Book organizer & editor, Tom Tresser
Here is the introduction to the book.
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The mayor says Chicago is broke.
The newspapers say we are broke.
Think tanks and policy shops say we are broke.
Can we believe them?
What would be the difference to the lives of Chicagoans and the future of the city if we are not broke?
If Chicago is NOT broke then we move from a narrative of scarcity and “can’t have” to one of self-sufficiency and possibility.
The difference for Chicago would be profound. The city could again stand for fairness, justice, opportunity and possibility.
I want to live in that city.
Would it be tipping my hand to say that I DON’T believe the narrative -- regardless of who is pushing it -- that Chicago is broke?
I don’t trust the experts on this. The experts have lied to us over and over again and have, time and time again, found money for programs that proved to be corrupt, wrong-headed and ineffective.
Why would so many powerful people and entities portray Chicago as broke and bereft of possibility?
I believe it’s because when a city is broke and has no ideas to advance economic prosperity it is ripe for fleecing. By that I mean privatization. By that I mean strip mining the assets of the many to benefit the few.
The Chicago Sun-Times quoted Mayor Richard M. Daley in an article titled “Daley: Stop Throwing Darts” from July 8, 2009. You can read the full article and the editorial response here: http://tinyurl.com/Stop-Throwing-Darts.
“An impassioned Mayor Daley today portrayed the 2016 Summer Olympic Games as the economic salvation for Chicago, but warned that the city just might lose the Olympic sweepstakes "if people keep throwing darts…This is the only economic engine. We're talking about jobs. We're talking about contracts…coming into Chicago." He swore he would never bankrupt the city and that taxpayers would not pay a dime for the 2016 Olympics.”
The article concluded with him confessing a startling admission, "People can discuss this, but this is the best economic engine we have going. I have nothing [else] up my sleeve."
It was a shameful admission of a lack of civic imagination and a reliance on a bankrupt and demonstrably proven disastrous scheme for advancing civic prosperity.
And all the major media outlets, civic institutions and policy shops backed the bid.
Chicago lost the 2016 Olympics in the first round of voting by the International Olympic Committee on October 2, 2009. There was a lot of handwringing here about all the lost jobs and economic benefits but absolutely no honest soul-searching or evaluation of what just happened to Chicago.
Instead Mayor Daley decided to retire and Rahm Emanuel was elected mayor of Chicago.
There have been three Olympics since then – each worse than the preceding one in terms of overruns, corruption and economic turmoil for the hosting government.
Now, seven years later both daily Chicago newspapers (who backed the bid) editorialized about how lucky Chicago was to have ESCAPED hosting the 2016 Olympics.
What the Olympics for sure WOULD HAVE done would be to privatize the city for seven years and shower billions of dollars on the same set of consultants, financial services firms, banks, marketers and construction companies that have grown fat by being close to power in Chicago. It would have done NOTHING for 99% of the people of Chicago.
So perhaps we can’t believe the experts, the media, the policy think tanks and the powerful when they tell us that something is so or isn’t so.
The narrative of civic poverty and lack of ideas has continued from Mayor Daley’s time to the present. We still seek to privatize public assets and pursue deals that benefit billionaires to the detriment of the public good. As I write, for example, Mayor Emanuel seems fixated on giving priceless lakefront land to Star Wars creator George Lucas and has proposed knocking down part of the convention center, then re-building another part of the convention center for over $1 billion.
We’ve seen 49 public schools closed, six public mental health clinics shuttered, CTA service curtailed, Park District programs ratcheted up in cost and new rounds of cuts threatening our public education infrastructure. We’ve seen Tax Increment Finance districts shower billions of dollars on private developers. We’ve seen aldermen go to prison, a Chicago Public Schools CEO sentenced to jail and unarmed African-Americans shot down in the streets and in their homes. A report on Chicago’s police department issued by the Task Force of Police Accountability calls into question in the starkest possible terms some of the most basic conditions of fairness, truth-telling and accountability in Chicago.
There always seems to be money for some parts of the city and treasured projects favored by the mayor and his allies. But most of the city, beyond the Super Loop of five wards, still looks like it did ten or even twenty years ago.
