New school year for Chicago brings both praise and concerns

An analysis of the trends, patterns, and challenges facing Chicago Public Schools in  2018-2019.

It’s back to school soon for Chicago Public Schools, just after the Labor Day holiday, it will, once again, be time for the bells, the smell of chalk, and the hum of fluorescent lights as the schools return to life after the annual summer break. But, the nation’s third largest school districts faces a myriad of problems, or more accurately challenges, that threaten its mission of education.

Number one is leadership - after the imprisonment of former CEO Barbara Byrd Bennett, last year, for taking bribes from a former employer for a series of dubious teacher and principle continuing education classes, and then the ethical violation of her successor, Forrest Claypool, a longtime Chicago political insider, it seems that the job is associated with criminal behavior, and ethical violations.

That was followed by another scandal, discovered in late July, of this year, with Camelot Education “to open publicly funded schools for students who’ve dropped out or are at risk of doing so,” said the Chicago Sun-Times, where Byrd-Bennett, once again, followed the same format, with bribes and payouts of $25,000 for each school that was opened with her influence; and, skirting the bidding process, said Chicago Board of Education Inspector General Nicholas Schuler.

The current occupant, Janice Jackson, is a product of CPS, and seems to be, at least on the surface, a good choice, but critics argue that many of the movements from Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s hand picked board, were also signed off by her, as Claypool’s right hand.

While many like the idea of a homegrown executive whose own daughter is in the system, other voices are more critical: “CPS’s Executive Officers have one job: To get their talking points from the Mayor’s education people, memorize them, and repeat them at every opportunity,” Troy LaRaviere, president of the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association, said in an email to Chicago Tonight.

“That was Ms. Jackson’s job as (chief education officer), and the only thing that will change as CEO is her salary.”

LaRaviere is one of Emanuel’s most vocal critics, and he headed an award winning school, some say, by breaking all of the rules as the student test scores and parental satisfaction soared. He is also running for mayor in the 2019 municipal elections.

Then, another, even more egregious investigation, this time by The Chicago Tribune which revealed the sexual abuse of  students at CPS, 523, over a nearly ten year period, from 2008 to 2017, and then shortly afterwards, another painful revelation: incidents where students had sexually violated other students; and where a majority of the perpetrators, and victims, were special needs students.

In all, as the investigation showed, there was a lack of thorough background checks, including meta checks for sex crimes, as well as violent behavior, even including the use of firearms; a situation that traumatized the students as well as their parents, by the system’s failure to protect their children.

In an eerie similarity, with the sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests, it was also revealed by the school investigation, that “The Tribune found that the CPS Law Department sometimes cut confidential deals with problem educators to get them to resign. To other potential employers, the district provides dates of service but no details about sex abuse investigations — a practice that puts students in other districts at risk.”

School Closings

In 2013 the mayor infamously shuttered 50 schools in mostly black and brown neighborhoods,  who, of a total population of 371,000 students, are also the dominant student population. Angered residents, both black and white, protested, and as sociologists have noted, schools are the cornerstone of city neighborhoods, and their closing represents a further disinvestment in those neighborhoods, many of whom are on the South and West sides of Chicago, long neglected areas for economic and social opportunities.

WTTW ‘s program Chicago Tonight noted, at the end of last year, that “Chicago Public Schools’ five-year moratorium on school closings runs out in 2018, and a new slate of schools is already on the chopping block.

“Among those are four Englewood-area high schools – Hope, Harper, Robeson and TEAM Englewood – that would be shuttered in favor of a new $85 million school that would open in 2019. But those existing schools will shut down in 2018, leaving a gap year between them and the yet-to-be-constructed facility.

The proposed actions will also include the long-discussed Ogden-Jenner merger and a plan to convert the existing National Teachers Academy elementary into a high school, while shipping current NTA students over to South Loop Elementary beginning in 2019.”

Changing the award winning elementary school created an uproar, when it was announced last month, and “NTA parents have protested that move, and students at Harper have held sit-ins to voice opposition to their school’s closure.”

For Emanuel, critics, such as Chris Kennedy, former gubernatorial candidate, this represents, part and parcel, of the gentrification of some of the city’s most developing, and desirable neighborhoods; underscoring, and accelerating, the trend of city living especially by affluent whites, with school age children.

“NTA students would move into buildings controlled by the nearby South Loop Elementary School, which will take over NTA’s attendance boundary. That plan continues to face stiff opposition from a well-organized group of NTA parents and teachers.

No one is going to argue integration is not a good thing. Integration is a great thing,” said Elisabeth Greer, NTA’s school council chair, after a protest . . . “  and she clarified her statement by saying, “But there is natural integration, and then there is, essentially, forced busing — which brings two communities together by force.”

An elected school board to the rescue?

Hovering in the background of many of these controversies is the desire to have an elected school board, as many critics, lawmakers and parents feel that removing power from Emanuel's hand can advance CPS into some level of parity, if not equality.

Sponsoring a bill to do just that is House Rep. Robert Martwick who was quoted as saying that, “The thing about 2017 is our toes were at the goal line,” he said. “It’s literally hammering out two little legislative details and then the bill sits on the governor’s desk.”

Growing unease headed into legislative victory as “The House this past spring approved a bill eliminating mayoral control in favor of an elected Board of Education on a 105-9 vote. The Senate then followed suit with its own amended version, passed on a 53-2 vote.”

Segueing next into structural reforms, “This legislation would divide the city into specific voting regions and grant each the power to elect its own board representative. In one version of the bill, a 12-member commission would be tasked with creating 14 district zones, each of which could then elect its own school board member beginning in 2023,” and “A board president would also be chosen through a citywide at-large race.”

