Paul John HigginsAfter months of FOIA wrangling with City Hall, we’ve finally acquired a copy of the city’s “shadow budget”—the list of allocated and proposed uses for the half a billion dollars a year in taxpayer money that the Daley administration has previously refused [...]
It was clear from his recent interview with WBEZ that Mayor Daley doesn't understand how his TIF program works.
And it's clear from its document "ABC's of TIF" that the Department of Community Development doesn't understand how the TIF program works.
And based on his letter in yesterday's' [...]
UPDATE: City officials say they are not currently seeking bids for a long-term lease of the MRRFs but rather for private-sector management of their daily operations. Streets & San spokesman Matt Smith says the city has put the long-term lease plan on hold until "until market conditions improve."
The city [...]
The essence of style is avoidance. We learn not to attempt what we know we cannot do well. Authors who can’t write dialogue concoct an aesthetic that has no use for it—and hope critics call them daring and experimental. Reporters allowed to pick and choose among topics reject perfectly [...]
As has become customary, aldermen bitched and moaned about Mayor Daley’s $6.1 billion budget before they passed it today. Nobody claimed to like it, though 38 aldermen voted in favor of it. But that number is smaller than it has been for most of Daley's reign. [...]
I don't know what folks at the Sun-Times have been eating for breakfast these days, but they've been spitting fire when it comes to Mayor Daley and his TIFs.
First there was Abdon Pallasch's Sunday story about how the mayor isn't telling the truth about the program.
[' [...]
Hunter Clauss reports an update in Joe Laiacona's petition challenge against Deborah Mell.
Laiacona and Mell are running for state rep in the 40th District, and if you caught our recent feature on Laiacona, a Columbia teacher and fetish columnist, you know that Mell may' [...]
The lawsuit between Block 37 developer Joseph Freed & Associates and lender Bank of America over a $128 million foreclosure is hard to follow, but a news report filed today on Crain's ChicagoRealEstateDaily.com may shed some light on the crucial question of which side the mayor favors.
[ [...]
One day in 2006, Chicago School Board president Michael Scott sat down for breakfast with CPS chief Arne Duncan, Congressman Danny Davis, and state senator Rickey Hendon in the back room of a soul food restaurant on the west side. They must have expected a quiet discussion in the [...]
Earlier this week Cook County sheriff Tom Dart and several of the top corrections officials at the Cook County Jail were sued in federal court by an inmate named Kenneth Simmons Mays. In a handwritten complaint he filed on his own, Mays alleges that on [...]
Mick Dumke talks TIFs and more politics with Nick Digilio
[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]
[...]Todd Stroger's inadequacies weren't the only topics of discussion at yesterday's forum for the Democrats vying for Cook County Board president. Two of Stroger's rivals also weighed in against one of Mayor Daley's: his resistance to full disclosure of how hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money [...]
Cook County Clerk David Orr has just released his annual tax increment financing report, and for the first time in years the news is good for taxpayers — the city's TIF take went down in 2009.
Of course, as with every thing else with the TIF program, it's all [...]
Five months ago the city’s largest bicycling and transit advocacy group released a report ripping the Daley administration for entering into the parking meter privatization agreement. Yet Monday night the Active Transportation Alliance inducted Mayor Daley into its “hall of fame,” and the group will soon release a [...]
Two weeks ago, Andrea Raila was eagerly gathering signatures to her nominating petitions and talking about cleaning up our rancid property tax system once she got elected Cook County Assessor.
Today, she withdrew from the race.
[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]
[...]"To be perfectly frank, I think it’s just a lack of marketing about what [TIFs] do and account for," Daley said. "We just have to show, with better marketing, we have to show what the benefits to the community are."
The mayor said that the special taxing districts, which freeze [...]
Since state test scores are among the big news items today, here's an excerpt from Ben Joravsky's 2006 piece "The Schools Scam: Under the TIF system millions of dollars in property taxes are being diverted from education to development"; it's long because the issue is tricky:
[...]The latest batch of property tax bills has been sent out and the results are just coming in.
My annual analysis of who pays what (I know, I'm an incurable geek) illustrates what Assessor Jim Houlihan has been saying for the last several years: residents on the south and west' [...]
The Sun-Times has a good but complex piece today on the relationship between rising property taxes and the phaseout of the so-called 7% property tax cap instituted by outgoing Cook County Assessor James Houlihan (here's more on the candidates vying to replace him). Fortunately, Ben Joravsky's been [...]
