I’ve been thinking about “public” and working to define, defend, and expand it for the past 12 years. Here is the first of a new series of webisodes I’m calling the “Great Public Report” as a way to talk about and stimulate dialog around the concept of “public.” Please watch it at our YouTube Channel and subscribe. Follow me at @tomstee and post using #MorePublic. If we don’t protect the Public, it will be taken from us.
I gave these short remarks at the April 2019 NewFounders Conference in Chicago. If you agree, please follow me @tomstee!
Check out the multiple perspectives on economic development for Chicago in the April 6, 2020 issue of Crain’s Chicago Business. I call for the abolition of TIFs and a new approach to grassroots economic development. The CEO of Sterling Bay has a different idea!
“The key to spreading prosperity, justice and opportunity across Chicago requires turning the page on old neoliberal market-based and clout-driven economic development programs. This was true long before coronavirus fallout clouded the financial picture for not just the city but the nation.
The first program that needs to bite the planning dust is tax-increment financing districts, which the rich and powerful have used to siphon billions of dollars of property tax revenues from important public needs, such as schools, parks and libraries.” Read the entire op-ed from the April 6, 2020 issue of Crain’s. If you agree with us that TIFs need to be ABOLISHED, join the campaign here.
The utter failure of the Trump Administration to deal with the global pandemic is a stark reminder of why we need a strong, competent, nimble, and service-oriented PUBLIC sector – ready to act powerfully for the public good. Take a look at Douglas Amy’s book “Government is Good – An Unapologetic Defense of a Vital Institution.” If you want a great response to these times, then check out the movement for a Green New Deal and help make it happen!
I’m proud to be a member of the inaugural National Advisory Board for the Public Banking Institute.
They are the premiere organization in America explaining, organizing, and making public banking happen.
Read the strongly worded editorial from the November 1, 2019 edition of Gazette Chicago.
“The TIF fund has a $1.5 billion (yes $1.5 with a “B”) balance. That’s way more than being just a “mayor’s slush fund,” and the CivicLab has launched the TIF Elimination Project to redistribute the $1.5 billion to schools, parks, libraries, and essential City services.
We join with them. We are fed up with developers lining up at the TIF trough to help with their glass and concrete towers. We are also tired of aldermen (several of them currently or formerly from this community) whining about how much we need TIFs to jump-start developments city-wide. The majority of the dollars funnel into the Loop and downtown district and other affluent communities such as West Loop and Fulton Market. Meanwhile, under-served and under-developed communities get crumbs, and the tax dollars that should have stayed locally in schools, libraries, and parks get directed elsewhere.
It’s ironic that TIFs were created by Mayor Harold Washington, because he did it to help blighted neighborhoods. Instead, Mayors Richard M. Daley and Rahm Emanuel turned the program into Robin Hood for the rich, robbing the money from poorer areas of the city to give it to rich developers. The CivicLab called the TIF program racist, but it is more than that. It is classist. The corporatists do not care if the money is taken from black, brown, or white people, just so long as it is taken away from the less well-to-do to be provided to the rich.
TIFs are sucking the lifeblood out of our communities, and this charade needs to end, now. The mayor has proposed closing out five TIFs, but we do not think that goes far enough.”
Read the front page story covering our announcement of the campaign, which was done at the University of Illinois’ “Future of Chicago” lecture presented by Professor Dick Simpson and the Political Science Department.
The CivicLab, through our TIF Illumination Project, has been investigating Tax Increment Financing districts here since 2013. After 143 public meetings and interacting with over 8,000 people all over the city, we declare that the TIF program is a racist slush fund and must be abolished.
Read our arguments and sign the online petition at www.endtifsnow.org.
Visit our online Action Center to become part of the TIF Elimination Project!
“Chicagoland’s civic health is on life support.”
That was the grim assessment from the 2010 report “Chicago Civic Health Index.” The report was prepared by the McCormick Foundation and the Citizen’s Advocacy Center. “The 2010 Chicago Civic Health Index demonstrates the failure of the region to prepare its youngest citizens for their adult civic responsibilities, along with the effects of endemic political corruption and the widespread cynicism and disengagement it spawns.” Ouch.
Fast forward to 2019. How are we doing?
Not so well.
What an amazing night.
Merle and I were in the Hilton Hotel overflow ballroom to witness and be part of history. The huge numbers for Lori Lightfoot went up a little after 7:00pm and soon the race was over. Lightfoot would carry all 50 wards!
It’s no exaggeration to say that I’ve been working to defeat and dismantle the Chicago Machine since 1990 when I did volunteer work for my professor from Roosevelt University, Hank Rubin who ran for Alderman in the 1991 municipal elections.
I saw the Machine field workers all over the ward to protect incumbent Bernie Stone. But the amount of Machine feet on the street for Alderman Stone was eclipsed by what I saw when I helped Professor Dick Simpson run for Congress in 1992. He challenged the most powerful Democrat in Chicago (right next to then Mayor Richard M. Daley), Dan Rostenkowski, the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.
I recall covering three precincts on primary day and seeing men at every polling place handing out literature, walking people into the polling places, ferrying signs and supplies back and forth and being present inside keeping track of the votes. I approached two large men, one who I recall had a well tailored coat and a large pinky ring and said “Hey, are you guys volunteering for Rosty?” “Nah, kid, I work for Streets and San” said the taller guy and the second guy said that he worked for the Forest Preserve.
They were actually doing their paid work right there. They were soldiers of the fabled Chicago Machine doing what they’ve been doing for sixty years. Working on the public dime to maintain and extend the power of chosen and connected elected officials.
Despite being outspent eight to one, Dick pulled 42% of the vote. Dick challenged Rostenkowski again in 1994 and again lost. A few weeks after the primary the Congressman embroiled in a scandal involving embezzling public funds which landed him an 18 month prison sentence in 1996.