Former alderman, and now associate professor of political science at the University of Chicago at Illinois, Dick Simpson wrote last year that, ““there are problems. First, if we held school board elections citywide rather than by district, we could end up with racial imbalance. Ninety percent of the students in the system are black and Hispanic but most of the elected board could be white. Second, with more than 600 schools to supervise, it is unclear how much any school board -- appointed or elected -- can do to really govern the system. Third, when we had elections of other local agencies like Model Cities Chicago, the political machine controlled the outcome in order to control the patronage jobs. The Democratic Party could control the outcome of school board elections as well.”

That might support the age-old adage to be careful of what you ask for, and as I previously noted, in my now shuttered column for The Examiner, in our later interview with Simpson, he said that the probability of political party domination still exists, but also might be highlighted, even with district wide elections, and “some of these county board districts are huge, and many people may not even know their county board members.”

Simpson also cautioned that there could be an increased role for different participants whether they are parents, teachers unions, or others, “all with different ideological positions, and each with their own slate, and from their own perspective.”

Noting that while an elected board is not a perfect panacea, especially for quick solutions for CPS indebtedness, Simpson concluded that, “on balance we need a positive start [towards change] and no solution, no financial solution, or representation problem can be solved easily.” 

Finances: New budget shows hope

Money, or lack of, is another critical aspect of survival, for CPS, and after heavy borrowing ay high interest charges, many were ready including bond agencies to downgrade CPS’s financial outlook.

This past April, “The best news came from Wall Street, where the three firms that rate CPS debt now have all brightened their view of its future,”  noted Crain’s Chicago Business.

“Last fall, it was Fitch that moved CPS debt up a notch from B+ to BB-. Kroll followed by changing its outlook . . .  S&P moved its outlook from stable to positive, an indication, according to the firm, that there is a 1 in 3 chance of a ratings upgrade within the next year.

S&P based its shift on what bondholders like to see: increased liquidity and ability to cover debt. It specifically noted the $220 million in additional state aid CPS is getting this year under a budget vetoed by Gov. Bruce Rauner but overridden by lawmakers; $130 million in increased property taxes to pay soaring pension costs; $79 million in other new state aid; and $80 million from the city, mostly for assumed security costs.”

As a result of those "notable wins," CPS cash flow has "notably improved," S&P said, and the Board of Education has been able to diversify the purchasers of its tax-anticipation notes, "a positive sign given its reliance on lines of credit to support operating and debt service expenses,” with its new budget for FY 2019.

In 2017, the district had “budgeted roughly $79 million just to pay the expected interest costs associated with that borrowing,” noted the Chicago Tribune nearly two years ago, to this date.

Now Crain’s reports the good news that money to shore up pensions is not coming from the same pile used for teacher salaries, supplies and lunch programs, due to the groundbreaking bill, for statewide education funding

The clue to that confidence was the increase in a tax levee from 0.383 to 0.567, that in, and of itself, represented an increase from 2017, and which mostly affected affluent homeowners.

"We're in a completely different place than we were," says Chicago Chief Financial Officer Carole Brown. "We are at a point where the money (for pensions) comes from dedicated revenue sources that do not cannibalize operating revenues."

Not so fast, say others

Critics noted that the foundations of that statement are not solid, and are, in fact, based on projection: “For instance, the projections assume that growth in pension expenditures will be limited to 2 percent a year. While newly hired state workers, indeed, will get smaller pensions, assuming 2 percent average annual growth could be a bit optimistic, given that annuitants now get a guaranteed 3 percent compounded annual cost-of-living increase.

Continuing in that vein, “At least debatable is the assumption that the city's property tax base over the next 20 years will increase at least 4 percent a year. Brown says Chicago historically has easily passed that mark, but when it comes to real estate values, there are no guarantees.”

The 2019 budget does have its advocates, however, cautious that they are, and leading the pack is the non-partisan Civic Federation of Chicago who in their press release praised the budget, the first under Jackson, and said: “Fortunately, the Chicago Public Schools’ finances have begun to stabilize following Springfield’s much-needed overhaul of the decades-old education funding formula—though the work is far from over,” said  President Laurence Msall. “Unfortunately, because Illinois continues to languish in its own financial crisis, State funding will remain a source of uncertainty for CPS and other districts.”

“While CPS’ credit ratings are still below investment grade, improved outlooks from ratings agencies and upgrades from Moody’s and Fitch translate to reduced interest costs for the District’s debt issuances. . .. At the end of FY 2018, CPS is projecting its first operating surplus in several years.

Despite an improved financial position, the Federation has concerns that the nearly $1 billion capital budget will require CPS to generate $750 million in additional capital funding, the majority of which will come from issuing long-term debt on top of the District’s $8.2 billion in outstanding debt.”

After the nearly two years absence of a state budget, Illinois now has an unpaid backlog of $14.3 billion dollars, making state contributions uncertain.

“Msall is also concerned that CPS will borrow $750 million of the nearly $1 billion it plans to spend on capital projects announced  . . . That’s on top of $8.2 billion in outstanding debt — plus the public has no way of knowing which capital projects get priority, according to the 96-page analysis,” said the paper.

Finally, this extremely cautionary note, “CPS’ finances have barely reached more stable footing; this is not the right time to issue massive amounts of additional debt with only a portion going to the most critical facility needs,” said Msall, in reference to Jackson’s open letter touting the budget, where she said, that, by priority, it would help those with “the greatest need.”

Reactions

The reaction from the Chicago Teachers Union was swift, and stark. In part, their statement said: “Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jesse Sharkey responded to Mayor Rahm Emanuel touting CPS’ new bond rating as a sign of "progress," while neighborhood schools confront desperate shortages of resources and neglected facilities.”