Sound familiar?
"By the time the City Council's Finance Committee got around to officially approving the . . . deal—a $400 million Loop redevelopment project—almost all of the aldermen had gone home for the weekend. . . . Not that full aldermanic attendance would have changed the outcome. The project" [...]
As predicted, Mayor Richard M. Daley proposed a $6.1 billion budget this morning that would be balanced by cutting city jobs, slowing services, and dipping deeper by hundreds of millions of dollars into the pot of money generated by leasing the parking meter system.
Most aldermen I spoke with [...]
Aldermen are already sweating about the 2010 budget process about to heat up at City Hall, because it's clear they're going to be forced to raise taxes, fines, and fees, dip into reserve funds, make additional staffing and service cuts, sell off more city assets, or all of' [...]
UPDATE: The United deal passed unanimously without debate. Finance committee chair Ed Burke said, "The net effect on the Chicago economy will be tremendous over the next ten years, and this represents an ongoing commitment from United Airlines to its hometown.”
Now that the City Council's Committee'" [...]
Having been lifelong fan of the Bulls, I understand more than most how devastating a sports loss can be to one's psyche.
[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]
[...]After spending hours in and around Washington Park, I finally found a resident who'd really, really wanted the Olympics to come to Chicago.
[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]
' [...]Congressman Mike Quigley has never been a Daley yes man, and even the carefully worded statement he issued after the Olympics defeat sounded to me like a challenge to the mayor:
“Chicago was a world-class city before today’s decision, and Chicago will be a world-class city tomorrow. [...]
From Ben Joravsky, out in the precincts:
"I was driving down 57th Street headed to Washington Park when I got a call from a friend telling me Chicago had lost its bid for the 2016 Olympics.
"I honked my horn, rolled down the window, and let out a whoop [...]
Among the many promises Mayor Daley and the 2016 bid committee have made to try to win the Olympics is a pledge to host the most eco-friendly games in history by incorporating green construction, renewable fuels, and recycled products into their planning—essentially the same formula that the [...]
The recent outbreaks of youth violence in Chicago have made national headlines, and today President Obama announced that he was sending attorney general Eric Holder and education secretary Arne Duncan to Chicago to look into the epidemic of killings.
Meanwhile, the Chicago City Council’s police and fire [...]
The City Council’s housing committee was breezing through its agenda on Wednesday—authorizing lease agreements worth millions of dollars, approving the sale of vacant city-owned land—when it was suddenly slowed up by a couple of people who had the nerve to ask a few questions.
About two weeks ago an off-duty cop shot and killed a 17-year-old near 69th and King. As is often the case in police-involved shootings, the officer said the teen had a gun; witnesses and the youth's family said he was unarmed.
The opposition has mobilized so it can try to do to climate change legislation what's been done to health care reform—that is, get people distracted from the real debate by raising the specter of catastrophe, socialism, and other liberal ideas. But there are increasing signs that Congress will be [...]
Sheriff Tom Dart confirmed last week that he’s declining overtures from top Washington Democrats to run for the U.S. Senate and will instead seek re-election to his current post. He says has both personal and professional reasons. For starters, he’s got five young kids. Plus, he maintains [...]
In case you missed it at the end of the day Friday: a Cook County judge has decided that a lawsuit against the city and state over terms of the parking meter lease agreement can move forward.
[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]
[...]Essentially, the City Council's great Olympic compromise with Mayor Daley boils down to this: they give him permission to spend as much public money on the games as he wants—into the billions of dollars. And he promises to tell them how he spent the money after he spends [...]
Critics often deride the Chicago City Council as a mayoral rubber stamp. Aldermen want you to know the critics have it wrong.
"We are a team on the City Council," Eighth Ward alderman Michelle Harris said today. "There's nothing we can't do with each other."
That raises all sorts of possibilities,' [...]
Chicago's parking meter lease deal has turned out to be a national inspiration: elected officials, policy makers, and financial analysts across the country have conclude that the way Chicago cut its meter deal is a model for how not to do it.
Sheriff Tom Dart has been recruited by national Democratic leaders to run for the U.S. Senate next year. But a source in the know tells me he's going to pull a Lisa Madigan and run for re-election to his current gig.
