MuniLand

Chicago public school teachers went on strike after attempts to reach an agreement with public school negotiators failed on Sunday. There are many issues at stake for Chicago, but the struggle is basically about job security and control of hiring decisions by school principals. As school reform is being further implemented in Chicago, teachers are bearing the brunt of tightening fiscal priorities. Reuters reports:

In Chicago, last-minute contract talks broke down not over pay, but over the reform agenda, both sides said Sunday. The union would not agree to Emanuel’s proposal that teacher evaluations be based in large measure on student test scores.

Nor would the union accept his push to give principals more autonomy over hiring, weakening the seniority system that has long protected veteran teachers. Already, the demographics of the teaching profession in Chicago have notably shifted, as the private managers who run charter schools tend to favor rookie teachers who are younger and far less likely to be minorities, studies have shown.

The increased emphasis on centralization and testing is costly for the school system and necessary resources are being wrestled from the teachers. The management of Chicago public schools laid out its strategy for taking funds from teacher salaries and benefits to fund more centralized administration, charter schools and testing in its 2011 financial filing:

As we look forward to the FY2013 budget cycle, we have identified numerous initiatives, such as the longer school day, common core state standards implementation and a comprehensive teacher evaluation process, which will require significant funds. In addition, we continue to invest in charter schools and turn-around actions to support our continued drive for improved school performance. These incremental appropriations will require tough decisions to find savings to offset the additional costs.

Big trouble is brewing in Chicago, the nation’s second-largest school district, as negotiations between the city and teacher representatives moves closer to a strike deadline on September 10. Chicago teachers have filed a strike notice that, if acted on, would be their first strike since 1987. The main disagreement between the teachers and the city is Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan to lengthen both the school day and the year. The district is offering teachers an eight percent raise over four years, and it wants to form a committee to create a new pay system.

Chicago teachers, the second highest-paid teachers nationally after New York City, say the fight is not about compensation, but rather that the mayor is actively withholding resources from the Chicago Public Schools system. The rhetoric has become inflammatory. Teachers’ union president Karen Lewis called Emanuel “a liar and a bully” while exhorting a union crowd at a Labor Day rally.

The political ramifications of the Chicago feud stretch far beyond the shores of Lake Michigan. Emanuel was previously President Barack Obama’s chief of staff. He is still a leading Democratic figure representing an important voting block in Illinois. The opposition he has created with Chicago teachers, an important base of the Democratic party, could not have come at a worse time as the incumbent president and Democratic-controlled Senate fight to stay in office. There is more at stake with a teacher’s strike than whether Chicago school children will miss a few days of school.

Is the Ricketts family of Chicago bipolar? The patriarch, billionaire and Chicago Cubs owner Joe Ricketts, blasted onto the national stage yesterday, when the New York Times reported that his super PAC considered running an ad campaign entitled “The Defeat of Barack Hussein Obama: The Ricketts Plan to End His Spending for Good.” His super PAC, the Ending Spending Action Fund, also lobbies against excessive federal spending and special-interest earmarks.

Meanwhile Ricketts’s son Tom, the general chairman of the Cubs, has been lobbying Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago and President Obama’s former chief of staff, for $150 million in tax revenues to renovate Wrigley Field, the home of his family’s Major League Baseball team. The irony of Joe Ricketts blasting the president for special-interest spending while his son grovels for taxpayer support to renovate his baseball stadium is enormous. The Ricketts family needs to meet around their kitchen table and get this matter worked out, because it makes both the father and son look clueless.

Greg Hinz of Crain’s Chicago Business has the local scoop:

Did the Ricketts family just knee-cap its own plan to rebuild Wrigley Field with a healthy dose of Chicago taxpayer cash?

Two major American cities are embarking on large capital programs, but in very different ways. Boston Mayor Thomas Menino has a $1.8 billion, five-year plan that he will fund with municipal bonds, while Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is trying to push a $7 billion plan, which will be paid for by private investors, through the city council. It would be hard to find to two more dissimilar approaches to rebuilding America’s urban infrastructure or two more different lists of who will reap the monetary benefit of the improvements.

Boston approaches its infrastructure needs with a rolling five-year schedule of projects that is updated on an annual basis. This allows for more controlled expensing and planning. In contrast, Chicago’s Emanuel announced his infrastructure privatization plan in January with very few details and buy-in only from the private investors who will benefit from their involvement. The Chicago proposal gives control of infrastructure decisions to a panel of four private citizens and one city council member with no ability for the city council to have oversight on projects and contracts. Chicago has a terrible history of leaving taxpayer money on the table in its privatization efforts. In 2008 the city’s parking meters were leased out to private investors for a tiny sum:

Chicago drivers will pay a Morgan Stanley-led partnership at least $11.6 billion to park at city meters over the next 75 years, 10 times what Mayor Richard Daley got when he leased the system to investors in 2008.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced the Chicago Infrastructure Trust yesterday, which was described this way by the Chicago Sun-Times:

A bus-rapid transit system with higher fares for faster rides. A CTA Red Line extension to 130th Street with distance-based fares. High-speed Internet service with a fee paid by businesses and individuals.

Those are just a few of the “transformational” projects that might be bankrolled by the “Infrastructure Trust” unveiled Thursday by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and former President Bill Clinton.