“The brutal truth is that this mayor is still starving Black and Brown schools across the city in every way, shape and form. The Chicago Teachers Union has advocated tirelessly in Springfield and City Hall for new revenue, and that advocacy has a real impact. We’ve succeeded in winning passage in the state legislature of a vastly more equitable school funding formula and hundreds of millions of dollars in additional funds, while removing pension payments from CPS’ operating funds.

We’ve forced the mayor to dip into his TIF slush fund to pay for public education. Yet conditions in the vast majority of our schools, for the vast majority of our students, effectively remain ‘junk’ because this mayor will not spend revenue equitably, and refuses to create sustainable sources of revenue that will guarantee our students the quality of education they deserve.”

Noting who the losers are, in the absence of a varied and sustainable revenue stream, the final question is: “Who ends up paying? Chicago taxpayers, including our teachers and paraprofessionals, and most critically, the Black and Brown children who make up 90 percent of our students.”

"In 2018 the district was rocked by the news in an investigative report that it had neglected special education students, and now despite the injection of $32 billion, in the new budget, the shortage of trained special education students is not enough to fill its mission, toward that student population.

The Sun-Times noted that “Chris Yun, Access Living’s education policy analyst, also questioned when the school system would be able to fill those positions given Illinois’ chronic shortage of special ed teachers. After CPS officials announced in January 2018 that they’d hire 65 more special education positions, they filled only 25 of them by that May,” she said.

“We have one month to go, one month to fill those positions by the 2019 school year,” Yun said. “I don’t think they can fill it.”

Declining Enrollment

Another glaring aspect is the decrease in student enrollment, attributed to many black families leaving Chicago, either for Northwest Indiana, or the South, or even nearby suburbs, or else to charter, or even other private schools, and, there is now a call from conservative lawmakers to decrease the budget.

Complicating matters is that CPS has played some old-fashioned back door politicking to either get public support for closings in exchange to new schools, such as the one in Englewood, but paradoxically opened 15 alternative schools were in areas that saw declined enrollment; and some are blaming the Emanuel administration, in an attempt to avoid confrontation about closings, or to even avert another teachers strike, at the beginning of the new school year.

Adding to the conundrum is the political blowback from conservatives, as seen in the following statement from the Illinois Policy Institute: “The underutilization problem has only grown worse since then. CPS has lost at least 20,000 students since 2013. And as of 2015, 50 CPS high schools were considered underutilized, with nearly three dozen of them less than half full.

With the school-closing moratorium set to expire in 2018, CPS officials should be looking for ways to combine and close the most underutilized schools – while also focusing on minimizing the disruption to students and parents. But there is little chance district or city officials will do that. With so much new state funding rolling in, they’ll have no reason to endure the wrath of Chicagoans by making necessary school closures.

So the moratorium will continue, unofficially. And state taxpayers will effectively pay for CPS to keep its underutilized and inefficient schools open.”

By the best accounting, 32,000 students left CPS in 2013, with a result of 370,000 total enrollment, down from a high of 580,000 in 1970.

In 2016, there were layoffs, and they “had been expected since the district announced last week that enrollment on the 10th day of classes was down almost 14,000 students from last year. The layoffs come on top of the more than 500 teachers and 500 school-based staff members let go in August, a move also attributed to enrollment declines.”

In 2018, the die was cast and “The roughly 371,000 students enrolled at CPS this year is a 15 percent decrease compared with the year 2000, when enrollment topped 435,000, according to CPS data. And there’s no sign the numbers will trend upward soon:  The district projects about 20,000 fewer students to enroll in the next three years. The trends mirror population drops in Chicago, which has about 182,000 fewer residents than it did 18 years ago, according to Census data. More than 220,000 black residents have left since the year 2000.”

What seems to be disinvestment in the South and West Sides, angers mayoral and CPS critics, pending an increase in gentrification, read white gentrification, and that is when schools would be built, with prominence given to charter schools.

In other areas charter, or alternative, schools are built to siphon off the existing enrollment, and close certain neighborhood schools, as they are either edging themselves to gentrification, or on the edge of a nearby neighborhood that is.

A case in point is that the Uptown neighborhood on the city’s North Side, a long desired spot for gentrification, is now getting closer to that goal: They received the extra push when CPS closed the lovely old Graeme Stewart school; and its subsequent redevelopment into expensive condominiums, despite that there remains a substantial student population, but again, being mostly black and brown, these students are on the losing side.

78 percent of CPS students are low income, giving them little bargaining power, and support from lawmakers, in the face of mayoral domination, cannot afford to offer them protection.

Chalkbeat.org an educational advocacy website had this to say recently: “Despite the criticism, and despite declines in city population and enrollment, CPS said it is taking a neighborhood-by-neighborhood approach to creating new schools and academic opportunities. In a statement to Chalkbeat Chicago, CPS defended its decision to open new schools, despite enrollment declines, by citing community demand. And CPS CEO Janice Jackson told a room of business and nonprofit executives at the City Club of Chicago on Monday, “we can’t do great work without investing” — and not just in school staff, but in buildings themselves.

Critics reading between the lines note that the investment seems lopsided and that this plan, like others may be less than what the students need, but what CPS wants. It also speaks volumes of what the 2019 school year will bring to eager students on the first day of school.

No tax increase says Emanuel, others say Chicago needs more money

2019 may prove to be a landmark year for the nation’s third largest city in a mayoral race dominated by an embattled, and controversial, incumbent, beset by a myriad of financial and social ills, not to mention a consent decree to help harness a long-held problem of recorded police brutality, and their racial prejudice towards black and brown people.

