Let Anna Valencia Go To Bed!

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The first time I was aware of Chicago City Clerk Anna Valencia and the City Clerk’s Office, the city department responsible for recordkeeping, it was because she had gotten something done. This was shocking to me, at least in the context of City government.

In 2018, the Fines, Fees, and Access Committee was established, a project of the City Clerk’s Office right after City Clerk Anna Valencia was appointed. it was created to address the disproportionately heavy effects of ticketing on low-income and black communities, based on reporting that year from ProPublica Illinois and WBEZ.

As someone who had organized in Chicago for five years and had yet to see a coalition pass anything, let alone something good, I was shocked and amazed. Though “creating a committee“ is not exactly at the top of the list when it comes to Action, it was a pretty big step on this topic, particularly when looking at all of the different departments and community groups who had agreed to show up.

I got obsessed with this committee, as I do, particularly because it was an example of organizing communications (parent organizing group COFI working with ProPublica) to actually make something happen. Wild!

I bothered lots of advocates and organizers about how the committee came about — how did this project even start, let alone get the tacit endorsement of high school senior year Mayor term Rahm?

Almost all of the people I talked to, organizers and city officials, said the same thing: “I don’t know, man. I think it’s just Anna Valencia.”

Rahm agreed: at that time, his spokesman Adam Collins commended Valencia for “taking a thoughtful, inclusive approach to address a really challenging issue.”

Okay, sure!

Obviously “a direct line to Rahm Emanuel“ and “get it done energy” is not indicative of a political hero. But the fact that Valencia could summon enough political will to get anything done, particularly right as Lightfoot began her 4 years of gridlock, was striking to me. I’ve had a weird parasocial relationship with her ever since.

These last few months have been all about Chicago’s City Budget Hearings — they are a laugh-a-minute assuming what makes you laugh is “logistical horror.”

During Chicago’s budget season, each department presents its priorities and goals for Aldermanic review, then — wait, I’m terrible at explaining this part, you should read City Bureau’s comprehensive blog post here.

At any rate: the budget hearings have been getting weird, guys.

Of course, Chicago’s City Government in general has been getting weird. There have been more City Council meetings in the last month than there were even during the City’s Council Wars, a period in the 80s where Alders including recently retired Ed Burke (on trial this week for assorted corruption charges — thanks Ed!) took every chance they could to procedurally challenge and undermine organizing Mayor Harold Washington.

Even with the ludicrous amount of drama in City Council lately that I haven’t been able to ignore, I’ve tried to focus on ordinances with real impact and active grassroots organizing groups behind them rather than procedural chaos.

But after watching City Clerk Anna Valencia during her office’s budget hearing, it occurred to me that there’s something else happening, something important to understand with what’s going wrong in Chicago’s government as Alder Lopez runs around banging on tables.

And as harrowing as everything is right now, fixing what’s happening in the Clerk’s office could help fix everything else — or at least provide some guidance for where the Left could change things.

What Does The City Clerk Even Do?

The City Clerk is in charge of record-keeping for Chicago, which means tracking elections, permits, licenses, and laws.

The office is responsible for maintaining and preserving records of City Council meetings, ordinances, resolutions, and other official documents, including livestreams and posting ordinances.

When the Chicago City Council is in session, the City Clerk also serves as council secretary, which means coordinating with aldermen, providing access to legislation and ordinances, and keeping everyone on take in terms of Robert’s Rules. Ugh! Every time I read the description of the City Clerk’s job I get depressed. Anyway — Valencia, who has held this role since 2017, was appointed by Rahm and continues in the role to this day.

Under Valencia, the City Clerk has also taken on:

+ Chicago’s CityKey Program, which combines access to government, city, and private sector services in one card. The CityKey program, run since 2018, was implemented in Valencia’s first term, allowing over 80,000 Chicagoans to use one card as a CTA pass, library card, prescription discount card, and form of identification. 

