Some things to be thankful for

A short reflection on some good things here in Chicago

Happy Thanksgiving!

Today is a great holiday. We spend a lot of time in this newsletter telling you about Chicago’s problems and talking about things we need to fix. That’s important. We can’t get better if we don’t acknowledge where we’re falling short. But there’s a lot going right with our city too, and in the spirit of Thanksgiving, we wanted to focus on some of the happenings we’re grateful for this year in Chicago.

Quantum Campus development

Last Thursday, the Chicago Plan Commission approved the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park, a new development coming to the site of the former US Steel South Works plant on the south side. This is just the latest step in the city and state’s efforts to make Chicago a national leader in quantum computing - or a “Silicon Valley of quantum development,” as Governor Pritzker has put it. The project is trending in a great direction - in July, DARPA announced that they’d be investing $140 million into the campus, and quantum startup PsiQuantum announced that they’d be joining the campus as anchor tenant.

This is awesome. Chicago has some structural advantages for these sorts of energy-intensive technologies - the city is on the shores of one of the largest freshwater bodies in the world, Illinois produces more nuclear energy than any other state, we’re close to Fermilab and Argonne - and we need to capitalize on those advantages. Fostering projects like this can be huge in propelling our economy forward for decades to come. It’s also really great to see (thus far) the project overcome some of the common NIMBY skepticism you get towards any large developments like this one. It would be really shortsighted to risk a project that could mean so much, and has so many moving parts, over the objections of a small subset of neighbors. It’s great to see it moving ahead.

The 1901 Project

The proposed mega-development to transform the Near West side area surrounding the United Center has me really excited. At a time when some other big projects seem to be stalling out or pushing for massive public subsidies, it’s really cool to see something that could have such a transformational impact take place with private dollars, particularly in an area that could use more investment.

The project is expected to include up to 9,500 apartments - and nearly 2,000 affordable - which is particularly great to see. It’s also worth pointing out that the development is expected to increase tax revenue by over $100 million annually - that’s as much as advocates were expecting from Bring Chicago Home, just from one private development project! This is exactly the kind of growth we need in Chicago.

A city council that’s willing to exert itself

For many decades, the mayor’s office had basically all the political power in the City of Chicago. That was kind of a weird thing - on paper, most of the power lives within the City Council - but in practice mayors have generally ended up running the show, with aldermen often focusing only on more local neighborhood concerns. That kind of rubber stamping has a lot of downsides; it’s how you get things like a 40-5 vote in favor of the infamous parking meter deal. Lots of parties - U of C, the Civic Federation, the Inspector General’s office - have proposed reforms to put a check on the mayor’s power, but most haven’t gone anywhere. The recent contention and dysfunction we’re seeing in city government, however, seems to suggest this is changing. Alderman Brendan Reilly (42nd) spoke to this recently as it relates to the city budget, referring to the “uncharted territory” of City Council taking on more power over the budget process. Having a more empowered council is important in establishing the kind of checks and balances we need to ensure good governance. We’re also seeing more discussion amongst civic leaders about better encoding those checks and balances more formally in a new city charter - all of which leave me excited about the potential for better governance ahead.

Fiscal responsibility at the state level

Like Chicago, Illinois’s public finance issues are well-known. But things are trending better at the state level. Last November, we had our ninth ratings agency upgrade under Governor Pritzker when Fitch upgraded the state from A- to A. This June, Susana Mendoza’s office announced that the state had its third straight year of paying off all bills on time and having cash on hand left over. The 2025 state budget drew praise from the Civic Federation for its continued focus on improving our financial position, and restrained spending growth to only half the rate of inflation.

At a time when so much of city finances - and leadership - remain dysfunctional, it’s nice to see an example of what good public leadership looks like down in Springfield.

A good county budget, too

At the county level, we also saw a budget this year which passed without raising property taxes or fees and sufficiently funds pensions. The County’s non-pension debt burden is also super low - debt service is less than 3% of the annual budget, and we’re down to only $2.7 billion or so in total county debt outstanding. Maybe we’re grading too generously - we certainly have a lot of other non-fiscal problems at the county level - but on the fiscal side, things are looking quite good here.

Promising signs from our first school board election

It will be a while before we actually have an independent school board, and there’s room for plenty of shenanigans in the meantime. But the results from the November elections were really promising. A bunch of qualified and committed independent candidates stepped up to run, and many of them did quite well.

Only one of the ten winning candidates campaign in favor of the Chicago Teachers Union-backed high-interest loan, and CTU-backed candidates make up a minority of the newly elected members. Voters sent a clear message that they’re paying attention to these races, and don’t want to reward irresponsible decisions in the short-term.

A national focus on good urban governance

In the wake of the presidential election, we’re also seeing a broader wake-up nationally about fixing urban governance. Ezra Klein, Josh Barro, and others have started a broader conversation about the need for Democrats in big cities to focus on actually delivering positive material benefits to the public. These ideas are the same ones we’ve been advocating at A City That Works since the beginning: a government that can actually do things and is able to do them well. It’s really great to see those ideas get more attention on the big stage.

Our readers

Finally, on a more personal note - we are still often surprised that there are (a lot of!) people out there willing to read our ramblings about various public policy challenges in Chicago. This is a labor of love, and it’s very personally rewarding to see our subscriber base keep growing and see people enjoy the content we’re put out. So thanks for reading - and have a wonderful holiday weekend.