Chicago’s billionaire families that own teams and stadiums are lining up to demand at least TWO BILLION public dollars to build or upgrade new/existing stadiums! The Mckaskey and Reinsdorfs hae combined wealth of OVER $2 billion. Let them build their own damn stadiums! Sign the petition here.
Help publish “Nobody Sent Us” How We Derailed Chicago’s Bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics – the story of the No Games Chicago campaign from 2009. Donate to help market the book.
Have you heard of We Will Chicago? This is a new city-wide planning effort launched by the city with a few major partners. Here’s my comment on their web site:
“I am deeply suspicious. The city has a long history of top down planning loaded with clouted mega nonprofits whose HQ are in the Loop and who are run by former Daley insiders and for-profit consultants (mostly White). What have you all given us so far that makes you the proper home for this work? Pushing the 2016 Olympic bid on us? Pushing privatization scams? Standing to the side as over policing runs rampant in communities of color? Standing by as TIFs stole $10 billion and sent billions to clouted developers (who will gain even more from this work, I’m certain). Where were you all when the two racist super TIFs were approved for Lincoln Yards and Project 78 that will divert $2.3 billion in public dollars to subsidize two mega developments in affluent White Chicago? Oh wait, the VP of the Metropolitan Planning Council was a “public representative” on the Joint Review Board that voted to APPROVE the Lincoln Yards TIF despite hundreds of people protesting and seven aldermen-elect protesting in the street on the morning of that cursed vote. No, I would say, surrender this approach and turn over all funding (past and forthcoming) for this work to grassroots groups who are struggling to make ends meet and who deliver real service and justice every day DESPITE your planning and love of clouted projects that shower love and resources on already prosperous parts of the city.”
They deleted my comment! Here is what they said:
“Hi Tom_Tresser, Thank you for signing up and providing feedback on the 2020 Citywide Plan Referendum consultation. Unfortunately your comment was removed by our moderators because it breached our moderation rule: The comment was potentially defamatory . Comment Details:
Project: 2020 Citywide Plan Referendum
Topic: Citywide Plan Referendum Survey
Moderators Comments: The comment was potentially defamatory. Please edit before reposting. Thank you.
If you feel our decision should be reviewed, please reply to this email with an explanation of the reason/s your comment should be reinstated. Your argument will be considered by our moderation team in due course. We will advise you if we change our decision. Please note, however, the decision of the moderation team is final and following a review, no further correspondence will be entered into. Moderation of this site is provided by Bang the Table Pty Ltd.
Here’s my reply (I was agitated): “What a load of crap. There was nothing “defamatory” about my comment. Just some facts and a strong opinion. How dare you silence my comment – I’m a taxpayer, a long time activist, educator, and former candidate for county-wide office. The leaders of the Metropolitan Planning Council are adults and they can take a dose of criticism, as should the mayor and all the people behind this planning effort. Your decision mocks the mayor’s repeated declarations of “transforming” Chicago’s corrupt and arrogant government. It reminds me of the days of Mayor Richard J. Daley turning the mike off on aldermen who got too disagreeable.
I ask you to reverse your decision and post my comment as I wrote it.
If you are offended by my few words, you better get ready for much stronger stuff as grassroots organizers get wind of this nonsense.
By the way, who, exactly is the “Moderation Team” – do you work for the Bang The Table that has offices in Australia and Boulder, CO. What do you know about the civics here in Chicago?”
This is what I posted on LinkedIn on May 15.
“There can be no real equity in Chicago as long as TIFs roll along. INVEST Southwest promises $250 million in TIF funding for ten communities of color where 488,000+ people live right now. The two super TIFs for the mega developments Lincoln Yards and Project 78 have committed $2.4 BILLION in TIF subsidies. These projects are in White, affluent parts of Chicago. NO ONE lives there now. And now as THIRD mega-project, the Michael Reese Hospital site (on the lake front) wants $200 million in TIF public dollars. See our arguments for ABOLISHING TIFs at https://tinyurl.com/TIFs-Social-Justice. Tom Tresser – tom@civiclab.us”
On may 16, Paul O’Connor, the Senior Urban Strategist for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill posted this response:
“I have no idea whether TIF should be repealed or not, but I do know you are making a disingenuous, if popular, argument. On Lincoln Yards and 78, the developers have to build the TIF-covered infrastructure with their own money — all risk on them, not the taxpayers. If they build those bridges and CTA stations etc. as they promised, then they get the TIF money. But you suggest to those reading that this TIF money is cash that can be spread around. Not so. Usually, the TIF money doesn’t even exist before a development changes lower-valued land to higher-valued land for tax purposes: the value difference is the “increment” (the “I” in TIF). Where the cash comes in is that local units of government postpone collecting the full taxes taxes on the newly created property values, and the developer keeps a portion of the cash value it has created. But it’s not right to link the apple of INVEST South + West with the oranges of these other two projects under cover of racial discrimination.”
