Reform bills come due in Chicago — and some of the people who were supposed to pay them are suing the city instead. This is Chicago Politics and Urbanism Daily. Today: a cleared alderman chasing a million-dollar payday, a mayor dodging the reelection question, office towers looking for a second life, and the courts finally calling out home equity theft. Schools, streets, and somebody's condo conversion — yeah, it’s one of those Fridays in Chicago. Alright, let’s get into it. Block Club Chicago, with Molly DeVore:
Ald. James Gardiner (45th) is suing the City of Chicago, its Board of Ethics and former Inspector General Deborah Witzburg for $1 million over claims they “maliciously” conspired to have him charged with violating the city’s ethics ordinance. In 2023, the board ruled Gardiner committed 10 ethics violations and assessed $20,000 in fines after he ticketed 45th Ward resident Pete Czosnyka — a vocal critic of Gardiner’s — for having overgrown weeds.
Block Club has this one — Ald. Jim Gardiner of the 45th is suing the city, the Board of Ethics, and former IG Deborah Witzburg for a million dollars. He says they conspired to railroad him out of office over a weeds ticket he wrote to a political critic. A weeds ticket. That’s what this started with — tall weeds, a guy he didn’t like, and now we’re in a million-dollar federal lawsuit. He was hit with ten ethics violations, fined twenty grand, appealed, and got cleared last June — so legally, he does have a hook here. But the allegation is that the IG’s office withheld evidence and used false testimony. That’s a serious claim to put in a complaint, and Cook County courts are going to make him prove it. If oversight agencies actually cooked the case, that matters — no question. But Gardiner’s starting point was using city resources to punish a constituent who criticized him, so I’m not exactly lining up to hand him a hero cape. Here's Fran Spielman and Mariah Woelfel at Chicago Sun-Times:
Mayor Brandon Johnson on Thursday ruled out school closings to help the Chicago Public Schools dig out of a $732 million hole, and said it’s up to the Illinois General Assembly to approve progressive revenue measures he believes it will take to avoid classroom cuts. A moratorium on school closings expires at the end of the 2026-27 school year, but Johnson said he won’t consider the possibility — even though scores of public schools are operating with more empty seats than students.
Following up on yesterday’s CPS budget squeeze — Johnson is now taking school closings completely off the table, even with a $732 million hole and half-empty buildings all over the city. His answer to how that math works? Springfield needs to pass progressive revenue. Classic Chicago: your problem is always somebody else’s vote. I get why nobody wants to close schools — those buildings are the last anchors on some of these blocks. But “the General Assembly will fix it” is not a budget plan. That’s a prayer. And when Fran Spielman asked him about a second term, total silence. So either he hasn’t decided, or he has and he’s not saying. Either way, not great. If you’re running, own it. If you’re not, let somebody else start lining up who’s actually going to deal with the CPS books. The ambiguity doesn’t help anyone in those classrooms. Propmodo, with Travis Barrington:
Chicago’s office distress cycle has entered a new phase. The first phase was denial. The second was lenders quietly extending loans and hoping leasing markets recovered. The third appears to be something closer to acceptance: older office towers trading hands at prices so low that conversion into housing starts to look less like a rescue strategy and more like a viable redevelopment business model.
205 West Wacker — a 1928 office tower — just traded via deed-in-lieu of foreclosure for around fifteen million dollars. The building had twenty-seven-and-a-half million in unpaid debt. A Chinese investment firm called Titan Power picked it up and is now talking about converting the upper floors into about a hundred and twenty apartments. Fifteen million for a twenty-three-story Loop tower. That’s the distress cycle finally hitting acceptance — lenders stopped pretending the office market was coming back and started letting buildings go for whatever the residential math supports. I keep coming back to that phrase — “rescue strategy” versus “viable redevelopment business model” — because that’s the real split here. One is charity, the other is developers doing this again and again. If this pencils at a fifteen million acquisition cost, it changes the calculus on a lot of other distressed Loop buildings sitting on lenders’ books right now. This one's from Illinois Policy:
A ruling against Cook County highlights Illinois’ status as the only state still unconstitutionally allowing governments to confiscate entire properties without compensation, even when the fair market value far exceeds the amount in taxes owed. Under the Illinois Property Tax Code, homeowners can lose their entire property for owing a small fraction of its value in unpaid property taxes.
A federal judge just found Cook County liable for damages over what’s basically home equity theft — and Illinois is now the only state in the country still running a system the Supreme Court unanimously struck down in 2023. Let’s be clear what this is: somebody owes a few hundred bucks in back taxes, the county sells their house, pockets everything above what’s owed, and hands the homeowner nothing. That’s not tax collection. That’s a shakedown. There are two bills in Springfield right now that could fix this. Three years after Tyler v. Hennepin County, every other state moved. Illinois is still standing on the tracks. Here's Quinn Myers at Block Club Chicago:
Mayor Brandon Johnson hopes the city will launch a shelter program for unhoused people on the CTA within the next year, is defending the city’s bike lane projects and agrees Chicago is facing a housing affordability crisis — but the first-term mayor is still not saying when he might announce a bid for reelection.
Block Club sat down with Mayor Johnson for his three-year anniversary media tour — bike lanes, CTA safety, housing affordability. Conspicuously missing from the whole thing: any answer on whether he’s running again. Three years in and he’s out here defending bike lanes. Meanwhile, people on the South and West sides want to know whether the CTA is going to feel safe enough to actually use — that’s the political problem for him. To be fair, he did tout the 2025 murder decline and rising CTA ridership — those are real numbers. But “we hope to launch a CTA shelter program within the next year” is doing a lot of work for a sitting mayor. Hope to launch. Within a year. That’s a campaign promise wearing a governing suit. Got a story idea, a correction, or something you think we should be watching in Chicago politics and urbanism? Send us a note at chicagodailyfix at lantern podcasts dot com. We read every message.
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That’s Chicago Politics and Urbanism Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.