Lightfoot hits the ground running as new mayor of Chicago

In less than the three weeks that Lori Lightfoot was inaugurated as mayor of Chicago, she has shown a propensity for tackling the hard work ahead, and her unenviable task list, for taking America’s third largest city from a sea of financial red ink, and the burden of high crime, weakened schools, (with a wobbly reputation), and pension indebtedness, among others; and has made some fast enemies, yet seems to care less about them, and more about the future of the city.

To wit, she has called for the disgraced, and now indicted, longtime alderman Ed Burke to resign, after he was fried by the feds for trying to shake down a Burger King franchise in exchange for a bribe, targeted to defeated mayoral rival, Toni Preckwinkle.

Lightfoot’s swift actions have gained her some enmity from long-time Chicago “machine” fans; and, to wit, one 60ish, black woman, and self-styled politico, told me in an off-hand comment,“I can’t stand her,” and exclaimed, with outstretched hands,  ”Look at what she has done to Beale!”

What she did to earn that woman’s ire was to push aside a Burke crony, Ald. Anthony Beale, from a key position in favor of a younger and fresher, read, “non-machine” colleague, Scott Waguespack, and accepted the reality that she was not going to have control over a casino, (designed to help fill the city coffers), and prepared an interim school board, as the Chicago Teachers Union, wrung its collective hands at not having an immediate elected school board, and most significantly signed an executive order to not allow aldermanic privilege to go unfettered, in the shadow of Burke’s shenanigans.

For a woman that is shorter than most of her colleagues, and even her own wife, she seems to brook no nonsense as she tackles Chicago’s problems systematically and methodically, and in less time than many of her rivals, who might have wallowed in the perks of office.

As we noted previously the job of Chicago mayor is often death by a thousand blows, and those who want the job either have to be mad, or are a crusader, and Lightfoot seems to be the latter.

Ending aldermanic privilege

Facing down the alderman and their “life, or death, privileges”, and also their side hustles, may give her street cred among progressives, but also is likely to increase the challenges to that effort, but as The Economist noted earlier this year, after the raid on Burke’s office, these building permits, and development requests, are best handled by city departments rather than through their hands. And, their power often hinders the effort to gain affordable housing, and re-enforces Chicago’s long held racial segregation.

“Under Lightfoot’s plan, the old system would be replaced with one where departments underneath the mayor’s purview would establish uniform criteria to decide who gets permits, licenses and more,” according to local PBS affiliate, WTTW.

“It’s really a simple change,” said Ald.Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, 35th, who says he enthusiastically supports the measure. “Rather than an alderman just picking up the phone and saying, ‘Stop that permit,’ it means the aldermen has to answer to a commissioner.”

Then on the other hand, there is blowback, and,  “She might as well say she doesn’t need aldermen anymore,” said Ald. Ray Lopez, 15th. “There is no cookie cutter solution to answer the issues in every neighborhood, and to try to use this to force aldermen to give up their duty to be advocates for their community is not only distressing, it is wrong.”

Ald. Lopez

“Still, there are some incoming aldermen who like Lightfoot won in part by campaigning to take power away from individual Council members. Some of them say they’re not quite sure that what they heard today from Lightfoot’s staff goes far enough to change the system.”

“For example, they point out that the issue of zoning is not included in Lightfoot’s planned executive order, meaning that aldermen will still have final say about which parcel of land can be zoned for residential, commercial or other types of use.”

“These kinds of decisions have, in the past, facilitated a pipeline for campaign contributions and corruption. Therefore, some aldermen say that Lightfoot will eventually have to take bolder steps to change the system.”

As the Tribune Editorial board reminded readers, “Remember, this is a body that brazenly avoided filling the position of legislative inspector general, a post that was created to investigate complaints against City Council members. When aldermen finally settled on New York attorney Faisal Khan to fill the role, they swiftly discredited him, mocked him, refused his requests for paperwork and ignored his demands.”

“I believe that it was abuses of prerogative around zoning that brought us to this point, to this call of reform,” said Ald.-elect Daniel LaSpata, 1st.  “And I think that’s going to have to be an ongoing conversation.”

“When public officials cut shady backroom deals, they get rich and the rest of us get the bill,” Lightfoot said in her inaugural speech., adding that “It’s in the City Council’s own interest.”

Lightfoot  also has plans to replace longtime politico Carrie Austin, another African American alderman, “from her long-held perch as chairman of the Budget Committee, instead giving that high-power assignment to Ald. Pat Dowell, 3rd.”

