(Editor's note: This article was published first by Wirepoints)
The buck stops with state government when one of its instrumentalities is failing. Chicago, like any Illinois town or city, is an instrumentality of the state and most everything can be changed by state legislation.
Even if Chicago hadn’t elected radically left Brandon Johnson as mayor, state legislation to address the existential threats to the city would have been required. Johnson’s election makes state intervention all the more essential.
To date, the state has turned a blind eye toward the city’s problems, and there’s no indication so far that will change. But here, for the record, are four critically needed actions the State of Illinois would be taking if it were not derelict in its responsibility:
First, the state should entirely reconstitute Chicago’s school district – start it over from scratch and strip the Chicago Teachers Union of its absurd level of power. It’s surprising nobody noticed that Paul Vallas supported that. In our November 2021 podcast, he said he agrees with the idea of entirely reconstituting the district, which we had written about.
Despite a stunning $2.9 billion for Chicago’s school district in recent “pandemic relief” from the federal government, enabling it to spend nearly $30,000 per student annually, Chicago’s school district is an abysmal failure for students. Only 11 percent of black students and 17 percent of Hispanic children in the entire district could read at grade level in 2021. Math performance is still worse.
And the district is already facing an annual deficit of $628 million by 2025. Reconstituting the district is the surest way to reduce cost, eliminate the deficit and, most importantly, properly educate Chicago’s next generation.
Michigan reconstituted Detroit’s failed school district. The concept is to transfer all assets and certain, reduced liabilities over to a newly created district, abandon unneeded assets, reform or reject unfavorable contracts and rehire only the teachers and personnel who are good. A new, sensible retirement system could also be part of reconstitution the district. The district’s own pension system today is just 45% funded with $13.8 billion in growing, unfunded liabilities.
School choice should be another feature of a new system, focused primarily on the poor in the worst schools. It’s unconscionable that they are deprived of educational choices, which the wealthy have.
School choice should be on the table irrespective of anything else done with Chicago schools, and it’s one reform that just might be politically viable. That’s because the public overwhelmingly supports it, regardless of political party or race. The most recent survey by Schoen Cooperman Research found a stunning 87% of Chicago parents supporting school choice, with support highest among Blacks.
Second, the state should enact legislation bypassing Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx on criminal law enforcement. Her refusal to prosecute is widely known to be a primary cause of Chicago’s crime epidemic. Putting more cops on the street will do nothing if criminals aren’t prosecuted. Since Foxx won’t have her office do the job, another office can, and should be, authorized to do it.
That reassignment of responsibility could be done in a number of ways. One way is illustrated by the recently passed “organized retail crime” law, which placed prosecutorial power in the Illinois attorney general’s office for a narrow category of major looting events to ensure an end run around of Foxx.
However, ideally, new legislation for other criminal laws not being enforced would not go to there since the current attorney general, Kwame Raoul, fully supports Foxx and would not likely do the job, either.
Good prosecutors now in Kim Foxx’s office who want to prosecute, under such a plan, would be relocated to another office, or a newly-created one, separate from the attorney general and not under Cook County’s control. Today, Foxx’s office is part of county government run by Toni Preckwinkle, who is also a major Foxx supporter. Foxx, Preckwinkle are a criminal’s dream team, and they must be circumvented.
Third, the state should fix or entirely abandon the SAFE-T Act, which would eliminate cash bail statewide and includes other provisions hostile to enforcement. Despite over 300 pages of amendments making changes that the act’s supporters initially denied a need for, the law is still badly flawed. Its constitutionality is being challenged in court by over half of the state’s elected county prosecutors and the matter is now before the Illinois Supreme Court.
Finally, pension reform is essential to breaking Chicago’s pension death spiral. About 80% of the city’s property taxes goes toward its four pensions, yet they remain grossly underfunded – among the nation’s worst being only 24% funded and with $34 billion in unfunded liabilities – making the pension system “unsustainable in its current form,” as Mayor Lori Lightfoot said.
Once federal bailout money runs out Chicago will return to the simple reality it faced before the pandemic: The city is simply not generating the revenue, jobs and growth needed to pay for obligations incurred plus current expenses.
State legislation is needed for any real pension reform in Chicago like anywhere in Illinois, but the state has chosen to ignore the problem. Gov. JB Pritzker dishonestly claims that pension reform is a “fantasy” for legal reasons.
A day will come when Chicago’s collapse will be so extreme that the public will demand the needed reforms from the state. Unfortunately, we’re apparently not anywhere close to that, so expect nothing.