There are many reasons to distrust the mayor when he says Chicago is broke.
There are many examples of civic problem solving throughout the city that deal effectively with perplexing and long-standing social and economic problems. They are run by civic champions who have passion, skill and experience. They just lack power.
And money.
So this book is an attempt to correct the record. To gin up a serious city-wide conversation about what is possible in Chicago.
The book is divided into three sections.
Section One is about money that has been stolen from us. This is money we should not have spent and should not continue to spend. We have corruption experts Professor Dick Simpson and investigative journalist Thomas J. Gradel starting us off with “The Cost of Corruption in Chicago.” Then we have “The Cost of Toxic Bank Deals for Chicago” by Jackson Potter of the Chicago Teachers Union and concluding with “The Cost of Police Abuse” by Jamie Kalven of the Invisible Institute (and recent Polk Award winner for his reporting on the killing of Laquan McDonald).
Section Two is about money that is hidden from us. This is a one-chapter section featuring my piece, “TIFs – Billions Off the Books.” This is about the property taxes collected by Chicago’s Tax Increment Financing districts.
Section Three is about money we are not collecting but should be. Here Hilary Denk of the League of Women Voters of Illinois writes about “A Progressive Income Tax for Illinois.” Professors Ron Baiman and Bill Barclay of the Chicago Political Economy Group speak to “A Financial Transaction Tax for Chicago.” Amara Enyia, a candidate for mayor in Chicago’s 2015 election, addresses “A Public Bank for Chicago.”
Wrapping up the book is Jonathan Peck, director of Restorative Justice at Alternatives, Inc. He reflects on all the ideas in the book and offers some Next Steps.
This book is the start of I hope will be a city-wide grassroots research, education and planning project. More on this in the “Let’s Get to Work” section at the end of the book.
I hope you will help me prove that Chicago is not broke and that we have a LOT of great civic solutions up our sleeves.
Tom Tresser
Civic educator. Public defender.
June 2016
----------------------------------------------
The mayor says Chicago is broke.
The newspapers say we are broke.
Think tanks and policy shops say we are broke.
Can we believe them?
What would be the difference to the lives of Chicagoans and the future of the city if we are not broke?
If Chicago is NOT broke then we move from a narrative of scarcity and “can’t have” to one of self-sufficiency and possibility.
The difference for Chicago would be profound. The city could again stand for fairness, justice, opportunity and possibility.
I want to live in that city.
Would it be tipping my hand to say that I DON’T believe the narrative -- regardless of who is pushing it -- that Chicago is broke?
I don’t trust the experts on this. The experts have lied to us over and over again and have, time and time again, found money for programs that proved to be corrupt, wrong-headed and ineffective.
Why would so many powerful people and entities portray Chicago as broke and bereft of possibility?
I believe it’s because when a city is broke and has no ideas to advance economic prosperity it is ripe for fleecing. By that I mean privatization. By that I mean strip mining the assets of the many to benefit the few.
The Chicago Sun-Times quoted Mayor Richard M. Daley in an article titled “Daley: Stop Throwing Darts” from July 8, 2009. You can read the full article and the editorial response here: http://tinyurl.com/Stop-Throwing-Darts.
“An impassioned Mayor Daley today portrayed the 2016 Summer Olympic Games as the economic salvation for Chicago, but warned that the city just might lose the Olympic sweepstakes "if people keep throwing darts…This is the only economic engine. We're talking about jobs. We're talking about contracts…coming into Chicago." He swore he would never bankrupt the city and that taxpayers would not pay a dime for the 2016 Olympics.”
The article concluded with him confessing a startling admission, "People can discuss this, but this is the best economic engine we have going. I have nothing [else] up my sleeve."
It was a shameful admission of a lack of civic imagination and a reliance on a bankrupt and demonstrably proven disastrous scheme for advancing civic prosperity.
And all the major media outlets, civic institutions and policy shops backed the bid.
Chicago lost the 2016 Olympics in the first round of voting by the International Olympic Committee on October 2, 2009. There was a lot of handwringing here about all the lost jobs and economic benefits but absolutely no honest soul-searching or evaluation of what just happened to Chicago.