Mayor Daley has been saying for years that he wants to make Chicago the greenest city in the country, but his environmental record is decidedly mixed.
After the mayor, no one has been as deeply involved in the administration's successes and as evasive about its shortfalls as Sadhu Johnston, [...]
Dan Hynes came out swinging against Pat Quinn yesterday, as Mick Dumke reported. Last night he discussed the race with Bruce Dold of the Trib and Laura Washington of the Sun-Times.
[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]
[...]I'm under no illusion that the 2016 Olympics—should we be so unlucky as to host them—will be anything but a waste of money, as the well-connected gorge themselves at the public's expense.
[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]
' [...]Suddenly lots of people are talking about how much local taxpayers are paying for city legal bills. But don't count on them getting smaller anytime soon.
[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]
' [...]Alderman Roberto Maldonado deserves some credit: he's taken the first step toward fulfilling his promise to withdraw his application for a controversial zoning change on property he owns in his ward, the 26th.
Now he'll have to figure out what to do with the empty lots—which have been periodically' [...]
Some of us have been thinking out loud that the Democratic field for Barack Obama's old spot in the U.S. Senate looks pretty weak, and that the party needs some other candidates—fast—if it's going to keep the seat after next year's elections.
Now it's looking like the first of [...]
This week Mayor Daley and his top lieutenants are holding a series of public hearings on the city's 2010 budget, which they've already said will be difficult to balance, even with an injection of funds from the parking meter deal.
As citizens put questions to the city's top leadership, maybe' [...]
Last night I was on the 147 north to my hood when an announcement came over the loudspeaker: "This is a clean hybrid bus purchased by the CTA using federal stimulus funds."
[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]
[...]The front page of today's Sun-Times proclaims that Mayor Daley is set to "take the blame" for the parking meter "fiasco" in a south-side speech tonight.
But when you actually read the story inside, which is based on a copy of the speech that was provided to the [...]
Exelon Corporation isn’t just hoping to get the federal government’s money and help for projects like the innovative solar power facility it wants to build on Chicago’s south side. It’s also been spending lots of money to lobby for them.
Months ago the Reader asked the city for agendas from the meetings held to determine the winning bidder for the parking meter lease. The city complied—but most of the documents had been blacked out. So we wrote about that.
Scott Waguespack, alderman of the 32nd Ward, was bothered [...]
I just talked to a friend I hadn't heard from in a while. He sounded chipper as usual, even when he almost casually mentioned that the cancer he’d fought off with surgery and chemo more than a year ago was back. He’s undergoing radiation treatment this time.
He mentioned' [...]
Scott Stantis isn’t actually replacing Jeff MacNelly (nine years after MacNelly died). He’ll be the sort of cartoonist for the Chicago Tribune that MacNelly never was, someone living in Chicago (MacNelly lived in Virginia) and commenting on state and local issues.
The parking meter privatization mess may not be settled yet.
The Independent Voters of Illinois-Independent Precinct Organization sued the city of Chicago this morning, charging that because of the meter deal taxpayer money is illegally being used to benefit a private company, Chicago Parking Meters LLC.
[ [...]
A couple of weeks ago local environmental groups announced their intent to sue the owners of six heavy-polluting coal-fired power plants in Illinois for polluting more than what they're allowed under federal law. If, as they hope, they can pressure the federal government to take action, they may' [...]
It just keeps going.
The parking meter privatization agreement was consummated months ago—and the "rainy day fund" it created will already be empty by next year—but city officials still haven't produced uncensored documents showing just what happened when bids for the deal were opened last fall, even though' [...]
Tonight at 7:30 at the Elmhurst Public Library, historian Richard C. Lindberg discusses The Gambler King of Clark Street: Michael C. McDonald and the Rise of Chicago's Democratic Machine. As Mick Dumke points out, it's a compelling new interpretation of the prehistory of the machine:
"Most people attribute" [...]
No sooner had I promised to keep the TIF mumbo jumbo out of my earlier explanation of Mayor Daley's goofy Olympic Village financing scheme then the e-mails and calls came in: Please, Ben, give us the mumbo jumbo!
[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]
[...]Sandi Jackson is just halfway through her first term as alderman of the Seventh Ward, but she's looked restless in the City Council from about her second week on the job. Now it sounds like she's contemplating a run for Illinois lieutenant governor.