Here is my reply from May 17.
“Paul – thanks for taking the time to comment on my post. Here’s how I look at these mega-projects. First – why do we need to pick up any related costs to their for-profit ventures? As I look around the research and online posting by well respected developers and real estate firms, I find that developers are responsible for 100% of construction inside NEW communities – which Lincoln Yards and Project 78 are (and the newly announced Burnham Shore, aka Michael Reese Hospital site is). So – if you and your clients want to build mega-projects on these vacant or almost-vacant sites, then they need to pay for them, including new streets, water lines, and, yes, even a new subway station if that station’s main purpose is to serve the new development. This leads to the second, related, objection. Why should the siting of these mega-projects in mostly White affluent parts of the city DRIVE public infrastructure planning and spending? The good (mostly Black) residents of the far south side have been waiting for the Red Line extension for 30 years. I suppose that the mostly White people who live in the Lincoln Yards project will enjoy a new Metra Station and the mostly White people living in Project 78 will enjoy their new Red Line station way before the folks in Pullman board at their Red Line stop. You say that the tax money is created FROM the developments and goes to pay the developers back for their risky investments in public infrastructure. But I say those investments are part of the deal – part of the overall risk of building in the first place. Let them prosper – by all means – with NO TIF MONEY. This way our public services – most notably our public schools which serve a student body predominately of color – will not be starved of those property tax dollars for 23 years. Come on, the developers are imagining that thousands of people will be living in their units – many will have kids that will go to public schools – all will use public services – but NONE will pay for those services via their property taxes for a GENERATION. That pushes up the taxes on the rest of us. That is not right. That is naked inequity. And here’s a fact that needs to be shouted from our civic rooftops – buried in the fine print for the Lincoln Yards and the Project 78 TIFs are $800 MILLION in finance fees. Now that is plainly obscene. Haven’t we sent enough of our public funds to Wall Street? That’s $800 million that will NOT go to our public schools, public libraries, public parks, or any public purpose. And lastly, I object to clouted and wealthy firms like SOM running the development show in Chicago. I object to these large developers showing cash on the mayor, the aldermen, and elected from the Governor to the Attorney General and even justices of the Illinois Supreme Court. The CivicLab has documented too many cases of TIF recipients delivering bounteous campaign dollars to elected officials over the years. You and your firm, SOM, are masters at Chicago politics. SOM, you, and four other senior members of the Chicago office have contributed $136,944 to local electeds – that I could find using public records and a PC connected to the Internet. Imagine what we could discover if had vast resources like you have available to you. But your firm has been connected to Chicago politics for over 50 years. “Architecture was not a passive component but rather an active component of the political machine under [Richard J.] Daley” states Bill Motchan in a 2014 post on Chicagoarchitecture.com in an article entitled How Chicago’s Mayor Used the Power of Architecture to Influence Politics. So, I think the picture of TIFs in Chicago is one of clout and inequity. We have much more evidence and analysis on this topic and invite you to visit https://tinyurl.com/TIFs-Social-Justice to review the foundation of our argument. The full set of arguments with sources can be found in our new book “Eliminate TIFs & Establish the Right To Development” which can be downloaded at www.civiclab.us.
I’ve been thinking about “public” and working to define, defend, and expand it for the past 12 years. Here is the first of a new series of webisodes I’m calling the “Great Public Report” as a way to talk about and stimulate dialog around the concept of “public.” Please watch it at our YouTube Channel and subscribe. Follow me at @tomstee and post using #MorePublic. If we don’t protect the Public, it will be taken from us.
