Chicago Is Broken, Needs Mayor Crazy Enough To Do The Right Thing

CHICAGO — As far as I’m concerned, the state of our city remains about how former Mayor Rahm Emanuel left it: Broke, corrupt and rigged for the rich.

Anybody who expects the new boss to fix that mess in 100 days, or four years, without blowing up the way we do business in this town has lost their dang mind.

That’s what I wish Mayor Lori Lightfoot would have said in her TV speech Thursday night.

Of course, a big-city mayor can’t say that kind of thing without giving widowmakers to downtown money men — those mega developers and corporate CEOs only interested in conducting business on the rich side of town while the rest of the city rots.

But wouldn’t it be cool if she did?

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Because anybody who lives in a struggling neighborhood like mine has to be fed up with hearing Chicago mayors and their Greek chorus of know-it-alls suggest that, if things go just right, they’ll revive parts of town intentionally destroyed by institutional racism and City Hall neglect.

For eight years, it pained me every time Rahm Emanuel showed up in Pullman to cut the ribbon on development projects that he had almost nothing to do with, and took credit for the hard work of others to make it appear that he cared about what happened to people who live down here.

So, as pleased as I was to hear Mayor Lightfoot mention Pullman and Roseland as examples of neighborhoods that need to be lifted up as cornerstones of the city’s “pathway to fiscal health” in her speech, she’ll have to forgive me for not holding my breath.

“We must lead with public investment, along with private partnerships, to catalyze neighborhoods where generational poverty has people in its crushing grip,” Lightfoot said.

I’m sure our rookie mayor means it. But there’s no way Lightfoot has a full-fledge plan to make it happen. Not yet, anyway, not if she really believes that “we should never settle for dividing up a shrinking pie, or pitting one part of this city against another.”

Because it’s too late for that. Our city's economic divide is steep. And City Hall’s policy has been to feed booming parts of the city, and let the rest survive on scraps.

There’s probably no greater example than the Tribune’s recent investigative effort that exposed the Emanuel Administration rushed to give Sterling Bay developers subsidies before new property assessments revealed what anybody with a brain already knew — Goose Island in Lincoln Park shouldn't qualify as blighted property worthy of $1.3 billion in public funding to build a posh neighborhood within an already fancy-pants neighborhood.

What Chicago needs is City Hall to embrace the already ongoing class divide with something shocking like a moratorium on taxpayer subsidies for mega developments, corporate headquarter relocations and steel-and-glass monuments to the rich north of Cermak and east of Western.

Downtown influence peddlers will say that’s crazy.

They’ll tell you that the rich part of town is the economic engine that powers the city, and the state for that matter.

Aldermen in the rich part of town will say it would be devastating if City Hall turned off the taxpayer-cash spigot even a little for Fortune 500 companies that want to set up shop in the West Loop, foreign investors financing luxury high-rises near Millennium Park, anybody who wants to build a casino downtown, and so on.

Even if they’re right. So, be it.

People surrounded by poverty and blight, folks who can’t take an L train downtown because city planners didn’t think they deserved one, are already devastated.

If City Hall isn’t willing to do something crazy to lift those neighborhoods up, then our city will never be as “world class” as our taxpayer-funded tourism boosters say it is, anyway.

Let the rich pay full price to buy a slice of downtown, and we should use the people's money saved by eliminating corporate welfare to revive neighborhoods that crumbled thanks to generations of City Hall policies and neglect.

Lightfoot said Thursday that she knows some of her administration’s yet-to-be announced solutions to Chicago’s financial troubles might put the city at risk.

“And if it means that I sacrifice myself politically,” she said, “so be it in pursuit of the right thing.”

There isn't a Chicago mayor alive who's said that before.

That line seemed, well, crazy — and just what this broken city needs.

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting and Emmy-nominated producer, was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docu-series on CNN. He was a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary, "16 Shots."

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• Did Police Board Ruling Include A Secret Message To Chicago Cops?
• Lightfoot Must End 'Mayoral Prerogative' To Neglect Neighborhoods
• Meet The Guy Who Fixed Billy Corgan's Stolen Guitar