Chicago News Roundup: Finance, How Does It Work?

“Does Chicago need another politics newsletter?” Let’s find out.

Hello,

It’s Thursday, 7/17. It’s not nearly as hot as it was last week, but it’s still buggy + wildfire-y enough for potential mass crop failure this year, so hold on to your existential despair, it’s still warranted :)

Ugh sorry ignore me! Go outside! Live in the moment!

Today in Movement History: Everyone got in a fight at Seneca Falls about women’s suffrage not being a “winnable” campaign.

This week I live-tweeted the Chicago Finance Committee meeting — this could also be called the “Pat Dowell Wrangles Everyone Into Sitting Still Long Enough to Understand What Bonds Are” Variety Hour.

That’s a terrible name for a committee meeting, but you get the idea.

Explainer: This Week’s Finance Committee

What is the Finance Committee, anyway?

The Finance Committee is, shockingly, responsible for the City’s Finance. This means revenue collection (how the city makes money) as well as Chicago's overall financial standing — in essence, monitoring the City’s credit score.

This as you can imagine, is a fairly wide purview, and meetings cover:

+ The allocation of funds for private projects, particularly development/housing.

+ The approval of settlements for those suing the city.

+ Things like permits for charitable soliciting (like the Salvation Army Christmas soliciting)

One piece I want to highlight is that the Finance Committee approves the provision of public city money to private developers — for example, TIF funding, and other buckets of money the city can draw on.

Did anything interesting happen?

Yes! I won’t talk too much about Congress Theater, the Joliet water deal or the lead pipe drama today, but check out the Daily Line’s writeup.

Did any Alders go full Watchdog Grandstanding Mode?

Boy, did they! Alders Reilly, Conway, Lopez, Vasquez, Spasato, and Taylor all had lots of penetrating questions for those presenting this week. These questions were primarily for those in the Department of Planning and Development, which makes sense — that’s the department that allows the city to give big public money to private developers. It seems kind of bogus that the city funds private development, right? Well, lol, that’s capitalism! City money is often used to incentivize certain standards, projects.

Some of the Watchdog Questions from Alders were very good ones: Vasquez (40th), at one point, admonished an official from the Water Department, saying that city departments need to communicate more about their budget and “where the money is going.”

Other questions were less on point, even if I’m on board with the “muckracking auditor” energy, I guess.

Alder Reilly repeatedly demanded a marketing plan for a specific type of green energy incentive program for contractors called PACE.

Alder Reilly: Why have only 3 projects taken advantage of this fund? What is your marketing plan?

DPD Official: Uh, because… this program tends to work better when… people are building things…. in a non-recession.

Then there was Alder Lopez, who was frustrated to see Chicago try to give unspent money for developments to IDHA (the Housing Department equivalent for the state) so the money didn’t disappear if it wasn’t used by the end of the fiscal term. This city official was far less phased by Alder Lopez — I don’t remember her exact words but I do remember she was pretty deadpan.

Alder Lopez: Why the City would give this money away? Why aren’t we spending it?

Department of Housing: (No change in expression) “because they have more money.”

Overall it’s exciting to see Alders grilling departments about how and where they are spend money.

Did anything happen that H is really interested in that no one else seems to care about?

Yes! Shocking, I know. In the June Finance Committee meeting, a number of speakers from Unite Here Local 1 (Chicago’s local hospitality union) spoke against providing city funds to a hotel project at 2222 S Michigan. This project, planned for Finance Chair Pat Dowell’s Bronzeville Ward, will be the first project of this size run by a Black developer in Chicago (who is also a former Bears player). After the public comment period in June, Dowell dismissed voting on the project and (presumably) met with Unite Here and the developer to get their demands figured out.

And so! At this meeting, UNITE HERE members used public comment to express their approval of the project and the greater number of good jobs + standards provided by the developer.

Organizing works! Attaching riders to projects Pat Dowell is very invested in works! Same thing!

Was anything horrifying?

The lawsuits, always the lawsuits. This is the part of the meeting where the City’s Law Department makes recommendations for settlements with those who have sued the city for the Finance' Commitee’s approval. These are always pretty horrifying because the settlements tend to be related to police misconduct, which — as I said last week — is an abstract phrase that describes abuse, torture, and wrongful imprisonment. As Chicago Bars pointed out on Twitter, often the total payout ends up more for legal fees than any amount that plaintiffs end up with.

This is unrelated, but it seems worth mentioning that Yvette Shields passed away this week. I never met her but I would say she was one of the best journalists when it came to decoding Chicago’s unhinged munipical finance system, and it’s a loss.

What happens now?

All of these ordinances (the ones that passed) went to City Council (on Wednesday), which probably means I should have written and sent this email out on Tuesday instead of today, whoops! Live and learn.

Those passed include a lawsuit against the City for STOP AND FRISK — which Fox called a “traffic related” lawsuit. Incredible. Awesome. Thanks.

Sorry, my brain was too broken this week.

You can read the full thread about the Finance committee here.

Stuff I Read That I Liked This Week:

Self-Explanatory.

+ The NLRB ruled that Howard Brown conducted bad faith bargaining in its negotiations with the Howard Brown Union.

+ After years of organizing, Illinois is the first state to ban cash bail.

What to Do This Week:

Events, actions, and paid opportunities. Send me yours so I can include it.

+ Haymarket Books is giving free copies of “Let This Radicalize You” by Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes, to groups interested in holding a book club for their members as part of their Rise Up and Read program, a project to encourage movement reading across Chicago.

+ Mayor Johnson is hosting city budget roundtables across the city.

+ The city is renting out its bouncy castle for free. I repeat: the city is renting out bouncy castles for free.

Afterthought:

This has been a weird summer, but come September I’m going to have a bit more room to explore contracts with those looking refine their membership program (from newsletter writers to organizers to fitness coaches). I’m excited about this, but not totally sure what it will look like quite yet — though I know finding a way to make a product that’s *actually useful* is really important to me. If this sounds like you or your group, get in touch — I’m always down to troubleshoot 1:1.