The public is rightly up in arms over the vast power an unelected, unaccountable person is exerting over the chief executive of their government. Citizens are demanding to know how this interloper leverages influence with the elected leader.
The person runs an organization with remarkable sway over a large bureaucracy, yet their work is not subject to public records requests. They’ve asserted they’re acting with the greatest transparency, a claim contradicted by an opaque track record.
They gained power by helping the chief executive win office. They offered up financial resources, an ability to marshal the passion of followers and artful use of social media to help win the election.
And they’re now cashing in — exerting untold influence and operating virtually without oversight.
Just who is this person? Elon Musk fits the bill. And right here in Chicago, so does Stacy Davis Gates, the president of the Chicago Teachers Union.
Musk is exerting powers far greater, with more consequential impact, than Gates ever will have. But the traits they share — unaccountable, self-interested, powerful — are unmistakable.
It’s even arguable that Gates has more power over the person she helped elect than Musk has over his. After all, no one is saying Musk controls President Donald Trump.
As a candidate, Johnson promised to serve “all of Chicago,” not just the CTU constituency he was part of as a union organizer. But consider Johnson’s record so far as mayor, and it’s hard to find examples of him breaking the bridle and going against Gates.
Whether Gates steers Johnson with a soft-cushioned halter or a steel bit, no one can say just yet. Not enough details have surfaced. But we could get a glimpse soon, thanks to an ongoing legal skirmish that started with a lawsuit Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez filed in December, seeking to prevent Johnson’s hand-picked school board from firing him.
The ouster of Martinez capped a monthslong struggle between the schools chief and City Hall, egged on by Gates’ CTU. The pitched battle started when Martinez refused to obtain a high-interest loan of $300 million to cover a CTU salary hike and the cost of a city pension payment owed to nonteaching CPS staff.
The sitting school board resigned en masse last fall rather than fire Martinez at Johnson’s behest. The members Johnson appointed ultimately did the deed. Gates denied complicity in Martinez’s ouster throughout, demurring about her evident influence on Johnson, not to mention her public statements asserting Martinez was not qualified for his job.
A court ruling has enabled Martinez to stay on the job, and in the latest legal twist, Gates and Jackson Potter, her second in command, are seeking to quash a demand for records issued by Martinez’s lawyer. Those would include CTU communications with the mayor’s office at the height of the power struggle with Martinez, as well as an effort to depose the two CTU leaders.
If those records do come out, and if the public obtains sworn testimony taken during deposition, we likely will get a glimpse into the machinations surrounding Martinez’s ouster. We might even gain insight into the power dynamic between Gates and Johnson, the mayor she helped elect.
This, in the end, is a purpose our court system can singularly serve. Records produced in response to discovery requests and sworn depositions as part of the adversary process are time-tested tools for uncovering the truth.
State and federal Freedom of Information Acts are handy tools for exposing public records. But when a private entity is involved, such as Gates’ CTU, or a novel quasi-governmental agency, such as Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, courts can be our lone best hope for getting to the bottom of things.
After all, Gates and her CTU are not subject to public records requests, and it’s not yet clear whether Musk and DOGE ultimately may be: The courts likely will need to sort this out, too.
In both cases, the stakes for the public are high. CPS is responsible for educating 325,000 Chicago students, while also serving their parents, and answering to the taxpayers who support the nation’s fourth-largest school district. As for Musk: He is in the early days of upending the entire federal bureaucracy.
Operating from her perch at the CTU, Gates wields substantial influence over the Chicago school system. She does so without oversight and with accountability only to the union members she represents. And the amount of sway she holds over Johnson remains a mystery.
The demand for records of Gates’ activity is a reminder, on a local level, of a core value of our country’s independent court system. The rules of evidence and ability to demand discovery of the truth are sometimes our best hope for holding government accountable. If Johnson really is under Gates’ thumb, voters have a right to know. If she in fact engineered Martinez’s ouster — even as both Gates and Johnson denied that was the case — we need to know that, too.
The more power our elected officials grant to unaccountable individuals, the more important this truth-seeking becomes. Gates and Potter are seeking to quash Martinez’s demand for information, so the decision on records and depositions will be up to Cook County Judge Joel Chupack.
At the national level, the lawsuits seeking to rein in Musk’s unchecked power are beginning to pile up. Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul has been commendably active in seeking to protect Illinois from exercises of power by Musk and Trump that may exceed the executive branch’s constitutional limits. Some such actions will wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court, where the future definition of executive power will hang in the balance.
At a time when nongovernment actors are exerting unprecedented powers, in Chicago and in Washington, the courts may be the best way to discover who is really in charge — and who is doing what to whom.
David Greising is president and CEO of the Better Government Association.
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