Check out the multiple perspectives on economic development for Chicago in the April 6, 2020 issue of Crain’s Chicago Business. I call for the abolition of TIFs and a new approach to grassroots economic development. The CEO of Sterling Bay has a different idea!
The utter failure of the Trump Administration to deal with the global pandemic is a stark reminder of why we need a strong, competent, nimble, and service-oriented PUBLIC sector – ready to act powerfully for the public good. Take a look at Douglas Amy’s book “Government is Good – An Unapologetic Defense of a Vital Institution.” If you want a great response to these times, then check out the movement for a Green New Deal and help make it happen!
“Koch Brothers network planning massive spending increase for 2018” – PBS News Hour 1/29/18
“FBI Condemns Push to Release Secret Republican Memo” – New York Times 1/31/18
America’s nonprofit leaders – wake up before it’s too late.
President Trump may well be a traitor doing the bidding of Russian politicians and plutocrats. He may well be dismantling our government in order to enrich himself and his investors.
But we really don’t know until we see his income tax returns.
While we wait to see what economic interests he is serving, we are watching high crimes and misdemeanors play out in the White House the likes we have not seen since President Nixon actively sabotaged the Watergate investigations from the Oval Office.
Now President Trump is actively suborning an ongoing investigation by the FBI into his connections with Russia.
He has put people in charge of federal departments who are hostile to their purpose. The latest scandal is the resignation of Brenda Fitzgerald, the head of the Centers for Disease Control, after it was revealed that she had bought tobacco company stock AFTER she became the leader of the agency. Lest we forget, one of the jobs of the CDC is to reduce American use of tobacco products.
This President is wrecking our democracy and is attempting to return America to the wonderful 1830’s where slavery was legal and women and children were chained to the loom and there were no restrictions on business or profit seeking.
I see little hope that a Republican Congress will criticize any of this, let alone rein him in. It’s a far cry from 1973 when a bi-partisan threat of an impeachment trial in the Senate drove Richard Nixon from power (only to have him pardoned by President Ford).
It’s time to declare war on him and his supporters.
I’m calling on all nonprofits in America to take up this cause. Rise up and work to defeat the policies of Donald Trump.
Start by working to fire all of his Republican and Democratic supporters at every level of government in the 2018 elections.
Continue to work to defeat President Trump should he seek re-election in 2020. If he is not the Republican nominee in 2020, then work to elect the Democrat – whoever it is.
Start now.
A few suggestions on how you might do this.
Register people to vote. Drop EVERYTHING your agency does and collaborate across your communities to get ALL people over 18 registered. Work to overturn laws that disenfranchise folks, suppress voter turnout, or contribute to purging voters from the roles. And then work to get people to the polls to vote.
Inform your constituents and allies that you all must work together here. Educate, agitate, and activate. Hold public forums to explain how your work is being sabotaged by the Republican agenda and that soon your work will become IMPOSSIBLE to do if President Trump’s agenda is unchecked.
Hold candidate forums for offices up for decision in your jurisdiction. Demand that candidates show up and declare their intentions to support social justice and take care of people. Don’t accept the narrative that we are broke and can’t afford to fix what’s broken in America. That is plain nonsense. The United States has PLENTY of money to prepare for and wage war. We shower the wealthy with tax breaks and outright gifts of subsidy. We allow companies to offshore trillions of dollars and escape taxation. We waste trillions and don’t collect trillions of dollars.
Finally, send messages to your constituents with all this call to action. Endorse candidates who will work to repair and save America – not to fleece her and to sell her to the Russians.
But wait, won’t this endanger our nonprofit status, you ask?
Everything I want you to do is permissible under current law right up to the call for endorsing candidates. But heck, the President wants to give that privilege to churches (who, he feels, will on the whole support him and his allies) – so what are YOU waiting for?
So – go for it. Declare war on President Trump and ALL his allies.
After all, what good does it do being a nonprofit in the Capital District of “The Hunger Games”? Or in George Orwell’s dystopian “1984”? Or in Nazi Germany?
Tom Tresser
Chicago
February 1, 2018
Tom is a civic educator and public defender who has been doing grassroots democracy work in Chicago since 1990. He is the co-founder of The CivicLab (www.civiclab.us), a do-tank devoted to building power for justice. tom@tresser.com
