Day before the holiday, and the city's version of a going-away gift is a bunch of empty seats and dropped charges. This is Chicago Politics and Urbanism Daily — Friday. Today: who didn't show up to the CTA hearing, whether Loretto's execs walk, and a vendor crackdown that quietly folded. Streetsblog Chicago, with Ellen Steinke:
For the second time this year, the City Council’s Committee on Transportation and Public Way failed to reach the necessary quorum, at least half of its 14 members, for a legally mandated quarterly hearing on the CTA. That cut short what was supposed to be a public update on service, safety, ridership, and the agency’s transition into a new regional transit era.
Second time this year the transportation committee couldn't get seven out of fourteen members in a room. Second time. For a hearing the city ordinance says they have to hold. And the timing is the story. NITA flips the switch on a whole new regional transit era in a matter of months, and this is the quorum they can muster to ask about it. Acting President Leerhsen shows up, presents ridership up, delays down, crime down — and half the people who are supposed to hold her to account just don't come. Ellen Steinke at Streetsblog named who wasn't there. That list is the whole thing. These are the same alders who'd lose their minds if a constituent no-showed a zoning meeting in their ward. Suddenly the calendar's too full for a legally mandated hearing. And we've got a mayoral field out here selling 'safe, clean, reliable CTA.' Which one of them is calling out their own council colleagues for ghosting the one hearing that actually touches that slogan? From Block Club Chicago:
Now, Miller and Bergdahl are in talks with prosecutors and close to finalizing deferred prosecution agreements, prosecutors said at a Thursday hearing. The agreements would mean that, should Miller and Bergdahl follow the terms outlined in them and “demonstrate a period of good conduct,” then the government would eventually dismiss charges against the two, Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane MacArthur said at the hearing before U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman.
Careful with this one. Prosecutors said Thursday they're close to a deferred prosecution deal for two ex-Loretto execs — George Miller and Heather Bergdahl. Close to. Not done, and 'deferred' doesn't mean dropped tomorrow. Tens of millions out of a West Side safety-net hospital. That's the place that treats folks with no insurance and nowhere else to go. And the headline might land as 'charges dismissed.' Keep the tracks separate — the CFO, Anosh Ahmed, is his own case. Miller and Bergdahl are the ones in these talks. Bergdahl was staring at fourteen wire fraud counts, twenty-one embezzlement counts. That's the ceiling this deal walks away from. A deferred deal means they behave for a stretch and the government dismisses it. So the terms are 'good conduct.' Meanwhile nobody's asking what that money was supposed to buy for the patients on Central Avenue. This one's from Block Club Chicago:
At the request of a city attorney, Cook County Judge Joseph Gump dismissed Murillo’s case, along with citations against at least 18 other vendors. The wave of dismissals comes as the city has been cracking down on unlicensed street vendors in Downtown’s high-traffic tourist area, going so far as to arrest people on city ordinance violations.
Nearly 20 vendors, citations dismissed. A city attorney stood up in front of Judge Gump and asked for it — after the same city arrested these people over fruit carts. Leydy Murillo sold fruit downtown, got cuffed on an ordinance violation, and then had to log into a virtual hearing a month later to beat a charge the city itself just walked back. And they cleared the docket on July 2nd. Day before a holiday, city goes quiet, cases just... evaporate. Nobody's connecting the crackdown to the collapse if it happens over the long weekend. Block Club's point that matters — the city was arresting people over what's usually a civil infraction. That goes way beyond standard enforcement, and it looks like City Hall picked a fight it couldn't win in court. And here's the part they don't put in the press release — these are immigrant vendors. Every court date's a chance to get grabbed by federal agents on the way out. Norma Salazar Perdomo got detained leaving a hearing last month. So the city manufactures the court appearance, then hands ICE the address. Whether that was the intent or just the effect, the result's the same. You want to talk about who shows up? These vendors showed up. Fought it. Won. Meanwhile the alders couldn't clear their schedules for a CTA hearing — the piece we just hit. Okay, help me out here — how does Chicago announce a surplus and a massive deficit basically in the same breath? Is someone cooking the books, or is this just how city finances work? Both numbers are real, which is why it sounds like a magic trick. The 2025 surplus is backward-looking: $219 million on paper, and Mayor Johnson's team called that a $381 million improvement over the year before. But the Sun-Times reported almost all of it was already spoken for, leaving only about $52 million actually free. The 2026 deficit is the next bill coming due. WTTW reported back in August 2025 that the city was projecting a $1.15 billion shortfall for fiscal year 2026, on top of a $146 million gap that had already opened up mid-year in 2025, partly because corporate tax revenues came in lower than expected. So both numbers can be true without fraud. You're looking at two different clocks: last year's ledger versus the budget City Hall has to balance now. And sitting underneath all of it is the structural problem the Sun-Times flagged: Chicago leaned on roughly $1.9 billion in one-time federal pandemic relief money for years, and that cash is now gone. The city should have been, quote, 'more proactive in meeting the moment we knew was coming,' according to that reporting. Add the cash-flow crunch on top of that — the city made only a partial pension payment earlier this year, and mayoral aides had to explain it publicly. So if there's a billion-dollar TIF surplus sitting around, why isn't that just plugging the hole? The Civic Federation — basically Chicago's taxpayer watchdog — warned about that exact move. They said the TIF surplus process the Johnson administration revised last year has become, in their words, 'complex and highly politicized,' which makes it harder for that money to flow cleanly into the general fund. And City Hall wasn't acting like TIF could solve everything. As of last summer, its own team was reviewing 26 separate revenue ideas, with property tax hikes and a garbage collection fee at the top of the list. Neither one is easy politics. The 2026 budget fight is going to show whether they land on recurring revenue or genuine spending cuts, or go back to one-time patches and put us right back here next year. If Chicago Politics and Urbanism Daily helps you stay ahead of the city’s big conversations, take a moment to subscribe and leave a review wherever you’re listening. It really helps other people find the show.
What we’re watching next: the next hearing in the Loretto case is set for July 14, when prosecutors and defense attorneys expect to present the deferred-prosecution agreements.
You’ll find links to all the stories from today’s briefing in the show notes, so take a look if one of them is something you want to read more closely.
That’s Chicago Politics and Urbanism Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.