Cut The Tape: The Mayor's best plan so far

If you let them, they will build

We’re continuing a brief series of recent changes to development policy in Chicago today. Earlier this year, back in April, the mayor’s office released a new report entitled ‘Cut The Tape.’ You can read the full report here. It contains a comprehensive set of recommendations on ways to speed up the housing and commercial development process in Chicago.

At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, I think it’s the single best plan from Mayor Johnson’s administration to date.

Overview of the plan

First, some background: in December Johnson issued an executive order for 14 city departments to review their roles in the development process and identify solutions to removing various bottlenecks that slow down the approvals process. Per the report, they met with city leaders and stakeholders in the development world, plus (importantly from my perspective) representatives from other big cities to get a sense for what best practices look like. This report is the culmination of that work. It covers a variety of facets within the development/permitting process - including zoning, the application/meeting process and some aspects of financing - and the idea is simply to make it easier to get development projects done in Chicago by reducing or eliminating the hurdles that city government creates along the way.

In total, the report contains 107 specific proposals to streamline development in Chicago, along with ten top recommendations on their most important steps towards making it easier to build. They also show exactly who is needed to make these ideas happen; about 10-15% can be implemented by the mayor’s office, another quarter require city council approval, and most of the rest need various city commissions to sign off on the changes (one idea also requires state approval).

Reception of the plan was pretty positive across the spectrum. Supporters include YIMBY groups, the not usually pro-Johnson Illinois Policy Institute, and development/business types, and even got some interest beyond Chicago from pro-growth advocates like the Institute for Progress. All in all, that’s pretty good stuff. Let’s talk about why you should care.

Why this matters

Let’s start with the premise: we are not building fast enough in Chicago, and obstacles created by our city government are one of the main reasons why. I think acknowledging that is a pretty big deal, especially for a left-wing administration (‘government regulations are bad’ is not typically a progressive talking point). Growth matters. This plan is intended to help us grow faster by building faster - it’s in the vein of what Ezra Klein has referred to as a “liberalism that builds.” We need a city government that’s capable of encouraging and enabling development to help the city grow faster - not just one that throws up roadblocks and requires endless meetings and permits to do anything. This is how we get there, and it’s important that we do.

Second, I actually think it’s a remarkably good political report. It’s clear and well written. It’s not just a fluff piece full of buzzwords and abstract ideas. It has a concrete list of the reforms they’d like to pursue, along with expected timelines, decision makers, and owners on every single goal. That’s pretty solid from an accountability perspective, and should make this a lot easier to track how they’re doing going forward.

Some particularly good ideas

To start by stealing from others - both the Metropolitan Planning Council and Streetsblog’s Steve Vance have good posts covering some of their favorite ideas; both are worth your time!

Both highlight a number of measures around updating the role of the Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) and simplifying the approvals process - for example, eliminating the need for ZBA approvals to open a salon or barber shop. I’m kind of baffled that we actually require those approvals today - and agree that getting rid of wasteful protectionist permit requirements like that is a good thing.

Speaking of simplifying the process, there are quite a few other proposals around consolidating commissions or reducing the number of meetings, reviews, or approvals required to build things¹. Fewer committees and meetings seems straightforwardly good to me.

The plan also has an emphasis on modernization and technological recommendations², which all strike me as great ideas. These include moving all permit application types to the City’s online portal, digitizing as many applications and forms as possible, and moving to digital signatures. I actually feel like the city of Chicago has a really underrated website - it’s pretty easy to find what you’re looking for - and moving as much as we can online seems like an easy way to improve the process.

Recommendation number 56 is to align the Chicago Construction Code with current modern standards. I haven’t heard this one get much attention, but I think it’s pretty underratedly important too. Various aspects of the city’s construction code make construction more expensive. As an example, until 2022 Chicago’s plumbing code required cast iron materials instead of PVC pipes for drainage and waste systems (we were the last major city to have such a requirement; everyone else started allowing PVC several decades ago). That drives up the cost of materials (iron pipes are more expensive - and harder to source - than PVC ones) and requires a more specialized labor force to install (not all plumbers know how to handle cast iron). I am not an expert in our construction codes, but I imagine that there are still quite a few similar regulations where we can better align with modern standards to lower the cost of construction via reduced materials or labor cost.

Finally, a big one - number 82 is to eliminate minimum off-street parking requirements for new developments citywide. I’ve briefly talked about parking minimums before in the context of zoning reform and housing affordability, but this again is a great idea. I’m not someone who wants to get rid of cars altogether in Chicago - I have one I drive a reasonable amount - but there is simply no good reason in my mind why the city should require a set number of parking spaces per apartment, instead of allowing developers and tenant/resident demand dictate the appropriate number of spots. Reduced square footage devoted to parking means more square footage devoted to housing, and that’s a good thing.

Things I would’ve liked to change

That’s not to say there isn’t room for improvement. There aren’t too many bad ideas I see in the list, but there are a few that strike me as wishy-washy or watered down:

• Recommendation 6 is to “Increase team building activities across City departments to build relationships and a collaborative working culture.” I’m not quite sure what that means, but it sounds a lot like, I dunno, having more department happy hours or outings to escape rooms? I agree strengthening relationships and collaboration is important, but I don’t really think that something like this deserves inclusion on a list of this nature. Come on now.