An e-mail from Dan Hynes's campaign committee just arrived in my inbox. He's confirming what everybody's been hearing for a while: he's going to challenge Pat Quinn for the Democratic nomination for governor.
[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]
[...]When Mayor Daley first told us about his plan to put an Olympic Village at the Michael Reese Hospital site, he promised that it wouldn't cost the public any money. I suppose we should consider it a step toward truth-telling that he's now saying the reason it's not' [...]
Most of us would agree that it's great news—that it's about-freaking-time news—when the city announces it's forged a deal to bring a supermarket to a longtime food desert in Roseland. Many of us might also wonder if it should have taken less than ten years and cost' [...]
High-priced golfing has arrived in Benton Harbor, Michigan. Now we'll see if rising fortunes follow.
[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]
' [...]Several of the country's biggest banks have provoked another round of outrage by paying top executives millions in bonuses even as they're getting federal aid to keep their doors open.
In Chicago things don't seem so dramatic and dire. Companies receiving taxpayer handouts here are favorites of the' [...]
I've got another idea for how to take care of the city's budget deficit, and it doesn't involve touching anything as sacred as TIF slush funds.
[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]
' [...]The “green” economy really is growing, even if it often appears to be happening a few dozen, federally funded jobs at a time.
U.S. EPA chief Lisa Jackson swung through town today to announce that the feds are sending about half a million dollars here to train people for [...]
With today’s blessing from the City Council, the city and Exelon are moving ahead with plans to create the largest urban solar power plant in the country on the polluted site of a former factory. If successful, the project is likely to serve as a model for how [...]
I just finished reading Chicago magazine's ode to Ron Huberman. The gist of the story is that he's a miracle worker sent in by Mayor Daley to rescue the public schools. Lucky us.
[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]
[...]Frustrated by inaction at every level of government, several environmental watchdog organizations announced plans today to sue the owner of Chicago’s two coal-fired power plants for alleged violations of the federal Clean Air Act.
[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]
[...]Here's a couple of things you need to know about Valerie Jarrett, based on Robert Draper's glowing profile in Sunday's New York Times Magazine.
[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]
' [...]Wal-Mart and its chief City Council booster, 21st Ward alderman Howard Brookins Jr., are reviving their six-year campaign to open a store on a south-side property that was once home to a Ryerson Steel plant.
This time it looks like they’re going to get their store, and [...]
My friend Karina is from New Jersey, and like most others I’ve known from that fair state she tends to be prepared for a fight about its relative worth at just about any time.
[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]
[...]In my ongoing effort to be fair and open-minded, I'm now going to try to make the case for continuing to give Mayor Daley unlimited control of everything in Chicago.
[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]
' [...]You gotta love Fourth Ward alderman Toni Preckwinkle.
True, I think she's wasting her intellect and integrity on supporting Chicago's Olympic bid, thus giving Mayor Daley perhaps his only shred of credibility on the subject.
But she really is one of Chicago's great political characters.
The City Council’s energy and environment committee approved legislation Tuesday designed to make Chicago’s air cleaner and safer through stricter regulation of asbestos, diesel emissions from vehicles, and certain industrial polluters. City officials said the legislation was a key step in making the city greener. But it was [...]
Interesting development in the coverage of Chicago's Olympics campaign in today's Tribune: the no-games crowd got about as much space as the pro-games crowd.
The Trib's account of last night's Olympics forum in Lakeview quoted Tom Tresser, one of the founders of No Games Chicago, on an equal [...]
CTA chief Richard Rodriguez is laying down the law: employees are no longer going to get to drive around in cars paid for by taxpayers unless—get this—it’s for agency business.
I'm wondering if anyone else will follow his lead.
Here's how far the city's reputation has declined . . .
At some of the recent public hearings the 2016 Olympic committee has been holding to promote their bid for the games, folks have been asking, "How can we trust your promise to come in" [...]
Fortunately, the name change won't affect the skyscraper's architecture. But it will blur the skyscraper's identity—and Chicago's identity, too.
Oh, please. Something about this reminds me of people who name their cars. It's sort of cute but it's also sort of creepy.
Steppenwolf Theatre Company has announced that the original Chicago cast of Superior Donuts will reprise their roles in the play's New York production this fall. Directed by Tina Landau, the show will star Michael McKean and feature Steppenwolf members Jon Michael Hill, Yasen Peyankov, and James Vincent Meredith, [...]
