Chicago school board election, new Bears stadium proposal | The Chicago Report

Welcome to the Chicago Report. I'm Anita Blanton. Five days from today, Chicago will have its first elected school board president. We've introduced you to the candidates. They all came here to make their case. Now, after scandals and special interest money have rocked the race, they are making a final plea for your vote. One-on-one with our political reporter, Brandon Pope. He sat down with Eladio Dominguez last night after the candidate was cleared in a CPS Inspector General investigation over misconduct allegations. Tonight, Jessica Biggs is in the hot seat, facing questions about her past, including getting fired when she was a principal in 2018 and her vision for the district. Why should voters trust you to lead the district and lead its leaders when you were in leadership there was a lack of protocols being followed there too? Well, you know, by and large, the work that I have done in this city in a leadership capacity has been with tremendous integrity. We'll hear more of that conversation later this half hour. Stay tuned for that. But we are amid Chicago budget hearings. The controversial gunshot detection technology debate has resurfaced. The Chicago Police Department presented its budget request to the committee yesterday, and Alders used it as an opportunity to get answers about a replacement. Last week, a last-minute announcement from the Johnson administration revealed CPD would launch a pilot testing a new gunshot technology across a handful of districts. But some alders are frustrated, saying that they've been left in the dark. And at yesterday's hearing, Interim Superintendent Fred Waller couldn't provide many details. He told reporters he wishes he knew more and passed questions about specifics to a subordinate. As you're well aware, there's a RFP that's out there that's active right now. Unfortunately, we can't discuss specifics there. And there is also DPS, through the authority of the chief procurement officer, as you mentioned, is running a pilot. So when will these pilots be deployed? That would be for DPS to answer. They're the lead in that one. We're as surprised as the rest of us when a pilot was announced last week, and that pilot was going to start in two weeks. Let's just let the cat out of the bag. We need procurement here or we need the mayor's office here to tell us this pilot that apparently doesn't include any of the nine entities that participate in the RFP. The city first began the process for procuring a replacement gunshot detection system in February of 2025. And Mayor Johnson has earmarked $5 million for gunshot detection technology in the budget. Last night, we had Mayor Brandon Johnson's chief of staff, Jung Yoon, on the Chicago report. We asked her why the administration hasn't been more transparent about the process over the last two years. Look, the mayor has always been committed to effective technology that supports our residents' safety. And so what we've seen in the past is ineffective technology put forward by corporations who are profiting off of our residents' fears. It didn't work. And so what we're doing is doing a pilot program so that we can get data, see how well it's performing and get residents' feedback before we can determine what vendor to move forward with more permanently. If I'm hearing you right, you're speaking of ShotSpotter. Do we have a name for the new company? I can't speak about the ongoing procurement process. The pilot is supposed to begin testing in a matter of days, with updates coming in early November. But City Council and the CPD seem to know very little. About what it entails. So here to react to it all is outgoing 19th Ward Alderman Matt O'Shea, who we heard a little bit from there in our introduction from the hearing that happened yesterday. Alderman O'Shea, you're a known ardent supporter of our law enforcement community here in Chicago. You were exasperated in yesterday's hearing. Explain why you are so frustrated about this rollout and what You do know about this new pilot. So, you know, taking us back to the beginning in September of 2024, more than two years ago, the mayor shut down ShotSpotter. When he made that announcement, he promised the city that there would be a replacement. So for the past two years, we've waited for what that replacement could be. There was a request for proposal, an RFP put out. There were nine bidders. And the Department of Procurement Services has had the names of those nine bidders and has had many to choose from for over a year. We've been waiting for this. We scheduled a hearing last week in City Council to bring the Department of Procurement Services before us. They no-showed, but the Chief Procurement Officer did send a letter stating that a pilot will start in two weeks. So that was nine days ago on October 20th, so in theory that pilot should kick off next week, according to the mayor's statement. We don't know who the vendor is. We don't know what the technology is. The leadership of the Chicago Police Department has not been brought into the room. The Office of Public Safety Administration has not been brought into the room. That was clearly stated on the record in budget hearings yesterday. Um, this is not transparent, uh, this is dishonest, hide the ball, um, another maneuver by this administration. But what's really frustrating is this is about public safety. And I know people like to say crime is down. But when you compare Chicago to New York, LA, Houston, other large cities, Our violent crime isn't down as much as it is there. This is a valuable tool that police leadership, including the last police superintendent and the current superintendent, said this is a tool our police department needs. Why aren't we working with them? Why aren't we identifying some form of gunshot technology, get that thing rolling, and make our community safer? So let me ask you this. You know, I think about some of the other recent conversations that have been had in hearings about different corporations, different companies that the city would do business with. Some could say, I mean, at least the mayor has earmarked money for. Some type of detection system. Does it matter which company? Absolutely. It needs to be a company that has a proven track record, that has technology that law enforcement officials, namely Superintendent Waller and other