 45,000 hours of police time last year. The movement to decriminalize possession (as opposed to trafficking) is growing, with fifteen states decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana.
The Fraternal Order of Police has not yet issued a statement about the possible legislation.
A bit about Chicago's teachers voting to authorize a strike should talks with the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) break down:
First, a strike authorization is not a call for a strike. Unions are, by statute and traditionally, democratic institutions. Leadership is elected and by-laws approved by the membership. Some organizational decisions require a direct vote by membership (e.g., election of the union leadership) and some through representative bodies--in the case of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), the House of Delegates, composed of delegates elected by members. Because public sector employees are not covered by federal labor law, they are regulated by state laws. So state statutes give public sector workers the right to organize and determine the rules by which they operate. Thus, members delegate authority to the union leadership and other bodies--for example, negotiations are conducted by a negotiation committed chosen by the membership. Similarly, the membership delegates authority to call a strike action by vote. That is what happened; the membership voted to permit leadership to call a strike should one become necessary.
Chicago's teachers voted nearly unanimously to permit a strike should negotiations fail. Ninety-two percent of members voted, and ninety percent of members (but ninety-eight percent of those voting) expressed support for a strike should one be necessary. The analog would be Congress voting to give the President authority to conclude a trade treaty (called "fast-track") without having to return to Congress for ultimate approval; except the strike authorization was more democratic, since all members were permitted to vote.
The Emanuel administration on Wednesday announced the Chicago New Americans Initiative with the intent of helping more than 10,000 people become naturalized U.S. citizens:
The Chicago New Americans initiative will bring together the State of Illinois, the City of Chicago and the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights to offer assistance to thousands of eligible, law abiding, permanent residents in becoming naturalized, U.S. citizens.
Chicago has one of the largest immigrant population in the country. That the city government is taking a partnership, positive role in the immigrant community can go a long way to improving the economic and social conditions for hundreds of thousands of people, particularly children who face uncertain futures given the acceleration of deportations under the Obama administration.
The failure of Tom Barrett to beat Scott Walker in Tuesday's recall election was probably about a lot of things. For social historians of this era, though, it will be this: a miscalculation of epic proportions, an error that defines the post-Citizens United era.
The public rage after Governor Walker instituted his de facto recission of public workers' collective bargaining rights was palpable and widespread. It was by no means universal, but it brought together lots of people who felt targeted, misled, and who saw the legislation as an existential threat to their economic security and well-being. Wisconsin's public sector after all is storied--Wisconsin passed the country's first public worker collective bargaining law--and public sector workers in that state came from all partisan stripes and economic classes.
The direct action that resulted, occupation of the capitol building, was a reasonable response. The decision to turn all of that activist energy into an election campaign was fatally misguided.
I argued, on the heels of the Citizens United decision, that the left could finally admit that elections are not a feasible method of obtaining particularly economic goals, and that it should begin exploring alternative, direct action methods; particularly, occupations, work stoppages, and boycotts:
It's a big week for Midwestern conservatives. Days after WI Gov. Scott Walker's victory on Tuesday in the recall election against him will be a weekend double-whammy of the Friday-Saturday Illinois GOP convention in Tinley Park and Friday's regional installment of the Conservative Political Action Conference in Rosemont.
Beginning today, over 20,000 Chicago teachers will vote on whether or not to authorize their bargaining committee to call for a strike should negotiations with the Board of Education over new contract terms fail. For authorization, 75% of non-retiree union members would need to approve. The voting takes place over three days. This high threshold is the result of legislation passed last year. As state public employees, teachers' collective bargaining rights and terms are governed by state, rather than federal, law.
The legislation in question, known as SB7, was passed after intense and stealth lobbying efforts by Stand for Children, a well-funded non-profit that operates at the state level to encourage entrepreneurial changes to public education that incrementally privatize school systems. Stand for Children co-founder Jonah Edelman famously bragged at a conference that they used access to important and influential political figures like Rahm Emanuel and Michael Madigan, and insiders like Jo Anderson to tighten restrictions on the Chicago Teachers Union. Part of the strategy was to take away one of the union's more potent tools, the strike threat. Unable to take away the right to a work stoppage, Stand settled for a 75% approval threshold.
Now, it is looking like Stand's strategy might backfire, if teachers ultimately vote to authorize a strike. After all, the question teachers will vote on is whether to authorize a strike, not whether to go on strike. Arguably, winning an authorization vote by 50%+1 would not be a real show of strength. A significant portion of teachers would have expressed their opposition to a strike, and maintaining the strike, once called, would be exceedingly difficult. The organizational capacity teachers build by being forced to get over 75% means a resilient strike, should things come to that, and a battle-tempered organization prepared to push hard during negotiations.
Besides the mechanics of it, there are the underlying social conditions that are bringing this to a head.
As the education privatization reforms spread across the country (from Chicago via D.C.), a report out of Roosevelt University threatens to add fuel to the fire of privatization critics, particularly here in Chicago.
The study, by sociology professor Stephanie Farmer, examines how tax increment financing (TIF) funds have been spent on schools. TIFs are controversial financing mechanisms originally created to allow cities to fund development in blighted areas by dedicating property values above a specific amount to projects within those areas. Thanks in no small degree to the work of Ben Joravsky of the Reader (and the now-defunct and terribly named Neighborhood Capital Budget Group), TIFs came to the public attention as de facto slush funds, with little or no oversight, used to divert property tax revenue (mostly from the schools) to be used as "incentives" or givebacks to developers. Because the revenues diverted into funds come from property taxes, the Chicago Public School systems has consistently been the biggest loser in the TIF craze.
Farmer's study does little to assuage the public's concerns. In it, Farmer finds that
CPS's top priority for the allocation of TIF revenues to school construction projects is to support selective enrollment schools....Though selective enrollment schools account for 1% of all CPS schools, they received 24% of all TIF funds spent on school construction projects.
It is hard to merely call it a "perception" that TIFs have been abused to accelerate gentrification, thus substituting displacement for economic development. That selective enrollment and charter schools received more than a third of all TIF funds spent on school construction and improvement projects isn't just an isolated fact. School quality is a strong, if not the strongest, component that determines not only property values but the attitude of young families and professionals to a neighborhood. Therefore diverting funds from CPS by creating a TIF, and then disproportionately spending that TIF money on already-elite schools actively harms the city's working class neighborhoods.
It's now been 11 days since the carbon monoxide leak which sent over 80 Prussing Elementary School students and staff to the hospital. While officials from Chicago Public Schools have partially answered some questions, and CPS CEO Forrest Claypool has informed that he will be visiting the school to field more questions on Nov. 16, many parents remain irate at the CPS response to date. More...
It's not surprising that some of Mayor Emanuel's sympathizers and supporters are confusing people's substantive disputes with the mayor as the effect of poor marketing on his part. It's exactly this insular worldview that has gotten the mayor in hot... More...