“The mayor wants to create a new Committee on Contracting Oversight and Equity and let Austin chair that one instead, in a bid to temper Austin’s anger over losing the Budget post.”

“My decision is going to hinge upon Mayor Lightfoot,” Austin said [last] Thursday. “I will say this throughout my term with her: If it’s something you want me to support, you’ve got to ask me. You’ve got to ask me. That’s the one thing I can say about Mayor Emanuel. He asked me for my support.”

“Lightfoot said Friday that she had asked Austin for her support. Asked whether she expected to get it, Lightfoot replied “I do.”

On a purely operations level, the mayor won as she “managed to reshape the City Council in her reformer image — installing new chairmen and new operating rules to prevent aldermanic conflict of interest — by a voice vote,” reported the Sun-Times.

“Only three aldermen could be heard shouting “No”: Anthony Beale (9th), Edward Burke (14th) and Ray Lopez (15th).

“I think it went fine,” a self-satisfied Lightfoot said, in a dramatic understatement.

Here a TIF, there a TIF

Next up on the “must do” agenda that helped propel her to City Hall, and also the progressive agenda that she backed, is reforming the TIF program -- Tax Incremental Funding -- that was designed to benefit low income areas, and encourage economic development, but which became under Mayor Richard M. Daley, and Emanuel, a slush fund, of sorts, that helped open the French Market, and other posh establishments, in rapidly gentrifying areas of the Loop.

Using the backdrop of an internal investigation by Inspector General Joe Ferguson, the Chicago Tribune reported that it was established to see “how well the city had enacted the recommendations made in 2011 by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s Tax Increment Financing Reform Panel.

The inspector general found the city has only partially followed through on setting multiyear development plans and capital budgets for the money, which gets diverted into infrastructure spending accounts within TIF districts all over the city instead of going to traditional property taxing bodies such as Chicago Public Schools and the annual City Hall budget.”

“Inspector General Joe Ferguson’s report reveals what many of us have long suspected: Behind closed doors, City Hall has made decisions on how to spend TIF dollars without documented justifications or clearly articulated goals to guide the spending,” Lightfoot said in a statement.

Mr. Ferguson

“The report makes two things clear. First, the TIF system needs far more transparency in how it makes decisions and who receives money. Second, the City must commit to publicly-available, community-driven plans for which economic development and capital improvement projects should be approved.”

“Emanuel’s agreement to earmark up to $2.4 billion in tax increment financing money to support megadevelopments The 78 and Lincoln Yards just before he left office this year brought particular scrutiny to the city’s TIF process,” the Trib added.

Despite those assertions, Lightfoot was criticized by some of the more progressive groups and media for accepting the deal negotiated by the outgoing administration of former mayor, Rahm Emanuel; and, in another blow to reality, Lightfoot had to accept that she did not have the votes to forestall the project,and instead let it continue with the promise of increased contracts for minority and women owned projects.

“But progressives see it differently. Talk to them and they say that they took Lightfoot at her word when she frequently said during and since the campaign that the Lincoln Yards deal in particular needed lots of work and that a final decision should be left for a new mayor and City Council,” reported Crain’s Chicago Business, also noting that the Chicago Teachers Union criticism was misplaced.

"Her consent for these deals will cost our schools, our parks, and our public services literally billions of dollars in deflected funding," thundered the Chicago Teachers Union in a statement shortly after the City Council vote. "The City Council and the new mayor will have to answer to the people occupying a packed City Council chambers who are jeering their maneuvers."

Crain’s columnist Greg Hinz opined, with accuracy, “I think the progressives really are way, way off base in much of their opposition. The $2 billion-plus in subsidies mostly is for transportation infrastructure, the type of thing government generally pays for. And that money won't "come from" public schools, however much the CTU screams. It will come from property taxes paid by the developers. With few exceptions, the schools will get that money back by raising their property tax rate a little higher on landowners not located in the TIF districts.”

All of this before the inauguration, to boot, but it shows that the 56-year-old, and former corporate attorney, will have to maintain a tough stance, as she faces criticism from many sides, in her effort to reform Chicago; or to paraphrase Lincoln’s famous stance of not being able to please all of the people, all of the time.

