Less than a month ago, Mayor Brandon Johnson presented voters with the Bring Chicago Home referendum. He asked voters to approve hundreds of millions of dollars in new public spending to support his homelessness initiatives. Voters said no.
Last week, Johnson was before the public again with another request for billions, to support a new Chicago Bears stadium. Given the public reaction to date, the proposed stadium looks to be heading for the same fate as Bring Chicago Home.
After the public rejects these initiatives, Johnson has been quick to blame the rejection on MAGA Republicans and other boogeymen. But that excuse ignores a much more obvious explanation: The public doesn’t trust Chicago’s politicians to carry out big goals.
The track record among our elected officials doesn’t inspire confidence. Former Ald. Ed Burke was convicted on multiple federal charges and faces sentencing soon. The former Illinois House speaker, Michael Madigan, stands trial on federal bribery charges later this year. In another federal investigation, housing regulators announced that the City Council itself likely violates civil rights laws by letting aldermen issue unilateral vetoes over affordable housing developments, a practice known as aldermanic prerogative.
While federal prosecutors are trying to clean up government, elected leaders haven’t shown the same initiative.
Past mayors have carried the torch of ethics reform, but Johnson wants nothing to do with it. Then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel entered a 2011 executive order that barred lobbyists from making political donations to the mayor. Johnson ignored the order and accepted contributions from lobbyists. He only stopped when called out by the Chicago Board of Ethics.
Lori Lightfoot as mayor also strengthened city government in ways that the Johnson administration has since abandoned. I had worked for Lightfoot on ethics issues, including efforts to roll back aldermanic prerogative. These efforts appear all but dead. Johnson’s office has even confirmed that he will not implement her final attempts to rein in aldermanic prerogative or to increase transparency.
And this Bears stadium proposal marks another step backward in good governance. The deal was negotiated behind closed doors with zero transparency, and it would saddle generations with as much as $6 billion in debt — all for poorly defined public benefit.
Before Johnson tries to pitch the public on another ambitious new project, he might first show Chicagoans why they should trust the city to carry out any ambitious new project. He can take three steps that would go a long way.
First, Johnson should fully adopt, and the City Council should codify, the good government executive orders of his predecessors. These orders restrict campaign donations from lobbyists, limit aldermanic prerogative and reform zoning practices. The orders prevent conflicts of interest and abuses of power, but they currently lack the full force of law until entered by the City Council. He should change course on this immediately.
Second, the city must reform the way it uses its zoning powers. Zoning laws regulate the types and sizes of buildings on a parcel of land. Burke and other elected officials used the leverage of zoning laws as a tool to extort donations from businesses and to exclude low-income and minority residents. These abuses drive up the cost of development, exacerbate segregation and give rise to extortion and corruption — and they must stop.
Finally, reformers should take a hard look at how we elect the people who lead our city. Our electoral system is not set up to promote the public interest but instead to advance the interests of elected incumbents. City Council ward boundaries are drawn behind closed doors. Elections occur in low-turnout, off-cycle dates. And Chicago’s elections are funded through donations from well-connected insiders and contractors, rather than through public funding such as in New York City or Seattle.
Until the public trusts its elected officials, big-ticket efforts such as the Bears stadium will probably suffer the same fate as the Bring Chicago Home initiative. No matter your views on the merits of those proposals, the fact that the public doesn’t trust its leaders to execute on big initiatives is a problem for us all.
Mac LeBuhn formerly was an adviser and counsel in the Chicago mayor’s office. The views expressed here are his own.
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