+ Mobile City Hall, which connects residents to city services across Chicago’s 77 neighborhoods;

+ The aforementioned Fines, Fees, and Access Collaborative that brought City Departments, community advocates, academic institutions, elected officials, and residents to develop recommendations to address the city’s fines and fees practices;

That’s a lot of stuff, Anna Valencia!

Who is Anna Valencia and Why is She So Tired?

As a person consistently mystified by the bureaucratic weirdness of Chicago’s city government, Anna Valencia’s public vehemence about transparency and structural reform, from 2017 to now, has always spoken to me.

Chicago has one of the largest city governments in the country, with more departments than almost any other municipality.

What happens in those departments? Well, it’s hard to say. Transparency has never really been a Chicago city government priority, and we’ve seen this at play during the budget hearings, as Alders grow frustrated with departments

Not all of this lack of transparency is related to corruption. Some of it is inertia and structural challenges, or the lack of funding or infrastructure or political will to make even minor changes.

For example — I spoke to 3 different Alder Offices back in April, for example, all scrambling to find CRMs that would work for them because there’s very little guidance on what you need to run an Aldermanic Office from the city. A CRM doesn’t seem like a big deal until it quickly becomes one when hundreds of people are calling you about everything from tree trimming to active shooter events. It’s not just corruption causing municipal logistical horror.

So though it might feel very baseline to be like “Wow, the City Clerk’s office has a good website” (that’s the job) — well, sometimes the baseline isn’t there in Chicago government.

So as an easily confused member of the public with deep sympathy for anyone charged with making their coworkers use a new piece of technology, I’ve always cheered on City Clerk Valencia’s commitment to bringing City Council into the digital age.

Valencia is also one of the only people I’ve seen in City Hall wearing suits of any color besides, like, charcoal or beige — and she remains unflappable when Alders are incapable of hitting the right button to vote 8 times in a row. I don’t know — none of these are particularly compelling arguments, but Chicago City Council meetings are long and arcane. It’s easy to get confused, bored, and eventually sad without some kind of guiding force.

So, all of these unimportant but charming facts, plus her Cheerful Get It Done Energy means that I regularly use “does Anna Valencia look slightly annoyed right now?” to decode the veracity of procedural issues in City Council. Her facial expressions have been a guiding light through countless municipal meetings I barely understand.

And Valencia has only ever looked slightly annoyed in the face of any major logistical issue, a testimony to her professionalism — until very recently.

What’s Going On in the City Clerk’s Office? Is Everyone Okay?

No! Everyone in the City Clerk’s Office is NOT okay.

Instead, as Valencia said in her budget hearing: "My team is burnt out and exhausted."

That’s very relatable, Anna Valencia!

City officials have issued 150% more municipal ID cards so far in 2023 than in all of 2021 according to data obtained from the city clerk’s office by Datamade’s Forest Gregg (thanks Forest!). Though the Clerk’s office attributes this sudden capacity issue as partially because of the arrival of thousands of migrants in the city, the problem is way more about city resources proportionate to demand beyond this issue.

Why Is Being a City Clerk So Sleep Deprivation Inducing Right Now?

There have been signs something is amiss with the City Clerk’s office for a while — a few weeks ago a vote to raise the minimum wage was delayed by what Clerk Valencia called “an administrative and human issue” — though, with her typical get it done quick energy, she emphasized the creation of new procedures “to ensure this doesn’t happen in the future.” It’s not just the City Council part —

“CityKey is just unmanageable right now," Valencia said at the budget hearing last week (as reported by Carrie Shepherd at Axios).

Unmanageable is a very abstract word, and though I’ve read many reports that say the City Clerk’s office is overwhelmed, few have said exactly what this entails. Many things are unmanageable at this particular stage of late capitalism, no? What makes this particular moment so overwhelming for this office?

Is it really that bad in the City Clerk’s Office?

Well, what Anna Valencia considers unmanageable for the City Clerk’s office is concerning.

As one anonymous source who attended the Clerk’s budget hearing reported:

At the last Mobile City Hall there were over 1000 people — it was too many people for crowd control and there were physical fights.

Oh, also, they have run out of the literal physical material they use to make City Keys.

