A.D. Q&A with Chicago Teachers Union VP Stacy Davis Gates

If you read Crain’s, you’ve probably spent a good amount of time thinking about the future of work – e-commerce, automation and telecommuting. Even if you don’t spend much time thinking about it, it’s abundantly clear that covid has rapidly accelerated those trends. Remote schooling and telehealth became necessities. Online shopping that might’ve been limited to clothes or homewares pre-covid exploded, with more people getting things like groceries delivered much more often. And there’s a heightened awareness of the importance of lower-wage work classified as “essential” during the pandemic. That’s why last year, the Illinois General Assembly created the “future of work” task force – a mix of current and former state officials, union folks and business representatives – to look into “how the state can best produce a broad-based post-pandemic recovery, confront the worsening crisis of poverty and create high-quality jobs for all.” A.D. Quig's two guests this week participated in the task force’s work: Professor Bob Bruno, director of the Labor Education Program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and Harish Patel, from the advocacy group Economic Security for Illinois. They discuss the findings of the report, including the highs and lows of the state’s current labor market, whether we might see more union agitating to boost conditions for frontline workers, and whether the business groups that participated in this task force think the recommendations are a good idea.

The Chicago Reader is one of the city’s best-known free papers and one of a few remaining alt-weeklies to survive the media crunch that killed dozens across the country. Until recently, the Reader seemed like it was about to go under, too. Our guest this week is the Reader’s publisher, Tracy Baim. She’s been in the Chicago media world since she was a kid. Her mother, father and stepfather were all in the biz. Fresh out of college, she founded the LGBTQ publication the Windy City Times. In 2018, she stepped in to lead the Reader. And what a ride it’s been. When print advertising from bars, restaurants and venues dried up in the early COVID days, the paper survived thanks to a federal PPP loan, another loan from the city, a series of innovative fundraising measures and leftover investment from the paper’s co-owners, lawyer Len Goodman and real estate developer Elzie Higginbottom. But in recent months, a spat with Goodman almost brought the Reader down. He wrote a column detailing his concerns about getting his daughter vaccinated for covid. It led to an uproar and an outside fact-check that found several errors. Editors wanted a correction, an editors note, or for the story to get taken down. Goodman cried censorship, and the fight hit pause on the paper’s transition to nonprofit status, a transition that would have allowed for money from foundations and philanthropists to flow in. In this episode, Baim brings us behind the scenes of that tussle, explains where the Reader goes from here, and forecasts what a broader shift to nonprofit status for legacy media means--for example, is the Sun-Times/WBEZ merger good for all the other, smaller independent publications dotting Chicago? And is there a way for Chicago foundations to pool their money for media in a way that spreads the wealth to smaller outlets?

Chicago's Office of the Inspector General has published many blockbuster reports over the years. Its job is to investigate corruption, misconduct, waste, fraud and abuse big and small. In recent years, it's found a culture of sexual harassment in the Chicago Fire Department, blasted the Chicago Police Department’s response to summer looting in 2020, and helped U.S. Attorney John Lausch secure indictments of City Council members. But despite its importance to chipping away at city waste, the office’s top post was left vacant for roughly eight months. Deborah Witzburg, this week's guest, was confirmed to take over in late April. She headed up the IG’s public safety section starting in the Spring of 2020, but left when the last IG, Joe Ferguson, announced he was stepping down. She wanted the job. And she got it. But what’s she in for? It’s no secret that Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Ferguson had a rocky relationship in the last few months of his tenure. She suggested Ferguson wasn’t staying in his lane and hadn’t delivered on all of the investigations he said he would. We’ll talk to Witzburg about whether she thinks the IG’s office swerved out of its lane while she was there, how she plans to counter the “trust deficit” that’s built up among citizens after years of Chicago corruption, and what it’s like being the first woman to lead the office.

When the U.S. Supreme Court draft opinion leaked suggesting Roe v Wade would be overturned this summer, immediate reaction came from the political sphere. What did President Biden say? Gubernatorial candidates? Pro- and anti-abortion groups? And what did this mean for Illinois as a so-called abortion access oasis? But reaction from the medical community trickled in slower. This episode presents a conversation A.D. Quig had with the CEO of the American Medical Association, Dr. James Madara, last Thursday. It was supposed to be a sit-down in front of AMA staff marking the organization’s 175th anniversary, but it came shortly after the draft opinion leaked. Dr. Madara was surprised about the leak and its contents, which would have major consequences for practicing doctors and patients alike. In a statement last week, the AMA said the ruling, as drafted, amounted to government interference in the patient-physician relationship, a dangerous intrusion into the practice of medicine, and the potential criminalization of care. There are Roe implications beyond abortion in the draft, Madara warned, including simple conversations between doctors and patients about whether there are handguns in the home. Madara discussed what the AMA plans to do if the decision does go through this summer. He also addressed the drop in trust in physicians following the covid pandemic; physician burnout and a looming doctor shortage; progress the AMA is making in its racial equity pledge; and whether the country has made as much progress as he thought it would following passage of the Affordable Care Act.