Instead Mayor Daley decided to retire and Rahm Emanuel was elected mayor of Chicago.
There have been three Olympics since then – each worse than the preceding one in terms of overruns, corruption and economic turmoil for the hosting government.
Now, seven years later both daily Chicago newspapers (who backed the bid) editorialized about how lucky Chicago was to have ESCAPED hosting the 2016 Olympics.
What the Olympics for sure WOULD HAVE done would be to privatize the city for seven years and shower billions of dollars on the same set of consultants, financial services firms, banks, marketers and construction companies that have grown fat by being close to power in Chicago. It would have done NOTHING for 99% of the people of Chicago.
So perhaps we can’t believe the experts, the media, the policy think tanks and the powerful when they tell us that something is so or isn’t so.
The narrative of civic poverty and lack of ideas has continued from Mayor Daley’s time to the present. We still seek to privatize public assets and pursue deals that benefit billionaires to the detriment of the public good. As I write, for example, Mayor Emanuel seems fixated on giving priceless lakefront land to Star Wars creator George Lucas and has proposed knocking down part of the convention center, then re-building another part of the convention center for over $1 billion.
We’ve seen 49 public schools closed, six public mental health clinics shuttered, CTA service curtailed, Park District programs ratcheted up in cost and new rounds of cuts threatening our public education infrastructure. We’ve seen Tax Increment Finance districts shower billions of dollars on private developers. We’ve seen aldermen go to prison, a Chicago Public Schools CEO sentenced to jail and unarmed African-Americans shot down in the streets and in their homes. A report on Chicago’s police department issued by the Task Force of Police Accountability calls into question in the starkest possible terms some of the most basic conditions of fairness, truth-telling and accountability in Chicago.
There always seems to be money for some parts of the city and treasured projects favored by the mayor and his allies. But most of the city, beyond the Super Loop of five wards, still looks like it did ten or even twenty years ago.
There are many reasons to distrust the mayor when he says Chicago is broke.
There are many examples of civic problem solving throughout the city that deal effectively with perplexing and long-standing social and economic problems. They are run by civic champions who have passion, skill and experience. They just lack power.
And money.
So this book is an attempt to correct the record. To gin up a serious city-wide conversation about what is possible in Chicago.
The book is divided into three sections.
Section One is about money that has been stolen from us. This is money we should not have spent and should not continue to spend. We have corruption experts Professor Dick Simpson and investigative journalist Thomas J. Gradel starting us off with “The Cost of Corruption in Chicago.” Then we have “The Cost of Toxic Bank Deals for Chicago” by Jackson Potter of the Chicago Teachers Union and concluding with “The Cost of Police Abuse” by Jamie Kalven of the Invisible Institute (and recent Polk Award winner for his reporting on the killing of Laquan McDonald).
Section Two is about money that is hidden from us. This is a one-chapter section featuring my piece, “TIFs – Billions Off the Books.” This is about the property taxes collected by Chicago’s Tax Increment Financing districts.
Section Three is about money we are not collecting but should be. Here Hilary Denk of the League of Women Voters of Illinois writes about “A Progressive Income Tax for Illinois.” Professors Ron Baiman and Bill Barclay of the Chicago Political Economy Group speak to “A Financial Transaction Tax for Chicago.” Amara Enyia, a candidate for mayor in Chicago’s 2015 election, addresses “A Public Bank for Chicago.”
Wrapping up the book is Jonathan Peck, director of Restorative Justice at Alternatives, Inc. He reflects on all the ideas in the book and offers some Next Steps.
This book is the start of I hope will be a city-wide grassroots research, education and planning project. More on this in the “Let’s Get to Work” section at the end of the book.
I hope you will help me prove that Chicago is not broke and that we have a LOT of great civic solutions up our sleeves.
Tom Tresser
Civic educator. Public defender.
June 2016
Listen to this interview from the "Mark Wallace Show" on WVON-AM from February 16, 2016 (22 minutes). Book organizer Tom Tresser lays out the reason why we published the book and directions for action are discussed.