Other than that though I guess it’s okay? Lol though. it’s not

And the delay on the minimum wage ordinance? Well, this was caused by the many issues with staffing, logistics, and technology in the Clerk’s office that means sometimes staff stays up until 4 in the morning to get ordinances out.

The different software used to run much of the voting, livestreaming, and other basic functions, are new and under question, as a letter from Alder La Spata recounted recently.

What? Let Anna Valencia go to bed!

Why Does It Matter If Anna Valencia is Tired?

To be clear, it looks like the proposed 2024 City Clerk’s budget is moving forward without issue.

But the structural issues happening in the Clerk’s Office right now, with City Council drama happening on the daily, is a good indicator of how things are falling apart faster than ever in this age of austerity.

Nick Zettel, policy director for 1st Ward Alder Daniel La Spata, had a good breakdown on why this is a particularly weird moment for city governments around the country — as he puts it:

“Hypergentrification, growth coalition development, good government reform, neoliberalism, and devolution are all capitalist forms of governance completely devouring one another. Where do we go from here?”

Nick didn’t answer his question, which is fair, because it’s insane.

No one knows the answer to this question.

Okay, Where’s the Hopeful Part, H?

This is the dilemma in Chicago right now — in theory, we have a Movement Mayor (tm) who can Take the Lead Boldly on Building a City on The Left. 

But in practice, all of our Bold Leftist Mayor’s moves are subject to:

— The established power dynamics in the city,

— The sheer volume of need > resources,

— The decades of corruption and inertia.

These issues mean that city services in Chicago are facing existential-level threats They are structural and getting worse every day.

And in the 2024 budget, even with its transformative components and major wins, Chicago is still reliant and attached to the decades of austerity classic tactics, or what Claudia Morell called what happens when “Municipal governments outsource services to “delegate agencies” and fund departments with unreliable federal funding.”

This is the impact of the years and years of “targeted austerity” caused by racial capitalism.

Addressing these existential-level questions requires taking existential action — it means approaching every facet of the Mayor’s office in a different way from how it was handled by its predecessors.

This is hard, and there’s not a lot of political will or excitement about these things, except when it’s hideously, egregiously bad.

As one person asked on X — “Is any other city doing this better?”

No! The closest example I can think of is the current Mayor of Jackson, who similarly had his radical agenda thwarted by a cataclysmic water crisis. Cool! Great!

But Chicago can do better, and we have to.

With everything so weird that austerity is showing up in procedural administrative offices like Anna Valencia’s, something needs to change — and moving forward from the existential threats facing city government (in Chicago and every other gutted city) requires engaging with the confusing and tedious City Clerk issues of the city.

That’s It!

+ The horrors continue! How’s your terror scrolling going? What are local organizers doing in your area? All I got on this in terms of non-horror— thinking about the people disrupting trade, blocking ports, and hitting key political targets in a way that is strategic and effective, including people that blocked the street outside Jan Schakowsky’s Evanston home.

+ Okay, for all that I just went on about how bad it is in Chicago City Council, the city just passed the most comprehensive Paid Time Off policy in the freaking country, one of many historic ordinances that has passed over the last few weeks. More about good things soon!

+ As always, if you’re looking for a real facts-based rundown of the City Budget you can check out City Bureau’s coverage or BGA’s breakdown here.

+ I’m hosting City Bureau’s annual Budget Bingo tomorrow during the final city budget approval — check it out! (You might win a t-shirt!)

Which song from 1989 (Taylor’s Version) would you recommend City Clerk Anna Valencia listen to after the budget vote?

Note: Lately I’m finding that every time I write about a public figure at least one person sends me a horrible story about said public figure’s personal or political behavior. I have no illusions about the reality of any public figure’s vibe, no matter how niche, but if you insist on telling me a horrible story about Anna Valencia please at least answer the above question re: Taylor Swift’s 1989 before doing so.

(If you’re curious, while writing this I listened to Blank Space, which sounds identical to the original Blank Space in every way.)

Thank you for your grace in these times of darkness.