The name of this week's guest, Chad Williams, might ring a bell if you’ve followed the lengthy debate about how the Chicago Police Department is meeting its reform mandates as part of the consent decree. Williams made a splash when his letter resigning from CPD’s audit division was made public in the Chicago Tribune in November. In it, Williams accused department leadership of pursuing superficial compliance with the court-ordered reforms. Their aim, he says, was to get better media coverage by “checking boxes” instead of creating lasting cultural change. Shortly after sending it, he was formally accused of “failure to promote the policies and goals of the department.” In this interview, he says that accusation came from top CPD brass as retaliation. This is the first time Williams is speaking out since he left the department. He offers new revelations about what happened during his three years at CPD. For one, he says CPD purposely buried reports his division completed, including about the use of dash and body cameras and administrative tickets. They've left others, including policies for treatment of juveniles under arrest, unresolved. Regarding that ticket report? He says senior reform leadership told him they wouldn’t turn it over to the consent decree monitor because it made the department "look bad." Williams also says hiring plans were held up by the current first deputy in the department, who he says had no business getting involved in auditing. He’s referred a complaint about that alleged interference with the city’s Inspector General.

This week, we examine the state of the Loop. If you read Crain’s, you know the recovery is… uneven. Let’s take a quick look at some headlines at chicagobusiness.com about the Loop area office scene, in case you missed them: Downtown office vacancy jumps to another record high... Louis Vuitton's Mag Mile landlord ready to cash out... Chicago Law firm Skadden starting a new lease with about half the space... you get the picture. The Chicago Loop Alliance reports as of March, hotels are only 52% occupied compared to 2019 levels. CTA ridership overall – which passes through the Loop regularly – was 44% of what it was in 2019… Similarly, Metra ridership as of February was even lower: just 22% of 2019 levels. According to the city's violence reduction dashboard, year to date, violent crime victimizations in the Loop are up 200% compared to last year, and last year was bad. All that said, there are reasons for hope. Our guest this week, downtown Alderman Brendan Reilly, says there’s a good-news metric that isn’t regularly reported: how packed his own schedule is with meetings about business relocations, new buildings and creative ways to transform the Loop. Reilly’s represented the 42nd Ward since 2007. That includes most of the downtown, River North, Streeterville and the Mag Mile. He gives his diagnosis of the Loop – the good and the bad – plus major issues facing it in Council, including crime and his grade of Superintendent David Brown’s tenure; his pushback to the city’s casino selection process; and how mayor Lori Lightfoot stacks up with other mayors he’s worked with.

Last week, dignitaries from across the city and state celebrated the late Mayor Harold Washington, whose 100th birthday would have been April 15. Top Washington aides like Jacky Grimshaw and Josie Childs; contemporaries like Congressmen "Chuy" Garcia, Bobby Rush and former Congressman Luis Gutierrez, Cook County Circuit Court Chief Judge Timothy Evans and the Rev. Jesse Jackson; and top elected officials like Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, and current Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot all celebrated Washington’s life and legacy at his namesake library downtown. Hanging over all of it? Politics, of course. Mayor Lori Lightfoot has yet to officially declare her reelection bid, but is raising money, staffing up her campaign, and so far, playing defense. Other candidates to become Chicago’s next mayor in 2023 are already lining up. Businessman Willie Wilson and current Ald. Ray Lopez are both running. Congressman Mike Quigley is polling. Former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas and state Rep. Kam Buckner both say they’re contemplating a run. Any number of spoilers could jump in over the coming months. On this week’s show, we’re talking lessons in tough campaigns and leadership with Marilyn Katz. She was a media consultant for Harold Washington’s historic run in 1983. A progressive activist throughout the late '60s, she joined the rainbow coalition of Washington backers, helping deliver captivating ads that brought him over the finish line in the 1983 primary against Jane Byrne and Richard M. Daley, and then the general election against Republican Bernie Epton. She’ll share her memories of that campaign and Washington’s leadership style when he took over the 5th floor at City Hall, and what lessons Lightfoot might take from him to hold on to her seat.