For Chicago, despite these ills, and challenges, the one area that needs an equal measure of attention are city finances --- despite the recent report heralded by Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office giving the good news of no upcoming tax increases.

The Chicago Tribune reported that  “his budget team on Tuesday ruled out any major tax increases to close a relatively small projected budget shortfall in the coming year.

The 2018 Annual Financial Analysis, a starting point for shaping next year’s spending plan, pegged the 2019 operating budget shortfall at $97.9 million — the lowest predicted gap since Emanuel took office in 2011, when the mayor had to close a 2012 budget chasm of $636 million.”

The intention of confidence, however, may not be the last word, but there are those that are looking for more from the mayor’s office with a laundry list of other debt that still threatens the city.

The Tribune also reported Budget Director Samantha Fields saying that “a property tax increase would not be needed to balance next year’s books.

“We don’t expect to have a tax increase that you’ve seen in the past, but we’ll have a better idea of how we’ll solve for the gap in the next few months,” she said, before flatly ruling out a property tax increase. “We may have small recommendations from the departments on revenues here or there, but I don’t anticipate any large ones that will move heaven and earth.”

Bloomberg News reported that “Emanuel has made progress, pushing through higher property taxes and utility levies to shore up the city’s retirement funds that were on track to run out of money. His plan has the public safety pensions on track to be 90 percent funded by the end of fiscal year 2055, and the municipal and laborers pensions at that level by the end of 2058. As of Dec. 31, the four funds were only about 27 percent funded, after years of inadequate contributions.”

In 2014  “Emanuel proposed a budget for the following year that included a few relatively minor increases in targeted taxes to raise $61 million. Months after winning re-election in early 2015, he pushed through a phased-in $543 million increase in property taxes to boost contributions to pension funds for city police officers and firefighters.”

Taking the beast by the horns, say his critics, is exactly what he is not capable of and “if he emerges victorious from what is shaping up to be a large field of mayoral contestants in next year’s election, he may again have to deliver bad news to city taxpayers. The financial analysis shows that the city in 2023 will need more than $2.1 billion to make its required contributions to the city’s four worker pension funds, up from about $1.2 billion next year.

“All in all, the city of Chicago is in a better structural position than prior years,” said Laurence Msall, president of the Civic Federation, which monitors state and local finances, “but it will continue to face revenue and expenditure pressures resulting in projected growth in future deficits.”

The city projects that spending for day-to-day operating costs will increase next year to more than $3.8 billion, an increase of nearly $50 million over budgeted spending for this year. That’s attributable to rising personnel costs and some expansions of city services, Fields said.”

In addition, Chicago “could find itself facing higher costs that were not included in the projected budget forecast. Those potentially include tens of millions of dollars for raises and back pay for police, firefighters and some other city workers whose unions are negotiating new contracts — as well as any costs added to the expense of running the Police Department as a result of a proposed federal consent decree aimed at restoring community trust in the long-troubled department.”

Mayoral challenger Lori Lightfoot, in a recent news conference, noted the absence of costs in the report by the mayor; what she called the absence of  “specific dollars” and noting that the cost for the monitor alone might be as high as $2.5 million, with an overall price tag to implement the reforms would cost at least $10 million a year, insisting that those costs be written into the document itself.

Emanuel in his first term tried to reduce the city’s pension fund obligations, but the Illinois Supreme Court overruled the changes, saying they violated a state constitutional clause that state pension benefits, once granted, “shall not be diminished or impaired.” That left him little choice but to turn to tax increases.”

The hue and cry over the price tag of the tax increase also resulted in a raft of regressive taxes from barking dogs to their tags, and a near revolt over additional county charges for sales tax, that is among the highest in the nation’

Adding a severe lack of affordable housing, has made city finances glow like a bonfire on Guy Fawkes Day.

This also came on the heels of the closing of more than 50 schools in predominantly black areas, ostensibly to make them better, but the result  has been a boon for real estate developers, since the sale of the buildings to be recast as condos, as part of a city-wide move to gentrification.

For example, In the Uptown neighborhood, one centrally located school, the Graeme Stewart, has been made over into a series of pricey condos designed to hasten neighborhood gentrification. And, as sociologists have noted, the presence or absence of a good schools can make, or break a neighborhood, but especially, for the low-income residents that will be displaced.

To be fair, the mayor did inherit a pile of debt and bad ideas: frequent pension holidays by Mayor Richard M. Daley, and raiding the teachers’ pension fund to prevent a fare increase for the CTA, and the infamous parking meter deal with J.P. Morgan Chase, that left a bitter taste in the mouths of Chicago taxpayers.

Emanuel, in turn, has not looked at other ways to handle the pension payments and city finances in general, seemingly, as his critics point out, is his penchant to pass any legislation, no matter how effective, just as long as something is passed.

When I interviewed David Fernandez, a New York based public finance attorney with Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney for my now defunct Examiner column, he said in an emailed statement, ”Perhaps it is time for Chicago to look back at NYC in the ‘70’s and find a way to create its own Municipal Assistance Corporation.  The restructuring of debt within the constraints placed by the courts and utilizing creative ways to provide access to the markets while preserving both the requirements of the existing obligations and the reserves being held by the City are going to be paramount in allowing Chicago to avoid the drastic measures of increased property taxes.” 

Words that were not heeded, and have now, with the pending election, can be a political albatross as the mayor seeks reelection.

Still a matter of controversy is the Tax Increment Financing, a vehicle to improve blighted neighborhoods, the city describes as a tool “to promote public and private investment, with funds generated by growth in the equalized assessed valuation of properties within each TIF district,” but has come to be known as a slush fund for Emanuel, and which now has seen a dramatic 17.9 percent increase in the take.

