Before he was sworn in, Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a billionaire heir to the Hyatt Hotel fortune, opened his wallet and ponied up $50,000 to conduct a search for someone to lead the state’s troubled child welfare agency. And at least one good government organization is raising its eyebrows about the first-term Democrat using his wealth for government business.
Democrats, meanwhile, are concerned that Pritzker’s campaign slogan to “do big things” is slow to bear any post-election fruit during the governor’s first legislative session, which is almost over.
Speaking of money, Chicago’s budget woes may be worse than previously thought. So where will Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot find the money, as she told CNN this morning, to help crime-ridden neighborhoods with programming and activities?
South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg spoke in Chicago today and accused Republicans of co-opting the terms “freedom” and “security” in the national mindset. Check back later for our coverage.
And “Hamilton,” the politically potent and still very relevant musical — hey, power (losing it, gaining it and losing it again) is timeless — about one of America’s sort-of-tragic Founding Fathers Alexander Hamilton will close its Chicago run early next year.
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Gov. J.B. Pritzker paid for $50,000 DCFS director search out of his own pocket
“Pritzker’s transition team signed a $50,000 contract in early January with Massachusetts-based Koya Leadership Partners to conduct a nationwide search for a new leader for the child welfare agency, which has churned through 14 previous directors since 2003,” the Tribune’s Dan Petrella reports. This governor leaning on his wealth, this time to find someone to lead the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, should get a closer look, according to at least one good government group. Read the story here.
Democratic discontent in Springfield? “The election of J.B. Pritzker as governor in November ushered in a sense of euphoria for Democrats after four years of Republican Bruce Rauner, resulting in an ambitious first-year legislative agenda,” Tribune political reporter Rick Pearson writes. “But with the first spring session under Pritzker’s watch nearing its scheduled adjournment at the end of May, many rank-and-file Democrats are concerned that the new administration’s big ideas have largely remained just that, rather than passable legislation. Republicans also have noticed the Democratic discontent.” Read Pearson’s story here.
Lightfoot’s facing larger budget woes than expected
Chicago’s 2020 budget shortfall may be more than $200 million larger than Lightfoot expected: Read the story by the Tribune’s John Byrne and Hal Dardick here.
But the incoming mayor, who takes office on Monday, said on CNN today that her administration is “going to flood the zone with programming, activities that hopefully will give our young people an opportunity to latch onto something positive and let people in those distressed neighborhoods know that we are there for them. We’re going to be present and we’re going to do everything we can to keep our communities safe.”
Journalist to Lightfoot: Open ‘police misconduct’ files: Jamie Kalven, the independent journalist who was the first to report about the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald at the hands of Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke, says in a Chicago Tribune op-ed that Lightfoot should make “police misconduct files” public when she takes office. He writes in part: “Gratuitous secrecy, withholding public information from the public, and selective release of information when it serves the interests of power to do so are among the tools used to impose official narratives at odds with reality. These practices should be called by their true name: They are a form of lying.” Read the piece here.
Emanuel wouldn’t mind having the city’s Riverwalk named after him: Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin notes that the Riverwalk is the outgoing mayor’s pride and joy. But as he patted himself on the back for meandering walkways along the downtown stretch of the Chicago River, Kamin notes, “No one talked about a still-empty plot of land on the other side of the Chicago River. That land, which sits east of Lake Shore Drive, is supposed to be a 3.4-acre park named for Chicago’s first non-Native American settler, Jean Baptiste-Pointe du Sable, a Haitian of French and African descent.” Perhaps Lightfoot can move the needle on that? Read Kamin’s story here.
Renters in Chicago’s black neighborhoods 4 times as likely to face eviction as those in white areas
From the Tribune’s Javonte Anderson: “In African American neighborhoods … landlords file for evictions at a substantially higher rate than in other parts of the city, according to a new report from the Lawyers’ Committee for Better Housing, a local housing advocacy organization that reviewed nearly 300,000 Cook County eviction court records for 2010 through 2017.
Racism at play: “Peter Rosenblatt, an associate sociology professor at Loyola University Chicago, said the large disparity between minority and majority-white neighborhoods isn’t likely the result of widespread intentional discrimination by landlords but rather comes from structural racism, which he defined as the historical and contemporary reinforcement of inequality along racial lines,” Anderson notes. Read the full story here.
Trump pardons former Chicago Sun-Times owner Conrad Black
President Donald Trump pardoned Conrad Black, former executive of the Chicago Sun-Times’ parent company and disgraced media mogul, on Wednesday. Read Tribune reporter Morgan Greene’s story here.
Jeffrey Cramer, the ex-assistant U.S. attorney who helped prosecute Black, told the Sun-Times it “didn’t hurt” that Black wrote a flattering biography about Trump just last year.
“With all the people who have been convicted and deserve some consideration, this president decides to show mercy on a millionaire who was convicted of defrauding investors and obstructing justice,” Cramer wrote in a text message to the Sun-Times. “The boys in cell block D should pen a favorable book or poem about the president. That seems to be the ticket to freedom.”
Oh, boy. Perhaps imprisoned former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich — who was on Trump’s “Celebrity Apprentice” — might take a page from Black and write a book of poetry about Trump.
Curtains for Hamilton in Chicago
That’s right, one of the greatest political musicals of all time, “Hamilton,” will close its Chicago run on Jan. 5, 2020, Tribune theater critic Chris Jones reported this morning. Read the story here. It’s one of incoming Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot’s favorites (her staff tells me she and her family have seen it a few times). No word on whether she’ll catch it one more time before the cast takes a final bow here. Of course, she and anyone else who wants to catch it again could head to New York or any of the other cities staging it.
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