What if you skipped half the meetings you were supposed to attend for work? A third? A quarter? Could you still be effective? Would you still know everything you needed to do your job well? To earn your full paycheck? That’s what you should ask of your elected representatives, too. On this week’s show, we’re digging into an investigation that Crain’s, WBEZ and The Daily Line published this week about how often members of Chicago City Council show up. There’s good news: aldermanic attendance improved since the last term that ended in 2019. Back then, the average alderman attended only 65 percent of all the meetings they were supposed to – that includes committee meetings where the real sausage-making happens, and the full City Council, where things get final approval. This time, the average alderman attended just over 80 percent of required meetings. That’s a big jump, but still represents hundreds of absences. And the lowest-ranking alderfolks – including one under indictment and two running for higher office – showed up less than 60% of the time. Along with reporters Erin Hegarty and Alex Nitkin of the Daily Line and WBEZ’s Claudia Morell, A.D. Quig sorted through nearly 11,000 records from May of 2019 through the end of 2021 to get you these answers. On this show, we take you behind the scenes of our reporting process. We wrote three stories for this analysis: one breaking down the numbers, where you can look up how you're alderman did; another about whether virtual meetings are here to stay – and the drawbacks to it; and a third about what we called do-nothing committees, ones with big budgets and important mandates, but that meet rarely. We break down what our findings say about how Council works… and doesn’t. You can read all three stories, for free, at chicagobusiness.com, wbez.org and thedailyline.com. We all want to hear from you, too. How does this change your opinion about your alderman or alderwoman? What else do you want to know? We’re here to listen and eager to report more. Until then, let’s get to it. Here’s A.D.'s conversation with The Daily Line’s Alex Nitkin and Erin Hegarty and WBEZ’s Claudia Morell.

As Chicago emerges from its most violent year since the 1990s, year-to-date crime statistics for March show a slight drop in shootings and murders, according to the Chicago Police Department – with the biggest drops in the city’s 15 most violent community areas. But our guest this week argues something has been amiss in Chicago for about 30 years. Professor Jens Ludwig, who helps lead the University of Chicago’s Crime and Education Labs, and the National Bureau of Economic Research’s working group on the economics of crime, points out that Los Angeles, New York City and Chicago all had similar crime rates in the 90s. But while L.A. and New York have seen their crime rates tumble, Chicago’s hasn’t. Many of the conditions that existed back in the 90s — the fact that we’re surrounded by places where it’s easier to get guns, our gang structures and our segregation — are the same. Ludwig discusses his theories about the origins of that split. He also explores whether bail reform or the state’s criminal justice overhaul, the SAFE-T Act, contributed to the recent surge, and how the interrupted school year might be impacting carjackings now, and potential violence in the future.

As Illinois lawmakers edge toward the end of spring session and head into campaign season, talk of potential bills to address a rise in crime is heating up. Democratic lawmakers, fearful of polling that shows violence is a top concern for voters, have discussed legislation cracking down on ghost guns, organized retail theft and carjacking. Gov. Pritzker’s budget includes increases to state police and witness protection, as well as grants for anti-violence programs. Republicans, meanwhile, are pushing for bills that boost funding for police, set a minimum 10-year sentence for anyone convicted of selling a gun to a felon, and automatically transfer cases of aggravated carjacking or armed robbery that involve a minor to adult court. But this week's guests – Soledad McGrath and Vaughn Bryant – are wary of knee-jerk reactions to an increase in violence. McGrath is executive director of the Neighborhood Network Initiative at Northwestern University, which has studied the outcomes of several anti-violence programs operating in Chicago. Bryant is the executive director of Metropolitan Peace Initiatives, a coordinator for many anti-violence groups. MPI is a division of Metropolitan Family Services – it focuses on helping people that have experienced the highest levels of gun violence in the city. That help involves things like violence interruption and street outreach; behavioral health and help finding jobs or getting into school; expunging criminal records; and working with cops to help them better understand the communities they police. Early analyses of these programs show some positive results. Northwestern’s analysis of CP4P, which Bryant’s group helps organize, found that fatal and non-fatal gunshot injuries among participants were 20% lower 18 months after they joined and roughly 30% lower two years after. Arrests were 17% lower two years after joining, too. This conversation explores what programs are working – including efforts to enhance community policing with the Chicago Police Department, a big upcoming test for anti-violence work in North Lawndale, and why both guests are urging patience when thinking about solutions to crime.