leaders in the department and the Office of Public and Safety Administration, who have to work with this equipment to make sure, is it effective? Is it the best tool? Is it what these six communities, where the pilot is scheduled to run, is this going to help save lives? Six communities. Does it include yours? It does not. Luckily for me, my community does not have that rate of violent crime. But in communicating with law enforcement officials, it's a valuable tool in neighborhoods that have been overrun with violent crime. And there are still many that are. Do you feel like the pilot should have been broader, though? Absolutely. I think there's certainly more than six communities that have. You know, large-scale gun violence. Our community deserves better. The interim superintendent, Waller, he acknowledged his pilot program will cover about a third of the city. So I guess the sixth would be a third of the city with that? Approximately. Mm-hmm. Why do you think that we're, I mean, we keep hearing RFP or procurement. You heard Jung-Yoon, when I asked her about it, tried to press in a little bit more, procurement. Why do you think we can't get past that? I'm at a total loss. The Department of Procurement Services has been a disaster in this city for several years. We can't get contracts out on time. But when you're talking about public safety, about a piece of technology that can help save lives, why isn't that front and center the most important thing they're working on? And again, more than two years later, all we have is a statement that a pilot's coming. But nobody knows what the pilot is. And as you had a member of the mayor's staff on last night, they're not willing to talk about it. I want to ask you, frankly, do you think that CPD knows more that they're just not sharing it with you all? Absolutely, they do not. They were on the record yesterday. Myself and several of my colleagues spoke to several leaders in the police department. I'm They're at a total loss. going They're completely in the dark. Wow. Okay. Alderman O'Shea, thank you so much for coming in. We appreciate it. to go Thanks, Anita. All right. Keep us updated, please. Will do. All right. All right, everyone, tonight we are getting more information, ahead too, about the Bears and not just what's happening on the field. and get Of course, we do have a big game that's coming up next week, but another Hail Mary to keep the Bears in Chicago may be brewing. started. Chicago architectural firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill released renderings of a domed stadium at the current Rail Yard site. That comes amid Justin Ishbia's announcement in September to move the Chicago White Sox to the South Loop, leaving the Bridgeport site open. That is where Amtrak wants to build a new 24/7 rail yard facility that some neighbors and community leaders strongly oppose. Now. The rendering that I saw had the stadium sort of more towards the south end of the site property along Pershing Road. And there are some public housing, there's a church there, as well as a few other things that would have to be relocated. This is why I think we're a long way off. This is definitely like a vision. I wouldn't call it a plan as it is because many more people will need to be involved in these conversations. From Alderman Nicole Lee, as speculation grows that this new Bears stadium plan could help bolster Ishbia's goal to relocate the White Sox. And she's been leading the effort to keep Amtrak out of Bridgeport. She says an alternative development. piques her interest, but she is not sold. And this week, the Federal Railroad Administration, remember, said that the Amtrak maintenance facility would have to undergo a federal environmental review, thanks to residents pushing back. We also talked to the firm about what this stadium would look like. We looked at the sites to the north, we looked at the sites to the south, and there's some existing users, but the stadium actually fits there. If it's something that the Bridgeport community and everybody impacted by it really embraced, we think it could be a viable possibility. This all comes as a new opinion piece from Crane Chicago suggests that the Bears staying in Illinois is not as improbable as it seemed a couple of months ago. Journalist Greg Hines argues there's new optimism now that Bears minority owner Pat Ryan is involved in the negotiations. He says he has a better relationship with the billionaires who run the NFL and has ties to Governor J.B. Pritzker. Well, personal information for nearly every registered voter in Chicago was left completely exposed online because of a mayoral candidate's mistake. The campaign website for Cook County Commissioner George Cardenas accidentally exposed data, including home addresses and voting histories for the top officials and judges. Reports show the AI-built site used GoTeam as its public password. The Cardenas campaign has since removed the data. It is time for our first break, everyone. We'll have more news in two minutes. Welcome back to the Chicago Report. Cook County State's Attorney Eileen O'Neill Burke is rolling out her 2027 budget proposal, promising a budget-neutral plan that saves taxpayers $5 million annually. Burke wants to add 70 new positions, including digital forensics analysts and early career prosecutors. The office says that will be funded curbing weekend overtime and bringing legal work in-house to reduce reliance on outside lawyers. And back to day four. budget hearings at City Hall. Today, the Departments of Planning and Development and Transportation got to present their budgets. The Departments of Sanitation, Water Management, and Technology are still ongoing. An interesting change from last year to this year involves the Department of Technology and Innovation. It's slashing its budget by nearly 55 percent. That's $41 million. Less than 2026, and it is because of major changes to software licensing and tech services. Jeffrey Kubitsch with the Better Government Association has been previewing each department's budget hearing. He's here with me to give a little bit more insight and to share with us what to look for in the upcoming hearings. Thank you so much for your time. Thanks very much for having me on. Jeffrey, I know. City Council ran out of time, although it's kind of odd to even say that when we're talking about technology and innovation, and we're