* 6/5/26 - City That Works - Our favorite writing from Chicago's hard-working press corps (re CPS Debt, Chicago Public Schools’ COVID recovery story, Chicago Social Impact Atlas, youth curfew legislation in DC)
Buzz Sawyer
Taste of Chicago: June 2026 EditionOur favorite writing from Chicago's hard-working press corps
Source: Matt Stratton via Flickr We’ve got lots of opinions here at A City That Works. Many of them are informed or inspired by the work of the local Chicago press corps, or thoughtful takes on national issues that are relevant here. While we link liberally, we thought it’d be good to take a minute to highlight some of the best of that writing over the last few months. Public Finances Gov. JB Pritzker touts wins in $56B Illinois budget, but some work in election-year plan went unfinished (Chicago Tribune / Dan Petrella and Jack O’Conner) A really helpful breakdown of the variety of tools lawmakers used to squeak out a balanced budget this year. Inspiring this is not - it’s a maintenance budget, not a transformational one. The Civic Federation (and plenty of others) have written about some of the longer term structural fiscal challenges the state faces. But this budget continues to climb the pension ramp, without instituting tax increases that would hurt working families or do serious damage to our ability to attract and retain businesses. That’s not the worst place to be, by far. Philadelphia pension system to be fully funded by 2032; officials hail progress as a success (WHYY / Tom MacDonald) “In the last decade, the city’s $10 billion pension system, which supports retired city workers and their beneficiaries, has moved from 45% to 67% funded, according to Mayor Cherelle Parker… The higher funding percentage came from several sources, including city worker unions agreeing to revise benefit structures and increase employee contributions, and the city boosting its own annual payments, which have totaled more than $1 billion over the past decade… Once the city’s pension obligation is fully met, Dubow said “hundreds of millions” of dollars each year will be allocated for other purposes.” Union enthusiasts should support abundance (Slow Boring / Matt Yglesias) We’re a bit biased (it’s an argument we’ve made before) but Yglesias make a good pitch for why public unions should embrace pro-growth YIMBY policy: “If a city is growing, it’s relatively easy for it to meet its obligations to retired cops and teachers and firefighters. If it’s shrinking, that’s harder. If a city is growing, it will hire more cops and teachers and firefighters. If it’s shrinking, some of them will get laid off.” Public Safety What is included in D.C.’s youth curfew legislation (Washington Post / Meagan Flynn) Much like Chicago, D.C. has been grappling with the often chaotic “teen takeover” phenomenon in recent years. Unlike Chicago, they’ve now been able to muster a legislative response in their City Council. Flynn’s piece is a good overview of what’s actually in it, and provides some suggestions for what Chicago might consider to strike the right balance (one interesting example: whenever police designate a curfew zone during the summer months, D.C.’s Parks and Recreation department is required to simultaneously announce structured, supervised youth programming in the same geographic area - and kids traveling to or from that programming are exempt from the curfew itself). A Contagious Peace: Behind Baltimore’s Historic Homicide Reduction (Hopkins Bloomberg Public Health Magazine / Melody Schreiber) ‘First, the stick: The individual is on the police’s radar now, and they will suffer the consequences if they commit any violence, the law enforcement officers warn. “If you get picked up for a minor violation, that’s not the focus,” Biddle says. “The message is very clearly specific to violence, violence, violence.” Crucially, the next part is the carrot: “We’re going to promise to try to help you change in a different direction, in a safer direction,” Webster says. Many of the people they identify are caring for others in their lives: grandparents, parents, children. “You can’t continue to put yourself at risk,” Mavronis says. “You have to be there to provide for them. What can we do to make sure that you are set up for success and that you’re able to stay in that place and on the right path?”’ Education Understanding Municipal Debt: A Case Study of the Chicago Public Schools (Civic Federation / Daniel Vesecky). As CPS’s financial position gets closer to taking center stage - that $700 million budget gap won’t close itself - understanding the district’s long-term challenges gets more and more important. That’s what makes this great overview of CPS’s municipal debt issues so timely, and it serves as a great starting point for anyone looking to better understand how municipal finance works. Editorial: Chicago Public Schools’ COVID recovery story doesn’t survive a closer look (Chicago Tribune). An important story, and always nice to see other outlets pick up our work. Housing Gov. JB Pritzker’s multiunit housing plans for Illinois stall in Springfield’s spring session (Olivia Olander / Chicago Tribune) “Faced with concerns about usurping local control of zoning issues related to housing, the governor’s office and its allies this weekend punted on the plans, which were among the governor’s most ambitious policy proposals this year... “I’m going to continue to fight for it, because we need more housing in the state,” Pritzker said at a post-session news conference in his ceremonial Capitol office Monday. He noted that some of his biggest legislative goals have taken longer than a year to come to fruition, including his school cellphone ban, which the General Assembly passed over the weekend.” Chicago’s Efforts to Keep Housing Affordable in Woodlawn Falls Short as Obama Center Nears Opening (Illinois Answers Project / Binghui Huang, Sidnee King Pineda and Andrew Adams) An exhaustively well researched article about the rising tide of displacement in Woodlawn. It’s the perfect storm: rising demand, paired with limited market rate construction, sky-high affordable housing costs, and limited state capacity to implement other anti-displacement programs. This group just built affordable housing in SF for half the price and twice as fast (SF Standard / Kevin Nguyen) “The affordable community for 145 formerly homeless seniors in the Mission was unveiled Tuesday, completing construction just 19 months after breaking ground, at a cost of approximately $525,000 per unit. That’s about half of the $1 million per unit cost for most Bay Area housing projects… Rather than follow the industry template of soliciting public money before construction — which would have triggered more applications and locked in strict rules for how 1633 Valencia could be built and operated — Mercy Housing used HAF’s private funding upfront to provide its partners with the financial certainty to start construction quickly.” Other Chicago health department leaves millions of federal COVID dollars on the table (Chicago Tribune / Alice Yin) “Throughout last year, Mayor Brandon Johnson vowed to protect Chicago’s public health dollars from President Donald Trump. But behind the scenes, his health commissioner voluntarily returned tens of millions of dollars in COVID-19 grants to the federal government months before expiration — funds that could have gone to disease surveillance to help prepare for an outbreak or racial equity programming to improve health outcomes across the city.” Chicago Social Impact Atlas (Eric Gastevich / Capari Partners) Ok, not an article really - but a very cool visualization of the more than 42,000 501(c)3s in the Chicagoland area. There are so many different organizations, often doing important or overlooked work in neighborhoods. It’s pretty cool to get to see them all in one place. New York State authorizes a land value tax that could provide billions for transit investment(Niskanen Center / Reed Schwartz & Alex Armlovich). One more for our YIMBY friends: New York’s latest budget quietly included authorization for the MTA to use land value capture - yes, including a proper land value tax - to fund major new transit projects. It’s an elegant concept. When the public builds transit, nearby land values rise substantially; a land value tax lets the public recapture a share of that windfall rather than handing it to private landowners for free. The authors make a compelling case for the pitch, citing research showing that even the famously expensive Second Avenue Subway could have paid for itself in property value uplift. A City That Works is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. |
