For far too long, Chicago has battled corruption that undermines the integrity of our government. From scandals dating from 1872 involving Ald. Herman O. Glade to Ald. Ed Burke in 2024, it’s clear that we need a fundamental change. The solution? A comprehensive city charter that outlines rules and accountability measures for our elected officials.
First and foremost, we must consolidate the number of aldermanic seats to 25 by the 2031 election. This reduction would streamline governance and improve the distribution of city resources. Additionally, implementing term limits — for all elected officials — would prevent political fiefdoms and ensure fresh perspectives in leadership.
Another critical reform is the introduction of a recall system for elected officials. Voters deserve the power to remove representatives who fail to act in the public’s interest, thereby holding them accountable at all times.
To curb excessive mayoral influence, we must require a two-thirds majority vote from the City Council for all mayoral appointments to city agencies and boards. This would reduce patronage and cronyism, which have plagued our city for decades. Furthermore, the annual budget must be a transparent and collaborative document, filed 90 days before the end of the fiscal year, with ample opportunity for public input. For the safety of our neighborhoods, all public safety expenditures must also receive a two-thirds majority approval from the City Council. In a city where residents deserve to feel secure, this reform is imperative.
Moreover, any new debt issuance should occur only with unanimous consent from the City Council, ensuring fiscal responsibility and oversight. We should also cap city liability lawsuit settlements at $1 million, requiring council approval to prevent mismanagement of public funds.
Lastly, to restore faith in public office, mayors must resign upon indictment or conviction and disclose any conflicts of interest before elections.
Transparency is essential for rebuilding trust. By adopting a city charter with these tenets, we can strengthen our government, restore integrity and ultimately create a better Chicago for all its residents. The time for reform is now!
— Daniel Boland, executive director, Committee For Chicago Mayor Recall
Supporting foster care
It’s no secret that abuse and injustices in our legal system are rampant in Illinois. Counties throughout the state, including Cook, St. Clair and Madison, are regularly listed among the worst jurisdictions in the country for lawsuit abuse, according to the American Tort Reform Foundation’s annual Judicial Hellholes report. This widespread abuse costs Illinois residents an estimated $4,281 annually per household.
But it’s more than that. What many fail to realize is the direct impact our broken legal system has on our communities — especially the most vulnerable. This was on display when legislation to ensure continuity of care in the foster system stalled in favor of continuing to allow the opportunity for those who wish to take advantage of loopholes for their own financial gain.
SB1696 and HB3138 were introduced to eliminate barriers for foster care providers to obtain insurance or maintain their current coverage. Without sufficient and affordable legal liability insurance, private, not-for-profit agencies caring for the majority of children in Illinois’ foster system cannot continue providing care. As a result, the state would have to take on the care of additional foster children, a task it does not have the capacity to do. This would disrupt the lives of thousands of children by displacing them from their homes and create a devastating foster care crisis, all to continue to allow frivolous lawsuits.
Actions like these helped create a legal landscape ripe for bad actors to take advantage of opportunities to line their pockets by pursuing abusive litigation, unfairly burdening families, businesses and job creators; deterring economic growth; and preventing those who actually need help from receiving it. According to a 2024 report by The Perryman Group, legal system abuse in Illinois imposes direct costs of $47.8 billion on businesses annually, resulting in annual state gross product loss of $24.1 billion and more than 208,000 lost jobs.
The Illinois Coalition for Legal Reform is working to correct this damage by promoting reforms that ensure justice is balanced and accessible, protect businesses from predatory litigation, and safeguard the rights of individuals legitimately in need of compensation and protection.
Ongoing exploitation has turned a system meant to compensate injured parties into a tool for personal gain. When it extends to children, it’s gone too far.
It’s time the state prioritized common sense legal reforms that, at the very least, protect the most vulnerable members of our communities.
— Katie Reilly, executive director, Illinois Coalition for Legal Reform
Newspapers’ importance
Is the newspaper business in Chicago on life support, headed for extinction?
Our Founding Fathers saw freedom of the press as being so important that they enshrined it in the First Amendment to the Constitution. Now comes President Donald Trump with his blunderbuss actions that weaken or threaten to weaken the press across the board, perplexing us all who are paying attention.
Yes, thanks to inroads by TV news and the rising costs of disseminating the printed word, newspapers are struggling to remain profitable, especially with younger audiences abandoning newspapers in favor of electronic media. Unfortunately, this helps make the resulting sustainability prospects for print grow dim.
Making sense of global events requires attention to the news stream, guided by the history of world events. But the fading of the importance of the printed word undermines doing that, in turn weakening society’s ability to ward off tyrants, whose first move is always to grab control of the press.
Such a development can unmoor society by controlling information, as the communists did in Russia. And, yes, it could happen here. Then what?
In this respect, we had best adhere to the wisdom of our Founding Fathers, for our own good.
— Ted Z. Manuel, Chicago
Vallas is cherry-picking
In comparing two Chicago schools — Chicago Hope Academy and Manley Career Academy — Paul Vallas has offered a misleading and unconstructive claim of superiority of a private school education and student achievement as represented by Chicago Hope versus those at Manley in the Chicago Public Schools system (“The tale of two Chicago schools,” March 18).
The subject of Vallas’ simplistic position is explored in the 2023 study “Choice and consequence: Assessing mismatch at Chicago exam schools” by college researchers. The study looks at the complex contingency of the factors necessary to evaluate the relative level of education available to parents between private and public providers.
Additionally, some private schools are administered by a mission statement supported by a community culture, parents and students who value education, whereas for CPS, the delivery of education unfortunately is treated as a political football between CPS and the Chicago Teachers Union, which dilutes its product as a function of administrative and in-school competence for some CPS schools.
Bottom line: Vallas is guilty of cherry-picking to support his claim. In the best of all possible educational worlds, unless parents are seeking an integration of religious or other personal areas of influence coupled with “education,” the voting public should demand elementary and secondary education providers meet an equal standard of education and training that is necessary for students to meet the challenges of living in a complex and challenging world.
— Gerson S. Ecker, Chicago
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