in 2026. They did run out of time before reaching the Department of Technology, a portion of today's hearing. Walk us through this major budget cut, because it's down. Pretty astounding. Are we looking at actual headcount reductions or unfilled vacancy slashes? You betcha. And they may still be going over there at City Hall. They were 10 minutes ago when I walked over. So they may yet get to Department of Technology and Innovation. But what we saw in this year's budget cut, that more than 50% reduction you were talking about, no change in headcount at all. Headcount stays the same. What we're seeing instead is a bunch of budget line items completely zeroed out. Things like software maintenance and subscriptions, Thank you. All of those were, you know, million-dollar-plus line items in the previous budget for the Department of Innovation and Technology. This year, they're not there. We did a little more digging. Some of them have gone over to the finance general section, which is a non-departmental category where the city puts expenses that are nominally citywide. So it's a bunch of things that had been DOT's, you know, the information technology department's. responsibility, their budget responsibility, and they've become these citywide expenses that didn't show up in their hearing. Very interesting. Yeah. To put that in perspective, how has the size and funding of the technology department shifted over the last few years compared to what the mayor is proposing now. Yeah, poor DOT has been through the wringer. You know, this is a department that Rahm Emanuel sort of spun up into its modern form as an IT department, and then Lori Lightfoot combined it with fleet and facility management, made the Department of Assets, Information, and Services that lasted through her term. Brandon Johnson split those back apart again. What we saw when that happened, though, was that the departments for the separated, the budgets for the separated departments, Didn't really drop back down that much after the separation. So you had two departments cruising along with their own budgets under Rahm, They're combined, and that budget gets quite a bit larger under Lori. They split back off, but we didn't really see much fall off until this year, where you're seeing some fall off. But a lot of it is achieved by just sort of shuffling Department of Technology expenses into that big citywide fund. So looking across all of today's budget testimony, what was the single most surprising or I'm not contentious thing that came out on the council floor. What we saw before I came over here, they were doing streets and sanitation and Department of Transportation and Department of Transportation, I think, got more pushback from the alders. A lot of questions about some of the individual projects they're doing, the contractors they're bringing on and what the problem that they're going to have with the Department of Transportation's budget that they have with a number of city departments is it's largely self funding. It gets its funds from the road, the vehicle taxes and from. federal and state grants. So that's not money where you can really cut a dollar out of transportation and put it into any other department you want. So the alders have a little bit of an uphill climb trying to rein some of that spending in the way they don't for departments that are mostly funded out of the corporate fund. And turning to the Department of Water Management and Sanitations, are there some additional sticking points that you would expect? Yeah, Department of Water Management is another one where its budget nearly doubled in the last couple of years, and that's from a big federal grant, a stormwater management grant. So whose ward gets that work, where that money ends up going, that's not something the budget tells you, right? They don't break it down to that level. So I think you're going to see discussions, some in public. Perhaps more in private about how that grant plays out over the next couple of years. And once it's gone, what happens when water management's budget starts to shrink again? It's been a lot of online buzz about executive salary bumps, particularly for the environment and aviation department, some going $50,000 to $60,000. Is a pay hike that steep normal during What many are calling a budget crisis, and how are the alders reacting to those millions in added personnel costs? Yeah, those five-digit raises is what one alder called them on the floor. Yeah, those are unusual in any year. You could make the case that Chicago has been in a slow-rolling budget crisis as long as I've been studying it, so, you know, whether one year is more crisis or another. Matter of debate, but I think those raises are raising a lot of eyebrows. And again, at aviation, it's a mostly self-funding department, so you have less of a case there to say, well, if we just cut some salaries there, we can put it somewhere else. Department of Environment, though. Most of their salaries, their personnel budget, that's all coming out of the corporate fund. That money is much more fungible. So I think alders who don't like those five-digit raises and would prefer to see that somewhere else, they have more power to do that with environment than they do with aviation. Thank you so much for coming over and sharing with us. As you said, the conversation is still ongoing right now and will be for several more days. Yes. Well, months. Two more weeks of hearings and then however long of a negotiation. Yeah. Thank you so much for your time and expertise. Thank you. I appreciate it. We appreciate it. All right, everyone. When we get back after this, we're going to have more news and a final break is right here. Welcome back everyone to Chicago Report. We are less than a week out from election day and nearly 1 million Illinois voters have already cast their ballots. That represents about 11% of the state's voters. Majority of those are requested mail-in ballots. One of the most consequential races. is for school board president and political reporter Brandon Pope is sitting down with the three candidates as the campaign season winds down. Brandon, you talked to Hilario Dominguez yesterday. Today was Jessica Biggs day. Yeah, she had a lot to say about state funding for Chicago Public Schools, something we also discussed with Hilario Dominguez as well. And we're going to be doing the same with Victor Henderson