• Recommendation 52 is to “Explore the feasibility of using electronic signatures on contracts.” Electronic signatures seem like a great idea - but don’t ‘explore’ whether we can, just do it! Further down, Recommendation 74 is to *actually accept* electronic signatures and PDF copies for zoning applications at the DPD - if they’re able to set a goal of doing it, I don’t know why the Department of Technology & Innovation can’t too. Similarly, Recommendation 95 is to “Explore options to digitize applications that are subject to review by the Chicago Plan Commission (CPC).” It’s sitting in between two recommendations that actually involve Digitizing processes and forms - so why is this one about exploring options instead of making it happen? For what it’s worth, I see a total of 12 recommendations³ which have this watered down “explore doing X thing” language, and my complaint extends to all of them (these are just the two most egregious in my mind). Maybe this is just a nitpicky linguistic thing, but our goals should be to actually change things, not to explore changing things. Will they get credit for accomplishing the goal if they explore doing a thing and then decide not to actually implement it? Obviously they shouldn’t. Do or do not, there should be no ‘explore.’

Additionally, there are also a few things I wish they included in the recommendations. One quick example is reducing permitting requirements for smaller home repairs. I own my own home in the city, and it seems nuts to me that Chicago requires homeowners to file permits with the city to do their own minor plumbing repairs - and forbids them from doing any electrical work at all. Now, to be clear, as a good law-abiding citizen I have certainly never changed out my bathroom sink or shower fixtures, just like I’ve definitely never ever fixed any faulty outlets on my own or installed any of my own light fixtures⁴ - but my impression is that these permitting laws are ignored pretty frequently. I don’t imagine it would have much of an impact on housing construction, but why not just get rid of some of these onerous rules to make homeowners’ lives a bit easier?

I’d also have liked to see them go further on some of the permitting-related measures. Looking outside of Chicago, earlier this year in Pennsylvania Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro launched an initiative to speed up the permitting approval process by requiring state agencies to refund application fees if they don’t issue permits on time - and the state’s permitting backlog is down by over 40% as a result. I’d love to see something similar in Chicago, and make our permitting departments put some real skin in the game.

Finally, I’d really have liked more metrics and targets around what we’re trying to achieve with this plan. The report has this table around proposed outputs and outcomes for success, all of which make sense:

But what does “more units” mean? Are we targeting 5 new units, or 5,000? Are we targeting 2 fewer days for City feedback turnaround, or 20 fewer? We can keep track of how many of the 107 recommendations get implemented, but it’s hard for us to measure how successful the recommendations are at translating into actual policy impact if we can’t put some definitive targets around these goals.

A report is just a report

Back when the plan first came out, I spoke to a few people who work in development about it. They all had a pretty similar read: it seems like really great stuff in theory - now let’s see if it actually goes anywhere. City Hall has a history of putting forth ideas on reforming zoning or development regulations which don’t make it far past the finish line (for example, Mayor Lightfoot’s efforts to curb aldermanic prerogative).

With that in mind, the key is to see how quickly the administration can make progress towards these goals. Thankfully the full list of 107 ideas includes timelines on implementation which provides a nice benchmark. Seven of the 107 were already done as of the time of the report, which strikes me as kind of cheating, but that still leaves 100 to go. Of those, 26 had a timeline of 3 months, which would put their target dates for implementation by… *checks calendar* …today!

Five of those 26 are recommendations where the ultimate decisionmaker is the Mayor or the Mayor’s Office, which I certainly hope they’re able to wrap up. Another five are specifically things which require City Council approval - I’ll be particularly curious to see how many of these get done, given what seems like a sometimes questionable relationship between the Mayor’s Office and City Council (it’s worth noting that City Council’s Zoning Committee still lacks a permanent chair after Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa was forced to resign in November).

I originally intended to put together a dashboard to monitor progress on those 26 (and the full 107) recommendations, but my understanding is that the Mayor’s Office itself intends to make some sort of status updates available sometime soon on the Cut the Tape report website.⁵ I’m hoping that does happen, but if it doesn’t, I’ll be back with more on this.

The Bottom Line

• Cut The Tape is a big deal and a really great report. These ideas are exactly what we need and we should be pushing them forward for the good of Chicago.

• As in all things, the execution is the bigger question mark. We need to ensure these ideas actually get done, and don’t just sit in a drawer somewhere. We also need to measure how these implemented ideas translate into measurable successes.

1. Like recommendations 7, 8, 9, 15, 16, 17, 23, 24, 38, and 64.

2. This includes numbers 45, 52, 54, 60, 74, and 87 to 96.

3. Numbers 7, 19, 23, 29, 39, 41, 45, 52, 68, 78, 86, and 95.

4. This goes without saying, but I’ve also obviously never driven above the speed limit on a city road, and when biking I have certainly come to a complete stop at every stop sign I’ve ever encountered.

5. Just for the record, as of 5pm on July 5th I cannot find any publicly available updates on the status of any Cut The Tape initiatives - though if I am wrong on this, please let me know! I do hope that an update is posted in the near future and will be looking out for one.