While there are suburban TIFs, in fact twice as many, their combined revenue is bringing much less than half that is seen in Chicago. And, expanding the concept further are Transit TIFs, which for Chicago, generated $40 million, but as critics have noted, do not have to be designated as “blighted,” and such funds are used to attract major big box developers.

For Emanuel the charges of a slush fund are compounded by the lack of an annual debate on TIFs bringing in more property tax revenue, which has not been done.

Cook County Clerk David Orr has said, “Unless a municipality can demonstrate ongoing blight, taxpayers should not be required to continue funding additional development.”

Significantly also, despite some improvement, there is no easy way for taxpayers to track exactly how TIF funds are spent.

With all of the twists and turns that Chicago finances have taken, especially around pension obligations, there is more to come with public school financing, just around the corner.  And, it’s a reasonable assurance that it too will be a campaign issue.

Planned Parenthood fights on despite Trump judicial decision

In another move to retreat from the decisions of earlier presidents, the Trump presidency, in May, filed for a retraction from Title X monies, those earmarked, initially from the Nixon administration to allow low-income people the right to healthcare. And, this recent move will, if enacted, will prevent women from receiving the necessary information for an unwanted, or unplanned pregnancy, and all mention of abortion, as one option, or even accurate and inclusive contraceptive information, for the future.

With rumors swirling that the next Supreme Court nominee will be Washington insider, Brett Kavanaugh, whose first mission is to recall the landmark decision of Roe. v. Wade, this move comes at the expense of poor women, of color, and the most vulnerable, to access to health care, in general. And, some see this as a trial balloon, of sorts, to test the waters for a repeal of Roe.

Of major concern for Planned Parenthood, is the violation of ethics that would prevent a provider from giving complete health information to a patient, from a provider, especially from a physician, who take the eponymous Hippocratic oath.

In response, “Planned Parenthood and the National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association . . .  asked a federal judge to prevent HHS from making changes to Title X funding that could effectively cut them off from federal dollars because their programs focus on contraception over abstinence,” according to the website ModernHealthcare.com.

The major change is that HHS would score grant applications for Title X family planning providers from this past February’s ruling, in a way that decreases organizations like Planned Parenthood from getting much needed funding, both for care, up to, and including, basic women’s health issues, and prevention; and, where in some areas, they are the only provider available.

“The program doles out $260 million to healthcare providers. Under the revamped system, grant applications that emphasize natural family planning and abstinence and don't reference abortion would be scored higher, thus increasing their chances of securing funding”.

According to the government website - HHS.gov, “The Title X Family Planning program, was enacted in 1970 as Title X of the Public Health Service Act. Title X is the only federal grant program dedicated solely to providing individuals with comprehensive family planning and related preventive health services. The Title X program is designed to provide access to contraceptive services, supplies, and information to all who want and need them. By law, priority is given to persons from low-income families.”

The federal government, in its response, asked U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden McFadden to “toss Planned Parenthood's suit because the policy change does not constitute a final decision and cannot be reviewed by the courts.”

On Tuesday their hopes were dashed when McFadden dismissed Planned Parenthood’s claims as “not reviewable,” ruling that the announcement outlining guidelines for considering Title X grants is not a “final agency action” that would mandate a stricter approval process.

McFadden also fobbed off Planned Parenthood's argument that the new rulings, or scorings, were arbitrary and capricious”, saying that “The Announcement merely encourages Title X providers to discuss healthy relationships and sexual risk avoidance, in a nuanced and research-informed way.”

In a statement, the national office of Planned Parenthood, said: “Additionally, the proposed rule includes a slew of additional changes designed to dismantle the program — including a new policy stipulating that Title X projects do not have to provide every effective and acceptable method of birth control. This is a sharp departure from the way the program has been operating, in which HHS put an emphasis on ensuring women have access to all 18 FDA-approved contraceptive methods. The rule also deletes the requirement that contraceptive methods provided by Title X projects be “medically approved.”

Cold water was also dashed on all of that by the judge, who noted the emphasis on abstinence, and said, in part, “However unpopular, decisions to choose forms of sexual abstinence have undeniable relevance to family planning, and the administrative record supports the Government’s conclusion that a meaningful emphasis on this topic can be part of a well-reasoned approach to Title X programs.”

“Though Planned Parenthood already does provide guidance on abstinence and works with faith-based community groups, the organization said in the lawsuit that its commitment “to following evidence-based best practices for patients’ health, and to providing comprehensive family planning care” — which Planned Parenthood is unwilling to sacrifice in exchange for a better shot at Title X funding — runs counter to the new HHS guidelines.”

Absent the recent judicial decision, the rule is similar to a Reagan era proposed restriction that failed to take effect because of legal challenges, and a subsequent change of administration.

As upsetting for the pro-choice organizations, from the decision, there is the prospective and chilling effect on low income women, the intended beneficiaries of the Title X legislation, many of whom are African American, or Hispanic.

But that took another, some say misguided turn, as  “The rule also re-defines what “low-income” means — expanding it to now include women whose employers no longer allow them to have their birth control covered by health insurance — in an apparent attempt to rectify the gap in care caused by the administration’s previous rule on insurance coverage of birth control. However, the rule does not stipulate any additional resources or funding to help the program or providers meet this increased need,” noted Planned Parenthood.

In Ohio, “Rob Salem, a Toledo attorney and board member of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio, introduced a resolution, saying the measure “essentially imposes a gag rule on health care providers” by preventing them from counseling patients about where to obtain a legal abortion.”

