Commuter advocates just named Nora Leerhsen for the permanent CTA job — and the clock that was supposed to force Johnson’s hand already ran out. It’s Chicago Politics and Urbanism Daily. We’ve got a mayor who let the search drift past his own deadline, a transit safety task force that still can’t tell you who’s actually running the show, and a Metra elevator stuck out until winter 2027 with apparently no one on the hook. Leadership, accountability, access. All in one Friday. Let’s get into it. Here's Chicago Tribune:
Mayor Brandon Johnson has had more than a year to determine who should permanently lead the CTA. Yet now, just days before new regional transit governance reforms take effect and dilute mayoral control over the agency, Chicago finds itself without a completed search process, without a publicly identified alternative candidate and without a clear explanation as to why the person already leading the CTA through recovery still appears to be viewed as temporary.
The Tribune makes it pretty simple: Johnson said there was a national search, a FOIA request says otherwise, and June 1 is almost here with the new NITA setup about to bring advice-and-consent power to the table. The deadline he was trying to beat is gone. Commuter advocates naming Leerhsen in public — that’s not an op-ed, that’s a constituency putting Johnson on the clock. She’s been running the agency for more than a year, the search that was supposed to happen apparently didn’t, and now it’s either his pick on his timeline or the NITA board walks into the room with him. We asked Monday if Johnson was trying to beat the new oversight structure — Tribune says no. And if Leerhsen is the only publicly known candidate, then City Hall gets to explain why she’s still wearing the “interim” label. She inherited the RPM Phase 1 construction mess; she didn’t make it. If the argument is that she’s not permanent, then somebody needs to put an actual name on the table — because “we’re still looking” with nine days left is just stalling. When the State’s Attorney is holding a press conference at a CTA station with cops and transit officials lined up behind her, who actually owns safety day to day? And how would we even know if this new task force changes anything? It really is a multi-headed setup, which is why accountability gets slippery so fast. Right now you’ve got CPD officers on trains — the CTA just ended contracts with at least two private unarmed security firms it had used since 2022 and is shifting that money to armed Chicago police patrols, per the April announcement. Cook County Sheriff’s deputies are also on trains under an earlier security plan the CTA filed with the Federal Transit Administration, after the FTA threatened to pull a fifty-million-dollar grant if the CTA didn’t change course. Layered on top of that is the new Regional Transit Task Force, announced May 18 at Roosevelt station — Cook County State’s Attorney’s office, the Sheriff, CPD, the CTA, Metra, Pace, and several federal agencies, including the U.S. Attorney’s office. On paper, the prosecution side has some teeth: the State’s Attorney’s office says there are 36 dedicated assistant state’s attorneys and investigators who’ll specialize in transit crime and train alongside CTA and CPD. And for a baseline, violent crime on the CTA system fell about six percent in 2025 compared with the year before, per CTA data. The numbers that matter now are prosecution rates on transit arrests, case dismissal rates, and whether that six-percent drop keeps going or snaps back once the seasonal noise is stripped out. So if CPD, the Sheriff, and the State’s Attorney are all technically in the mix, does that make it easier for any one agency to duck blame when something goes wrong? That’s exactly the worry. The task force is supposed to meet monthly to review violent incidents and coordinate charges, per the Sun-Times, which at least gives us a recurring paper trail to demand. The questions now are whether those reports ever go public, whether the FTA actually finishes its review of that fifty-million-dollar grant after looking at the CTA’s revised security plan, and whether the 36-prosecutor unit shows up in felony filing data — because if none of that surfaces, then the press conference was the whole product. Here's Jason Knowles at ABC7 Chicago:
After a year of major delays to get Cook County property tax refund checks to residents, the ABC7 I-Team learned that the hold-ups are coming to an end and refund money is starting to get into the hands of taxpayers.
ABC7’s I-Team says the Cook County Treasurer’s office is finally clearing a year-long property tax refund backlog, and Treasurer Maria Pappas is crediting AI experts. One tax-exempt school in that backlog got more than $300,000 once ABC7 started asking questions, and it still says it’s owed another $387,000. Credit where it’s due — real money is getting to real people. But “AI fixed it” is doing a lot of work in that release. Why did it take outside tech help and an I-Team call for a tax-exempt school to stop getting billed for back taxes it never owed? The Quantum LEEP Academy founder said she thought she was going to have to close her doors. That’s a school. Over a billing error. And it moved the moment ABC7 showed up — that’s accountability, not AI. Kaija Wilkinson, writing in Elevator World:
Disabled riders of Metra, the rail system serving Chicagoland, are being forced to reroute their trips with the closure of the only elevator that provides access to the Electric Line at Millennium Station downtown, CBS Chicago reports. The elevator on South Water Street was shut down for modernization on May 18 and is not expected to reopen until winter 2027.
Millennium Station’s only elevator to the Electric Line went down May 18, and Metra’s backup — a station half a mile south — is described as not always working. That’s not a plan. That’s a shrug in ADA paperwork. Winter 2027. That’s what modernization looks like for disabled Metra riders while everybody downtown is busy arguing over who runs the CTA. The governance reform we keep talking about shuffled CTA oversight — it didn’t touch Metra accountability — and this is the result. And the spokesperson quoted here is putting her hope in the RTA replacement structure — the one that doesn’t exist yet — to fix access gaps across the whole regional system. That’s a long wait for somebody who can’t walk a half mile. This one's from Illinois Department of Human Services:
The conversation included a panel of experts discussing the structural factors that contribute to racial and ethnic disparities in rates of Latine homelessness, such as a lack of affordable housing, employment, and healthcare access, as well as other insights and findings contained in the report.
Springfield dropped a first-of-its-kind report Thursday on Latine homelessness in Illinois. UIC’s Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy did it with the state’s own Office to Prevent and End Homelessness. The structural drivers they’re naming are affordable housing, employment, and healthcare access. So on paper, the state is finally defining the problem. Humboldt Park is a heavily Latine neighborhood where residents have been raising housing and infrastructure complaints for years, and now the state is publishing a report that names exactly those structural factors. The question is whether the city’s investments in that corridor — the zoning, the housing dollars — are actually matched by the anti-displacement work this report says matters. And it ties into something bigger this week: the elected school board is absorbing enrollment and budget pressure driven by the same forces Springfield is now naming — housing instability, immigration status. The state writes the diagnosis; CPS’s elected board inherits the consequences. If Chicago Politics and Urbanism Daily helps you stay on top of the city, consider subscribing and leaving a quick review wherever you’re listening. It really helps other people find the show.
You’ll find links to all of today’s stories in the show notes if you want to dig further into anything we covered.
That’s Chicago Politics and Urbanism Daily for this Friday. Thanks for listening. This is a Lantern Podcast.