next week. Now, Biggs says that working with state lawmakers is critical to getting CPS the funding it needs. The current school board The principal is making her case to lead the district's board. Among the issues we discussed, the special interest money behind her, the potential for school closings, and securing state funding while giving schools certainty about their budgets, Biggs opposes counting on $150 million from Springfield without it being banked. Now, we'll hear more in that interview. Take a listen here. Well, if you become school board president, does that mean you would not attempt to try to obtain that $150 million? Absolutely not, right? We have to be fighting in Springfield. You know, I was down in Springfield at least three times last session. I was there for the evidence-based formula advocacy day. I would continue fighting in Springfield for the resources that we need for our schools. But what I hear from legislators over and over again is that They want to know that we and CPS have a plan and that we're using the resources we have responsibly. You've already said you don't really want to look to borrowing to get money. Are you looking at potentially raising property taxes? Is that a potential alternative? Well, Brandon... Property taxes are regressive. They really harm those of us who are least able to pay. And so when I think about a Springfield strategy, when we can show our state legislators that we are using our resources responsibly and we have a plan, That strategy needs to focus on making sure that our mandated categorical expenses, which is the way that our district is reimbursed to pay for services for our students with disabilities, services for English language learners, that there is a real significant allocation from Springfield to match the cost that we bear here locally. I also think we need to really be in deep conversation with Springfield about our pensions. Only school district in the state whose pension is not fully supported by Springfield. Every other school district in the state is fully supported. So there's not parity there. And that's something that we really need to work on because that would free up significant resources to go to operating expenses, our schools and our classrooms. Do you rule out closing schools in that first term? It needs to always be an absolute last resort. What criteria, aside from community voice, would you use to decide whether a school needs to be closed or consolidated? I mean, I think that's a fair question. I think it really needs to be an expression of a vision and a dialogue to figure out how do we bring to fruition the vision that community has for students. What responsibility do you personally accept when it came to what happened at Burke? Yeah, you know, Brandon, I am really proud of my record as a school leader. I'm proud to have more than doubled enrollment, tripled the size of my staff, shown significant improvements around academic achievement, significant improvements around school culture and climate, to have been a champion and an advocate for my students and my school community. And in that process, you know, We also worked really hard to get kids to school. One of the things that we did was that if a child was not in school, we would call home. And if a child was at home and needed help getting to school and a parent asked for help with transportation, we provided it. I did not keep a copy of appropriate documentation on file. I didn't deserve to be removed for that, but that's what happened. So why should voters trust you to lead the district and lead its leaders when you were in leadership, there was a lack of protocols being followed there too? Well, you know, by and large, the work that I have done in this city in a leadership capacity has been with tremendous integrity. It's been in partnership with communities. It has helped to bring folks together. And so I think that really is the story to tell about my leadership. With all the money that's poured in, especially special interest money, there's been a lot of questions about where your independence would be. Who would you be beholden to? Would it be The donors who have contributed to you, would it be Michael Sachs? What does that look like for you? You know, Brandon, I have a record of independence on this board by way of my votes. I'm actually the only candidate in this race whose voting record can be evaluated. I don't think there is one interest group out there that is happy with every single vote that I've taken. But every vote that I've taken has centered students, it's centered community, and that's the work that I'll continue to do as board president. So I also think it really speaks volumes, the diverse and broad coalition of people that I have brought together. So five days till the election, you hear Jessica Biggs there really stating her case. You can hear the full interview at foxradio1230.com Same thing for the Hilario Dominguez interview as well. Great conversations around really the big issue, state funding. Yeah, and each one of them has things to... A highlight about their background and some accountability to take. That's what it's all about. Victor Henderson is up next. And do you have anything that you want to really hone in with him about? Yeah, you know, I think these other two have a bit more experience when it comes to our schools. So I'm really curious, why does Victor Henderson want to do this? And what does he think makes him the best leader? For school board president, we'll also, we'll talk about all three of these candidates have different things they've been accused of different issues. We'll definitely talk about the domestic abuse allegations, get his response to those. But overall, I really want to understand what his Springfield connections may be and how he views the role of trying to secure money and the budgeting issues, this major crisis that CPS is facing and working with Mayor Brandon Johnson or maybe a future mayor to determine how you're going to get that money. All right. We look forward to that conversation. And again, everyone, thank you so much, Brandon. We'll see you again tomorrow. We will see you all hopefully coming up next week. We won't have another show on Friday, but come Monday, we hope that you'll be joining us. And of course, in between now and then, you can always go on to foxchicago.com for the very latest. Take care.