10 aldermen could rescue reform of Chicago’s remapping process
No one playing the political insiders game of Chicago ward remap baseball was surprised when the house of cards supporting actual reform and the end of gerrymandered backroom deals collapsed in the past week under the weight of aldermanic self-interest.
Aldermen want ward boundaries that gift them with the maximum number of voters likely to support them at reelection time, the fewest potential opponents inside those ward boundaries and the most economic development projects they can fasttrack in exchange for campaign contributions.
Craven? Of course. Practical politics the “Chicago Way?” Of course, on steroids.
So that explains why we at CHANGE Illinois, a good-government reform nonprofit, are down to our last few breaths as we try to make history by winning City Council or voter referendum approval of a resident-drafted ward remap. It actually would empower regular folks by linking their neighborhoods with ward boundaries so they have one or at most two aldermanic offices to field their concerns about crime, schools, jobs and city services and one or at most two aldermen to hold accountable at election time.
Our map, for instance, puts the two distinct communities that make up the South Side neighborhood of Englewood into one ward each.
That’s how representative democracy is supposed to work, but that is the last thing most City Council members care about. They cobbled Englewood into parts of six wards, which epitomizes the ongoing disenfranchisement of residents and the marginalization of their neighborhoods.
It may be too late to change the outcome of this year’s ward remap debacle, given confirmation that the City Council’s remap leaders, with assistance from the mayor’s office, have tentatively secured more than the 41 votes it takes to approve a map and avoid a voter referendum in June.
The showdown vote may happen at a special City Council meeting this coming week. If the numbers hold, city residents will have been shut out of the remap process once again and left with gerrymandered ward boundaries for another decade, since remapping only takes place every ten years, after the decennial census.
But let me make a final plea to at least 10 City Council members to rescue remap reform from the jaws of defeat by withholding their votes on the gerrymandered insiders’ map when the City Council meets about it.
If they do that, and the majority map fails to get 41 votes, there will be a referendum on the June 28 primary election ballot, and our reform map, created after dozens of public hearings around the city, will be able to compete with the City Council map crafted behind closed doors without a single in-person public hearing.
I know that letting voters make the final decision, which is a basic principle of representative democracy, would violate a basic tenet of the insiders’ playbook — “protect yourself and your power base, citizens be damned” — but it would also be a giant step toward good government in Chicago after decades of corruption.
At least 10 City Council members — a measly 20% — must have a backbone and a commitment to something other than the Chicago Way, which has sent dozens of their aldermanic predecessors to jail since the 1970s and perhaps irreparably tarnished Chicago’s image.
It would be nice if Mayor Lori Lightfoot would pull a 180 and keep her campaign pledge to reform the remap process. It’s not too late — the deadline is Thursday — to chalk up a sorely needed political win by quietly orchestrating a “palace coup” and pulling off enough votes to sink the council majority’s map at least until the June 28 primary election.
So, on behalf of reformers and good government advocates in Chicago and elsewhere, I plead once again: Put city residents and their neighborhoods ahead of convenient self-interest by at least allowing a showdown vote between our map, crafted in public by the public, and your gerrymandered ward map, drafted in a backroom by political insiders.
Think about making history and national news and finally fulfilling the promise of a City Council that works in the public interest. Go for it!