Chicago is drifting.
More career politicians and people beholden to special interests aren’t gonna fix it. I’m not a politician. I’m a lifelong Chicagoan. I’m a builder and a fixer.
It’s time for new leadership focused on growth, affordability, and safety.
Chicago is too good of an opportunity to waste.
Join the fight at https://t.co/WOT6Yokjzs
I’d argue this is the same issue with tent encampments in parks. The solution cannot continue to be trains and parks, there has to be a better near term solution while we tee up longer term solutions
The first step toward solving this very real problem is to stop disguising it in soft language.
There are hundreds of homeless people, all dealing with severe mental health issues or chronic drug addiction (or both) living on the Blue Line.
And the city does nothing.
So much for transparency and accessibility. What a complete cluster this process has been from the beginning. I know it’s easy to Monday morning QB but there are about 1 million ways this could have gone better
Thinking of this process map a developer recently shared at the second public design meeting for a neighborhood proposal and you start to understand why we aren’t building very much in this city…
This is accurate, and true in a lot of businesses as well. It’s a large contributor to the slow death by bureaucracy that cities face. Which is why I believe we need new leaders that aren’t in it to climb the political ladder and more likely to introduce / execute new ideas…vs more bureaucrats that will at best keep us in neutral and at worst keep us heading down and to the right
People forget that the operative principal for a lot of City departments (here and probably everywhere) is that you can only get fired for allowing something new and having it go wrong. There's almost no career risk if you just delay, study, and task force new ideas to death.
Doing a little yard work and thinking about a few things I’d fix at City Hall while I’m at it.
🌱 Term limits for aldermen and the mayor 🌱 Move elections to November so more people actually vote 🌱 Cap mayoral fundraising at $5 million and get some money out of politics 🌱 Right-size City Council 🌱 If you win a primary or general election, do the job voters elected you to do — at least a year before running for something else
Nothing revolutionary. Just some common-sense reforms.
Groundbreaking legislation for Illinois families living with #epilepsy has passed the IL General Assembly & awaits the Governor's signature! Once signed, it will expand access to FDA-cleared seizure detection devices through both IL Medicaid & private insurance coverage (1 of 3)
Bring back ShotSpotter, more detectives, more officers back on patrol
“The city’s overall progress is masking how deeply gun violence still shapes daily life in some areas. In some places, it’s actually ticking up. So far this year, shootings in parts of the South Side are on the rise by more than 20 percent, and overall killings by more than 50 percent in 2026 compared to 2025”
I wrote about ShotSpotter over at @acitythatworks. Before we dig into the efficacy of the technology, it'd be helpful for everyone to be a little clearer about what whether they *want* police officers to rapidly respond to shootings in the first place. (1/6)
Continue to advocate for this to be applied and expanded to Chicago municipal pensioners as well. Won’t be right for everyone, but it can be a win-win for state and retiree who wants cash flow now and / or certainty of payment
Nothing exposes the fragility of Illinois' pension system quite like this:
Over 15,000 state retirees have voluntarily forfeited 30% to 40% of their pension's face value just to get their money out of Springfield's hands and into a private IRA.
Lawmakers expanded the state's pension buyout program as part of the state budget for fiscal year 2027. It will save taxpayers an estimated $1.4 billion.
Workers are fleeing the system because they simply, and justifiably, do not trust Illinois politicians to keep the funds stable.
Only a constitutional amendment will fix the crisis in the long term, but we will take the short-term win in the meantime.
https://t.co/5UWE1U8GJJ
Like I’ve written before: “The reason Americans flee to suburban sprawl, the reason we can't build proper bus shelters or maintain public restrooms, the reason our downtowns empty at 5 p.m. while Tokyo thrives at midnight, is not because we lack urbanist ambition. It is because we have refused to maintain the baseline of public order that makes shared urban life possible.”