This led to a Republication representing the 5th District for two years and then, in 1996 then Illinois State Representative Rod Blagojevich was elected to that seat. Blago is the son-in-law of powerful Machine leader Richard Mell who essentially put his handsome son-in-law in public office. Blago ran for and became Illinois’s governor in 2002, leaving his Congressional seat open.
in 2002, with the help of Daley’s patronage army, Rahm Emanuel was elected to that seat in Congress. From the Chicago Tribune (6/1/06): “By dangling the promise of public jobs and promotions, a high-ranking city official recruited a “white ethnic” patronage army of almost 300 campaign workers controlled by Mayor Richard Daley’s office, according to testimony Wednesday in the City Hall corruption trial. Daniel Katalinic, a former top official in the city’s Streets and Sanitation Department, described how his political group of city employees crisscrossed the Chicago area for the mayor, U.S. Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) and pro-Daley candidates in suburban state legislative races. Testifying against former Daley aide Robert Sorich, Katalinic said he got election-season orders from Sorich and Greg Goldner, who managed the mayor’s 2003 re-election campaign and also worked to send Emanuel to Congress.” Sorich was convicted of corruption in 2006 and was sentenced to 46 months in prison.
So, let’s review. Machine workers – people on the public payroll – helped keep Congressman Rostenkowski in office. If it had been a fair fight – would Prof. Dick Simpson have been elected to Congress in 1992? And if so – would he have been re-elected mutliple times after serving with distinction. And if so – then two OTHER politicians, Blago and Rahm, would NOT have been elected to that same Congressional seat. They would’ve had a different path to power.
My next brush with the Machine was in being part of the city-wide coalition to stop casino gambling from coming to Chicago in 1994. I was part of a coalition led by Douglas Dobmeyer and Rev. Tom Grey, I started a small effort “42nd Ward Citizens for Chicago’s Future” and organized along the Gold Coast to build opposition to the proposed casino. The efforts worked and the casino was never built.
In 1997 I was a consultant for the Chicago Park District leading the transformation of Douglas Park into a community cultural center. I led some 70 meetings in and out of the park and connected the park to a wide range of cultural partners and curated many new partnerships with local artists and performers.
A full time job doing cultural development and planning opened up inside the Chicago park District. Before applying I had lunch with the director of cultural and arts planning for the district, Helen Doria. She told me that leadership loved my work but “Don’t bother applying for this position,” she said, “You’re a known Daley-basher.”
“What?” I said “Known by who?” She assured me there was a “no-hire” list at City Hall and that my name was on it. This list has never surfaced – unlike the 59 page “blessed” list of 5,743 names that was at the center of the corruption scandal that took down Robert Sorich. You can download your own copy below!
The list never surfaced but I know I’ve suffered because of it. I suppose I did not advance my case with Mayor Daley and his allies as I co-led two very public civic projects that further attacked and embarrassed Machine backed projects. These were the efforts to stop the privatization of Lincoln Park through the establishment of Protect Our Parks in 2008 and the No Games Chicago campaign to derail the bid for the 2016 Olympics in 2009.
In 2010 I was the Green Party candidate for Cook County Board President and I ran against Roger Keats, the Republican nominee and Toni Preckwinkle, the Democratic nominee.
At the meeting of the Tribune Editorial Board in September of 2010 I sat with Mr. Keats and then Alderman Preckwinkle. I produced a copy of the recent issue of Chicago Magazine featuring a scathing investigation of Cook County Democratic Party Chair Joe Berrios who was then a commissioner of the county’s Board of Review and was seeking the Democratic Nomination to be Cook County Assessor.
I reminded the editors of Alderman Preckwinkle’s role in placing Todd Stroger as the outgoing Cook County Board President in 2006. The elderly John Stroger, the outgoing President of the County Board had disappeared from public view right before the primary then won the primary then resigned from his position and from the ticket. The Democratic Committeemen voted to replace the older Stroger with his son. Preckwinkle was a powerful and influential Committeeman. They passed on the opportunity to replace Stroger with the man he had just defeated in the primary, Forrest Claypool. I chastised Preckwinkle for her role in that scam. Todd Storger’s time in office was a litany of scandal and incompetence. She indignantly replied that she just DEFEATED Todd in the primary. “Sure, Todd was so toxic he lost the backing of the Machine and was not slated.”
With all that in mind I challenged Preckwinkle to renounce her support for Joe Berrios – who she was supporting in his campaign fro Assessor – and, instead, to support the challenger, none other that Forrest Claypool!
She said she could not support Claypool and then launched into a speech proclaiming Berrios “a reformer because he championed Latinas in elective office.” “Which Latina do you mean, Alderman?” I asked, ” Do you mean his daughter,State Representative Toni Berrios?” Preckwinkle replied “He is the leader of my party and I am a party loyalist.”
“I rest my case,” I told the Tribune editors. “That’s the definition of the Machine. Party over the people. Alderman Preckwinkle is the new face of the Democratic Machine.
In their editorial endorsing Preckwinkle for the job published on October 2, 2009 the editors said they were “tempted” to endorse me. But, they resisted temptation.
President Preckwinkle maintained her loyalty to Assessor Berrios over the years even after more scandals, investigations and a damning report showing his assessment system was racist and punished the people who lived in poorer communities and communities of color.
All this history replayed in my head as I listened to Lori Lightfoot’s victory speech. During her campaign she pledged to kill the Machine and end Chicago’s reign as America’s most corrupt city. She repeated that pledge Tuesday night.
Oh, it’s SO time to kill the Democratic Machine and its web of corruption, injustice, inequity, racism and disinvestment in our communities.
