The Johnson Administration had fought off ward-based restrictions on ADUs because of a 2023 federal ruling that aldermanic prerogative leads to segregation. Trump’s HUD freed the mayor to wheel & deal with alders. @danielkayhertz.bsky.social on this: illinoisanswers.org/2025/09/25/c...

Compromise ADU ordinance PASSES City Council in a 46-0 vote, ending a 7-year legislative battle over a modest affordable housing tool already common elsewhere in the country. Story TK

Inbox: City Council's most vocal supporter and most vocal critic of citywide legalization of ADUs ("granny flats") announce they've reached a compromise. Still waiting on a copy of the new ordinance language to understand what the "limitations and local review" are. cc @stevevance.net

New: for the first time in memory, the City Council is going to hold an entire round of PRELIMINARY public budget hearings in September, before the mayor releases a proposal. Check the schedule:

The newly beefed-up City Council Office of Financial Analysis quietly dropped its mid-year budget report last week, including a 1st-ever report on city employee vacancies by department. chicago.gov/content/dam/... Should be of interest to anyone advocating cuts over new taxes!

The infamous Evanston Brothel Law! dailynorthwestern.com/2021/10/18/c...

In 2016, as Chicago mayor, Emanuel banned city employees from making most trips at the city’s expense to North Carolina, which banned trans people from using the bathroom that aligned with their gender. He also backed an ordinance blocking any Chicago business from imposing similar bans.

I’ll be talking about the ordinance to allow citywide construction of ADUs, which just advanced out of the City Council Zoning Committee in a 13-7 vote

Mayor to force a vote next week on legalizing ADUs citywide, Fran Spielman reports. chicago.suntimes.com/city-hall/20... Letting people build backyard coach houses would represent an "attack by the mayor’s office on the bungalow belt," says Ald. Marty Quinn (13th).

Thanks @wbez.org for having me on Reset yesterday to talk ADUs! Take a listen: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a...

🧵(1/4) I remember walking into the City Hall press room at age 26 on my first day on the beat and being floored by the sheer force of Craig's kindness and sincerity. Like...veteran journalists are not supposed to act like this! Who did this guy think he was??

WBEZ Reset host right now: *WHY does there need to be a community meeting for a homeowner to add a unit??* (they are talking about ADUs, and referred to this statement in @alexnitkin.bsky.social's recent article)

Here's my story, on an affordable housing tool nearly everyone seems to agree is a good idea, but that the Chicago City Council and (so far) state legislators can't manage to push forward: t.co/YDh0XBRHiP (1/6)

In awe of this important, ambitious project — a collab between @illinoisanswers.bsky.social and @southsideweekly.bsky.social — and proud of the small part I got to play in it: makingitinchicago.illinoisanswers.org Please check it out today.

This article about ADUs in Chicago by @alexnitkin.bsky.social does the best at tying together all of the “blockers” to citywide expansion. illinoisanswers.org/2025/05/27/g...

New from me: An obscure, perennially resource-starved oversight office is set to take center stage in the Chicago City Council's effort to wrest more control over the city budget-making process. They face a mighty task. (1/5)

Folks neck deep in Chicago politics Twitter might remember screenshots of the city's salary database a few months ago seemed to show a bunch of aldermanic staffers earning more than the mayor. @alexnitkin.bsky.social dug in and found an opaque bonus system: illinoisanswers.org/2025/04/14/c...

NEW from @alexnitkin.bsky.social: Quiet Use of Bonuses for City Council Aides on the Rise illinoisanswers.org/2025/04/14/c...

Letter from Mayor Brandon Johnson this morning outlines a "series of engagements" with City Council to get ahead of an expected $1.12 billion projected budget gap for FY2026. Unclear how many of these "engagements" will be public meetings vs private briefings.

"Illinois is one of only six states that does not provide ready access to archival videos of floor proceedings, according to a 2022 analysis from the National Conference of State Legislatures." - Bryan Zarou of @bettergov.bsky.social www.bettergov.org/2025/03/24/b...

A state agency has repeatedly failed its legal charge to track and report child abuse cases, per my colleague, the indomitable public records gremlin Peter Nickeas: illinoisanswers.org/2025/03/18/a...

Quick🧵updating a story we did last year: Nearly $500M in taxable real estate value was added to Cook County rolls after an investigation by @illinoisanswers.bsky.social & @chicagotribune.com uncovered hundreds of mistakes in property assessments. The corrections come from an audit. 1/5

Clarification here: Chicago CFO Jill Jaworski said today this only pertains to money for the aldermanic Menu program, which is already at the discretion of individual alders. (This explains the $75M cap — $1.5M for each ward) The rest will go toward the City's overall Capital Improvement Plan.

