From Our President

Challenge to Pritzker Re-Election Focuses on Crime, State Finances

The tension between spending and discipline is coming to a head as leaders in the legislature and the Pritzker administration focus on how to make the most of $8.3 billion in federal American Rescue Plan Act funds.

… in a state like Illinois, that’s not saying much.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot has come up mostly empty on crime. Arne Duncan, a co-founder of the Chicago anti-violence group CRED, is the one who’s full of bright-sounding ideas now. Would his ideas make a difference if he became mayor?

Read a message from President and CEO David Greising on the disturbing incident during our recent community forum.

The messy use of data by Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Cook County Chief Judge Evans over electronic monitoring is particularly painful in a dispute where lives are at stake.

The odds of solving Chicago’s tragic crime problems are undermined by the fact that the city’s chief public-safety officials simply can’t get along. That has to stop—now.

Even in the face of an anti-democratic movement, there are some signs that the commitment to truly representative government is still at work.

With surging crime rates to close out 2021, Lightfoot hopes to execute a plan to curb the violence by summer 2022; however, the mayor should take her proposal back to the drawing board.