Concurring is Julie Lynn, Manager of External Affairs of Illinois Planned Parenthood, who said in a telephone interview, Wednesday, that she is doubly concerned because this is also part of “the global gag network because of a political football” that has been tossed as far as Africa.

She also points out that the gag order also has wide range consequences, for other groups, and gives a deleterious effect, beyond the initial view, with a negative impact on those that are HIV-Positive, in the absence of condoms, as an option, to protect individual health.

The transgender community can also be affected if someone “who identifies as a man, but [is still biologically a woman] and needs a pap smear, might be denied outside of one of our facilities; we have always been a safe and healthy place for the LGBTQ community.”

The American Medical Association opposes this gag rule, saying they “are particularly alarmed about government interference with the patient-physician relationship in the exam room.”

Many say the timing is ironic considering that, “The Trump administration's proposal comes at a time when both teen and unintended pregnancy rates in the U.S. are at historic lows.

Yet, as critics have pointed out, with other areas of “revision”, from the Trump administration, be they anti-rape procedures on college campuses, public education or food stamp work requirements, logic is not the primary concern.

“The decision to uphold the new guidelines could have dire effects for Planned Parenthood, which noted in the lawsuit that it will now have to “compete for Title X funds with one hand tied behind their backs” against faith-based and pro-abstinence organizations and “face the prospect of losing some or all of [their] Title X funds.”

Lynn emphasized the scope of Title X funds that “affect 4 million people and those that are below the poverty line who rely on them”, and even where there are other providers, “they could not take on additional patients, without access to these funds, and in many communities Title X facilities are the only options in the community [they live in].”

Also problematic is that “Heavy patient loads are common at these clinics, says Sara Rosenbaum, a health policy professor at George Washington University. Rosenbaum says these community health centers provide important services but aren't as equipped to provide the reproductive services that Planned Parenthood is known for,” in an interview with National Public Radio, earlier this March.

The turnabout from legislation designed to help, in part, women of color, of whom Lynn says, in Illinois, are “21 percent Black and 32 percent, Hispanic or Latino, also live in places where there is health care disparity,” which tears at the social fabric of communities that have a legacy of economic disinvestment, and poverty.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, there are a total of 95 Title X locations in Illinois, and of those run by Planned Parenthood, there are 17, and, significantly, Planned Parenthood of Illinois, makes up almost 18 percent of Title X providers in the state.

Other figures are total female contraception patients served at Title X locations in Illinois: 119,470, plus total female contraception patients served at Title X Planned Parenthood locations in Illinois are 50,340.

Of note, PPIL is the only Title X provider in six  Illinois counties: LaSalle, Macon, McLean, Peoria, Sangamon, and Tazewell, and as Lynn emphasized, “PPIL makes up only 18 percent of Title X providers in Illinois but serves 42 percent of those patients.”

As she stressed, much “like the Reagan proposal, this takes it to another level,” but there is a public comment period where all interested, can issue a comment, ending on July 31st, and Lynn notes that “DHS must respond.”

Those interested, in stopping the gag rule, can do so by clicking here.

In a statement released after McFadden’s decision, from the national office of Planned Parenthood, Dawn Laguens, Executive Vice President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in part, “We will not stop fighting for our patients and the four million people who depend on this health care. This program is meant to ensure that every person -- regardless of where they live, how much money they make, their background, or whether or not they have health insurance -- has access to basic, preventive reproductive health care, such as birth control, cancer screenings, STI testing and treatment, and regular check-ups. The Trump-Pence administration is trying to impose its ideology on people -- no matter how many it hurts. We will never stop fighting for people’s health and rights. No matter what.”

New report says minimum wage workers cannot afford modest housing

With all of the joyous news that greeted the May Jobs Report, from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, and the much heard, phrase, of “this is a tight job market”, the issue of wages, or more accurately, wage stagnation, was often politely shoved aside to preach the good news of job growth.

There was only a slight increase in wage growth from the prior month, a gain to some eyes, from the previous moribund reports, it seemed a gainsay, for many economists, bankers and other spokespeople for the American financial industry. But, 2.7 percent wage growth seemed tepid, and with job growth coming in strong with lower skilled jobs, that require little more than a high school education, the economic base seems constructed on a new paradigm.

“This is the last shoe to drop in the labor market,” said Torsten Slok, chief international economist at Deutsche Bank. “It’s just a matter of time before wages start going up more strongly, but there’s frustration that it hasn’t happened yet, even though unemployment is the lowest it has been in almost 18 years,” he told The New York Times.

Another facet  was that many of these jobs are entry level and many paying minimum wages, and despite liberal voices asking and, in some cases, demanding a guaranteed minimum hourly wage of $15 dollars, being able to find affordable housing, on that income has become a challenge.

In Illinois, the challenge has become even greater, than in previous years as “renters in Illinois must earn more than $20 per hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment,” stated a new report from Housing Action Illinois, the state chapter of a nationwide organization, the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

Starting July 1, there will be an increase in the new Chicago minimum wage to $12 per hour; and that's a 45 percent increase since 2015, according to Mayor Rahm Emanuel's office.

Currently, that wage is $11 per hour. According to the local ABC affiliate, “the increase is part of a plan to raise minimum wage in Chicago to $13 per hour by 2019.The mayor's office said about 367,000 workers will get a raise by July 1, 2019, as part of this plan.”

While many have lauded the good news from CIty Hall, the challenge to housing in Chicago is greater than ever and the report notes, that “In order to afford a modest, two-bedroom apartment in Illinois, renters need to earn $20.34 per hour. This is Illinois’ 2018 Housing Wage, revealed in Out of Reach 2018: The High Cost of Housing, a national report jointly released in Illinois by Chicago-based Housing Action Illinois and DC-based National Low Income Housing Coalition. This means that to afford a two-bedroom home without paying more than 30% of their income on housing costs, a person earning Illinois’ minimum wage ($8.25 per hour) must work 99 hours per week just to make ends meet,” they said in a statement heralding the bad news.