On the heels of that action Hinz added: “But Lightfoot is the one who said she opposed action now. And she's the one who acted very much like the Emanuel she criticized in releasing terms of the deal under cover of night—in this case, a 10:45 p.m. email—too late for morning media coverage and too late to really have much impact before a 9 a.m. City Council meeting.”

There was good news in the shuffle: “The new Finance Committee also has been stripped of control over tax increment financing subsidies, like the record $1.6 billion package for Lincoln Yards and “the 78” Mayor Rahm Emanuel pushed through shortly before leaving office.

The power over TIF subsidies has gone to the Economic Development Committee, to be chaired by Ald. Gilbert Villegas (36th), Lightfoot’s floor leader.”

With her support for affordable housing, which is at a dearth in the city, and those calling for rent control, which the local realtor association definitely does not want, the balancing act between a progressive agenda, and not wanting to totally alienate the business community, will be a challenge.

Violence they say, stop, she says

Gun violence has been in the headlines for Chicago for months, even years and there seems to not be a day that there are not headlines proclaiming the latest murders and shootings.

“In an interview with CBS News national correspondent Jericka Duncan, Lightfoot said she plans a proactive approach to tackling gun violence as a public health crisis by better investing in neighborhoods to address the causes of violent crime,” reported CBS Chicago.

“It means we bring resources to the communities so that they can grow; that we bring economic development opportunities to neighborhoods; that we work on providing wraparound services and job training in the neighborhoods so that people in those neighborhoods who don’t have a history of work actually have a pipeline to good paying jobs,” she said, and noted that fighting violence was the biggest challenge of her new role.

“You have to bring people together. They have to get comfortable with each other, which is why we are encouraging our officers to get out of their cars, walk the beat, get to know the community that they’re in. We will be bringing some additional changes both in training our new recruits and our veteran officers,” she said, just ahead of the Memorial Day holiday, an annual launch to a new round of violence, and associated with warmer weather.

Her good intentions aside, “After “flooding the zone” over Memorial Day weekend with 1,200 more police officers and dozens of religious leaders — and touting more than 100 events and youth programs as alternative activities — Lightfoot came away with results tragically similar to previous years, according to the Sun-Times.

“Seven dead, same as last year. And 34 wounded, two more than last year.

That’s apparently why Lightfoot is now attempting to lower the bar that she herself raised by putting so much of her early political capital on the line over Memorial Day weekend.

“I didn’t come into this with any illusions that we were gonna be able to wave a magic wand and reverse trends that have been in the making for some time. We were down on homicides from a year ago. But, we were up on shootings—and that’s clearly unacceptable,” the new mayor said.

It's been widely acknowledged by academics, sociologists, and others who study America’s core cities, that violence is underscored by the lack of opportunity that Lightfoot has seen.

She has noted that “a lot of what we’re seeing out there are crimes of poverty.” That underscores the need to invest heavily in the South and West side neighborhoods suffering from “systemic disinvestment” that has dragged on for decades.”

“There’s young guys out there who get a small amount of money to essentially patrol their streets, but are telling me, ''We have nothing.’ It’s difficult to make a persuasive argument not to be involved in the illegal drug trade, for example, when there are no other economic activities and opportunities out there for young men and women to participate in,” she said.

Show me the money

Of course, as critics have pointed out, none of these changes are possible without money; and the debt, especially the pension debt the city has endured, plus the high interest loans the city took out, under Emanuel, have made things better and Lightfoots’ transition team demurred on the question of city finances, and what is known is a $700 million budget shortfall.

According to The Civic Federation, Lightfoot faces a $277 million increase in pension payments and “payments that will rise by $1 billion in 2023 — as a five-year ramp to actuarial funding ends and the road to 90% funding begins.”

“Whether it’s the structural deficit for next year, the pension obligations that we have to meet, the service on the debt, open police, fire and teachers contracts and a range of other issues, we have a significant challenge on our hands. Make no mistake about it,” Lightfoot said.

“We will talk about what that challenge is. But I also believe you have to talk to people about solutions. We’re not there yet. We’re looking at a range of different options. . . . But it’s important for us to actually get in and see the books for ourselves so we can understand what the magnitude of the challenge is.”

The dean of Chicago political reporters, Fran Spielman, of the Sun-Times, said, in her coverage that “Newly elected mayors routinely paint the worst possible picture of the budget shortfalls they inherit, then blame their predecessors for leaving behind a bigger mess. That frees them to make the painful choices on taxes and budget cuts early in a first term in hopes that Chicago voters forget about it before the next election.”