Northwestern University's Dearborn Observatory telescope is open for public observing every Friday from 9 to 11 PM, rain or shine. Containing what was once the largest lens of its kind, the refracting telescope is tucked away near the center of the Evanston campus.
[ [...]
The University of Illinois at Chicago hosts its third annual garden walk, this year with the theme "healthy living in the city," Friday from 11 AM to 4 PM at its Dorothy Bradley Atkins Medicinal Plant Garden (Polk and Wood). There'll be guided tours of' [...]
The owners—or, it seems, former owners— of Jake probably aren't very happy about today's rather juicy story in the New York Times. First off, it starts with the obligatory Times flyover dis, calling them "beefy Midwesterners."
Second, it's about how several designers charge that they haven't been [...]
As noted in Lynn Becker's cover piece this week, the Great Books Foundation has published a centennial edition of Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett's Plan of Chicago. The paperback version ($39.95) is a 9"x12" thing of beauty, with lots of full-color illustrations and reproductions [...]
According to City Pulse, an alternative newspaper in Lansing, Michigan, two veterans of Lansing's BoarsHead Theater have canceled plans to perform there next season in protest against BoarsHead's firing of artistic director Kristine Thatcher. Actors John Peakes and Carmen Decker had been expected to appear in Beau [...]
An Escada sample sale, deep discounts at Robin Richman, free shipping at Net-a-Porter, and more:
[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]
[...]
Andrew Freund's documentary Workers' Republic, about last year's successful occupation by laid-off workers at Republic Windows and Doors to retain their benefits, screens Friday at Casa Michoacan.
Freund, who produces the CAN TV series Labor Beat will speak after the screening, along with Reader' [...]
A guided tour of Kendall College's Culinary Curiosity Exhibition, a tasting of Neal's Yard cheeses, a tour of Indiana farms, and more.
[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]
[...]
Comprised of homegrown garage diva Alex White and her younger brother, Francis, White Mystery plays a free show tonight at 10 PM at Cobra Lounge (235 N. Ashland), a Critic's Choice for this week. Reader critic Brian Costello calls White's newest project a [...]
[Kind of a repost. Getting worked like a speedbag today.]
"Make no little plans" - Daniel Burnham. Or not.
It's a pernicious little quote because there's nothing qualitative about it - it demands that plans only be not little (I'm unaware of Burnham's official position on medium-sized plans). But Burnham' [...]
During the 2008 Wimbledon final, I decided I was watching sport at its ultimate. Nadal was playing Federer, and the match was a supreme test of their speed, strength, agility, endurance, intelligence, and will.
This year's Australian Open final between the same two players reinforced that belief. The [...]
Tonight at Quimby's, Gigposters.com founder Clay Hays will sign his new book, Gig Posters Volume 1: Rock Show Art of the 21st Century; he'll be joined by Diana Sudyka, proprietor of The Tiny Aviary, a great gig poster artist in her own right, and wife [...]
Saxophonist Jon Irabagon, who grew up in Morton Grove and later Gurnee and studied music at DePaul University, has steadily made a name for himself since relocating to New York in 2001 to pursue further studies at the Manhattan School of Music. For the [...]
Moroccan singer Najat Aatabou plays a free show tonight at 6:30 PM in Millennium Park's Pritzker Pavilion. According to Reader critic Peter Margasak, Aatabou has "a husky, authoritative voice and navigates the tricky polyrhythms of the Maghreb as easily as a native might wend her way'" [...]
Pitchfork just released 300 more individual passes for each day of the Pitchfork Music Festival. If you missed out on the first round of tickets for the weekend's festivities (Flaming Lips, the Jesus Lizard, Grizzly Bear, Fucked Up, and so on), I'd jump at the chance' [...]
In addition to this week's featured takes on Nightwood, Browntrout, and Fianco in Food & Drink, there are five more new reviews in the listings. I picked over the large and half-baked menu at Dudley Nieto's tapas joint, Eivissa, Kin Sushi & Thai Cuisine got Anne Spiselman's' [...]
Think the performing arts pickings get slim during the summer? It's not necessarily so. In addition to Justin Hayford's in-depth look at offerings from National Pastime Theater's Naked July festival and Laura Molzahn's Critic's Choice on the latest from Luna Negra Dance Theater, we've got capsule reviews' [...]