Great dive into the city’s ARPA-funded antiviolence efforts, and where it all stands now:

NEW: ⁦‪Chicago Dept of Law‬⁩ has been stretching its authority to impede ⁦‪Inspector General investigations, including by selectively jamming up probes close to the mayor, watchdog says in memo calling on City Council to tighten rules via ordinance www.bettergov.org/2025/02/13/a...

Periodic reminder that Chicago is one of the only major cities in the country that doesn’t pass an annual capital budget, making it much harder to track spending on city-backed construction & streetscape projects

BREAKING: The City Council will NOT vote today on whether to lower the city's default speed limit to 25 MPH to 30 MPH. Instead, the City Council will weigh whether to create a working group to examine the issue, Ald. Daniel La Spata announces. @wttw.bsky.social

This building was last inspected in 2009, when the owner was slapped with 10 violations related to unsafe conditions, per city records. Chicago officials continue to insist emulating other cities with regular, proactive inspection regimes would be impossible. illinoisanswers.org/2023/03/10/c...

The City Council is set to vote today to lower the speed limit on city streets to 25 mph, effective 1/1/2026. The latest version of the ordinance is a touch more flexible than the original, allowing some variation in special cases.

Morty says Happy New Year everyone

In some communities, a false narrative is spreading: New immigrants, who are mostly from Venezuela, are getting government support and assistance while American-born folks are not. But as @blockclubchi.bsky.social reports, there is no aid for many of them. blockclubchicago.org/2024/12/19/t...

Periodic reminder that every one of these is more regressive than the property tax, which is effectively a tax on wealth

Members of the IL congressional delegation repping Chicagoland announce nearly $2B in critically important funding for the CTA’s Red Line Extension is coming through, money officials had been racing to secure before a second Trump admin @wttw.bsky.social

In light of the $500K slipped into the city budget for a plow-the-sidewalks pilot, re-upping this from my colleague @ctoner.bsky.social: illinoisanswers.org/2024/03/26/3... Toronto spends $27M to plow its sidewalks annually — that’s ~11% of what Chicago spent on police overtime in 2023.

ICYMI from @alexnitkin.bsky.social: Chicago is considering lowering speed limits, but other cities have already made the move to improve safety on their streets. Here’s how these changes are working elsewhere: illinoisanswers.org/2024/12/12/c...

New from me: the Chicago Department of Transportation is circulating a report that supports lowering the city's default speed limit to 25 mph. It cites the policy's broad success elsewhere. As the proposal remains in legislative limbo, other cities aren't waiting:

Meanwhile, the City Council zoning committee is right now trying to figure out how to shelve a proposal for 294 new apartments in Lincoln Park — because the local alderman is against it — without landing the City in legal trouble: t.co/UdWsvwfILm

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝗦𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗲𝘁𝘀 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝗻! CDOT Smart Streets vehicles patrolled the streets on 7 days Nov 1-15 identifying 823 violations! Chicago Ave and Dearborn St accounted for 56% of the total violations (467). Nearly 60% of violations occurred during the morning peak of 8a-10a. 🧵

If you’re watching the Chicago Dept of Transportation budget hearing right now, you’re hearing the word “menu” a lot, often without much context. Here’s a TikTok we posted recently at @illinoisanswers.bsky.social explaining the menu program: www.tiktok.com/t/ZTYDVcave/

At the swearing in for Circuit Court Clerk Mariyana Spyropoulos. “We have high hopes for her service in this position,” county board president Toni Preckwinkle says. “We need somebody who’s committed to running an effective office. I know she has that commitment and will do the hard work.”

Group of 15 conservative City Council members out with a proposal to “right-size” the budget by unspooling ARPA-backed boosts & returning every dept to an inflation-adjusted version of 2020 budgets. Wld mean heavy rollbacks on proposed social services spending, 100s of millions more for police/fire:

1990 to 2018 = zero Cook County judges voted out. 2018 to 2024 = three judges removed by voters, the most recent being Shannon O’Malley, who changed his name to appear Irish on the ballot and faced questions about whether he actually lived in the county. www.injusticewatch.org/judges/judic...

Ald. Mike Rodriguez just shouted out our reporting on results from the city's new grid-based tree trim system during Dept of Streets & Sanitation budget hearing just now: t.co/hhlJbIW53d t.co/fb6ikVspib