Looking even more closely, “a household must earn $3,525 monthly or $42,304 annually. Assuming a 40-hour work week, 52 weeks per year, this level of income translates into an hourly Housing Wage,” of the aforementioned, $20.34.the calculated cost for a modest two-bedroom apartment, it became obvious that the wage challenge proves to be nearly impossible to meet for minimum wage workers.

Going even further, we see that two-and-a-half of full-time jobs at minimum wage “are needed to afford a 2 -Bedroom Rental Home at Full Market Rate.”

“In Illinois, the Fair Market Rent (FMR) for a two-bedroom apartment is $1,058. In order to afford this level of rent and utilities — without paying more than 30% of income on housing — For a modest one-bedroom apartment, at $8.25 an hour the prevailing state wage, it would take a worker 83 hours to meet the cost.”’ their research showed.

With the upcoming national mid-term elections getting closer and closer, both the  statewide and local elections, and especially, for mayoral and gubernatorial campaigns. The report authors make this point::

“Every legislator should be talking about the fact that nowhere in Illinois can a full-time minimum wage worker afford rent,” says Sharon Legenza, Executive Director of Housing Action Illinois. “And every candidate seeking an elected office should have a plan for how to change this. Housing should be a source of stability, not insecurity. Voters deserve to know how our elected officials intend to make sure that every one of their constituents has a good, affordable place to call home.”

“Out of Reach 2018 finds that average cost of rent and utilities for a two-bedroom apartment in Illinois is $1,058 per month. In order to afford this, a household must earn at least $42,304 annually. Assuming a 40-hour workweek, 52 weeks per year, this level of income translates into a Housing Wage of $20.34,” they also noted..

With varying statewide rents, “there is no place in Illinois where a minimum wage worker can afford a two-bedroom apartment. Rental housing is the most expensive in Kendall County, where the Housing Wage is $23.56, followed by the Chicago metropolitan area, where the Housing Wage is $22.69. The lowest that the Housing Wage gets for an average two-bedroom apartment in Illinois is $12.88, which is still more than 1.5 times the minimum wage.”

The Chicago Metropolitan Area, with its glut of low-wage workers, often laboring in fast food restaurants, hotels and sanitation crews are the most inevitable workers that try to meet the challenge, And, in our interviews, most of them are trying for this Herculean task, by working two and even three jobs.

To say that this is a crisis, is an understatement, and statewide there 1,635,043 renters, reperesting 34 percent of the state as renters.

In October of last year, Sen. Dick Durbin’s office released some good news: “U.S. Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) today announced that Northern Illinois communities will receive $3,880,550 in federal grant funding through three programs administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).  In total, Northern Illinois communities were awarded $2,957,019 through the Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) program, $182,521 through the Emergency Shelter Grants (ESG) program, and $741,010 through the HOME Investment Partnerships program.”

What is needed, is a targeted program to marry money with deliberate development to address the needs of minimum wage workers.
.

Also helping to identify local and national lawmakers to press in this area, especially during the challenges of the Trump administration, and identifying and helping educate them on the issue would be of prime importance.

Increasing the vouchers and subsidies are essential , but how much could even the most modest bump help those workers in targeted areas across Chicago and Illinois, would be a necessary adjunct.

Pessimists suggest that the slim boost, in wages, about one percentage point above that of April suggest that this may be a no-win situation, for the present time.

Lastly, what efforts, if any, can those that are most affected by the need, do to let local and national lawmakers that they need to do more?

These and other questions were addressed to Housing Action Illinois, but by press time, there was no response, or from the office of Sen. Durbin.

For the full report go to: http://nlihc.org/sites/default/files/oor/OOR_2018.pdf

Will Lori Lightfoot's crusade lead to being Chicago mayor?

Holding an elected office in Chicago has become akin to either death by a thousand blows, or sheer masochism, and those are during the good times. Certainly, the job of mayor falls under that category and into the already crowded fray, of decided, and even undecided, a crusade of sorts has entered the melee, in the form of Lori Lightfoot, attorney and most recently president of the Chicago Police Board, and chair of the Chicago Police Accountability Task Force, has plunged into the race for mayor of the nation’s third largest city with an equally crusading spirit.

She has taken two issues on, the appearance of an ethical violation with Chicago School Board president making a public advertisement for school performance improvements, and paid for by a group of heavy financial backers for Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Secondly, the sex abuse scandal in Chicago Public Schools that has not shown either proper oversight, or even the appearance of protection, to a system that has been burdened with debt and weak test scores, before the recent improvement.

All of this seems part and parcel of the work that the 53 year old attorney has done, and often under the proverbial bushel basket as many have not known of her intense work on behalf of the city, and especially in the unenviable task of police reform.

“She’s got a long track record on police reform. She’s not viewed as being part of the establishment. She has positioned herself to be a change-agent,” said Victor Reyes, the former Daley political operative who ran the now-defunct Hispanic Democratic Organization at the center of the city hiring scandal.

As the Chicago Sun-Times reported, in their profile of the candidate, “Lightfoot could probably make it into a runoff in a fractured field with just 30 to 35 percent of the black vote, 25 to 30 percent of the white vote and 35 to 40 percent among Hispanics.

Citywide the black population of Chicago is 32 percent, with 45.3 percent white, according to the 2010 census; a significant statistic that cannot be ignored.

Getting votes is a numbers game, and having the other five black candidates remain in the race, as she, or any other candidate, can harness both the black and Latino votes, is paramount.

“It would definitely help to [narrow the field], but having them take votes helps her, too. As long as they’re subtracting from Rahm, they’re helping her,” Reyes said.

“Greg Goldner, who managed Emanuel’s 2002 congressional campaign, advised Lightfoot to follow the playbook that carried County Board President Toni Preckwinkle to a landslide victory during a 2010 campaign master-minded by Ken Snyder, who just happens to be Lightfoot’s political consultant.”

He noted, that “She unified the African-American community to a large extent, and she was able to get white progressives,” Goldner said of Preckwinkle.”

Matching the crusading spirit with political acumen may make the grade, not only if it makes her the city’s second black mayor, but also the first lesbian, in a city with a strong, and supportive gay community.

Her idealism may be her strength, as she noted, when announcing her candidacy and said, “In order for Chicago to remain a world-class city, we need to forge a new path, in which equity and inclusion are our guiding principles. By almost every measure, we currently are headed in the wrong direction,”

 “All over Chicago, people feel the effects of the us-versus-them style of governance. Investing here, but not there. Providing advantages to some, but not others. Listening to a few, but ignoring far too many. That mentality and style of governance ends the day I am sworn in as mayor.”

Hearing that, former alderman, and now, professor of political science, at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Dick SImpson, said that he “believes Lightfoot has the potential to “assemble a progressive coalition similar to Harold Washington’s.”

“The police issue is the hottest and most important issue of all. … She has a very strong record on the police issue. That will have a lot of appeal in the African-American community,” Simpson said.

He also “advised Lightfoot to turn up the heat and make it uncomfortable for aldermen to stick with Emanuel, no matter how much money he offers to drop into their campaign coffers.”

“She needs them to choose sides and she needs to get somebody to choose her …Some group needs to mobilize behind her and really push her candidacy. The ideal would be to get a number of the minor candidates to drop out and endorse her,” Simpson said.

The police problem, along with the violence, has become one of Chicago’s more durable problems, as epitomized by the Laquan McDonald shooting, and the coverup of the video that showed the discrepancy between what happened, and what was reported, with the searing result that the states attorney lost her bid for reelection, with accusations of a cover up, and loud demands and angry street demonstrations for Emanuel’s resignation.

In a city with a long history of racial segregation and police brutality, no issue could command more of a crusader’s attention, for reform.

Recently during a local radio appearance, she noted that the vast majority of police are in their jobs for the right reason, but also that there cannot be “abuse of the power that they’ve been given.”

That abuse was the problem with the suppression of the McDonald tape, but also reaches back to the days of Cmdr. John Burge, who was convicted of brutally torturing black male prisoners.

Even later was an expose by a British newspaper, The Guardian, (which I explored in a column for my now defunct Examiner column), that resulted in a lawsuit that describes a facility in Homan Square as an “off the books police detention, interrogation, and intelligence gathering center where the CPD unconstitutionally detained many thousands of predominantly, and disproportionately, African American and Hispanic citizens without probable cause and without access to lawyers and family.”

They also reported “from August 2004 to June 2015, nearly 6,000 of those held at the facility were black, which represents more than twice the proportion of the city’s population. But only 68 of those held were allowed access to attorneys or a public notice of their whereabouts, internal police records show.” 

When the Guardian reports first surfaced, local activists demonstrated demanding that the facility be closed, but police denied the accusations, according to The Chicago Tribune.

Much of the anger - especially that of Chicago’s black community has centered on Emanuel, who in 2013 closed 50 schools in the city’s black neighborhoods forcing grammar school students to cross gang-infested neighborhoods to reach their new schools, a move that prompted the temporary hiring of citizen guards to protect them.

It is this type of occurrences, systematic, at times, that she would confront as mayor.

Lightfoot has the types of rags to riches story that America loves --- worked seven jobs for her undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan, and had a grandfather who was a sharecropper ---  a similar profile that propelled Oprah Winfrey to stardom, and power, on the small screen.

When she earned her J.D. at the University of Chicago, “she organized campus protests against the discriminatory hiring practices of Baker McKenzie, the multinational law firm. Although Baker McKenzie was one of the university’s biggest benefactors, the protests culminated in the firm being banned from recruiting on the U. of C. campus.”

Taking on big boys, and even bigger projects, shows that Lightfoot is not afraid of tackling an issue and the importance of discipline ---- as how she financed her university degree, shows discipline and the campus protests at University of Chicago, reveals the profile of a fighter for a seemingly impossible cause.

The charges of sexual abuse at Chicago Public Schools, and Lightfoot’s handling also are part of a crusading campaign, where with over 430 charges, there were 230 of them convicted. And, as she noted, getting in front of the issue, we have to “build an infrastructure to protect our kids . . . this is the sad and sick reality.”

Going back even further “In 2005, then-Mayor Richard M. Daley asked the team of Lightfoot and Mary Dempsey to clean up a minority contracting program disgraced by scandal. In the course of cleaning house, Lightfoot and Dempsey made waves by taking on powerful targets. They included Tony Rezko, the now-convicted former chief fundraiser for now-convicted ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich; Elzie Higginbottom, Daley’s chief fundraiser in the black community; construction giant F.H. Paschen, and the O’Hare outpost of O’Brien’s restaurant, an Old Town institution.”

Now, the biggest boy to take on is her former boss, who has shown, much like Daley, father and son, that he knows how to keep the City Council under his thumb.

As Paddy Bauler famously said, “"Chicago ain't ready for reform yet" and if it is, and the reform begins with a black woman, of modest means, then the city is long overdue.