CN September 27, 2012

Posted on September 28, 2012 by Ken

Here’s a succinct explanation of the CHA’s Plan for Transformation:

“Mayor Daley was a very successful politician, and he was faced with a political problem. He had half the people in the city wanting to tear the buildings down because they thought the residents were welfare queens living in high-rise palaces, and the other half of the city wanting to tear the buildings down because they felt the residents were incarcerated victims oppressed by a cruel government bureaucracy. Presented with that dilemma, the consensus point is – tear the buildings down, or look weak…if you take that first step and do the demolition, and think about what’s going to happen later, that’s a politician’s approach to the issue. ”

That’s the view of Ethan Michaeli of Chicago’s on-line Resident’s Journal (and We the People Media) as we seek out a status check on the radical Plan for Transformation.

It was supposed to be a ten-year plan, proposed fourteen years ago, and now it’s essentially a fifteen-year plan with no prospects of being completed soon. But those hated high-rises were demolished, and the plan called for replacement communities that contained a so-called 1/3-1/3-1/3 mix – of public housing residents displaced  from demolished developments, people livng in units with subsidized rents, and people who had bought their units at “market rate”.

It never worked out that way, and as WBEZ’s South Side Bureau reporter Natalie Moore discovered, it’s being re-thought by the new boss.

“The 1/3-1/3-1/3 model is not something that was tested. There’s no social science research around it. It just sounded like a good thing to CHA. For them it was about – they will tell you – it was a deconcentrating poverty, and it’s about poor people and well-off people should live together and live happily ever after…but when I did talk to (CEO Charles) Woodyard shortly after he came to this position, I pressed him on that and to my surprise, he said, well, you know, we have to take another look at this. ”

So what does this mean for two older, very different developments, Altgeld Gardens on the far south side and Lathrop Homes on the North side? Both are slated for radical re-working, including, most likely, major demolition. But activists say this is perfect housing  for Chicago’s huge population of working poor who can’t afford the over $700 the Chicago Rehab Network says is needed for a basic one-bedroom unit in Chicago.

Lathrop “could be rehabbed into any different kind of rental apartment housing” Michaeli asserts, because it has already undergone federal analysis and found to be sound enough to undergo rehab. But neither surrounding neighbors or the remaining residents want to see “market rate” housing built on the site. The CHA apparently does, fearing that anything else might create a new island of poverty. “The curious thing about this,” adds Moore, ” is that you have  a larger community that, I don’t think would be offended by having public housing there. ”

A major reason the Plan hasn’t really come to fruition (other than the demolition of the high rises) is how unrealistic it was, according to Michaeli. At the height of the building boom, he explains, commercial developers were delivering 4 to 5 thousand new units to market every year. The CHA’s plan to replace the tens of thousands of demolished units  was to build 5,000 new units per year. There just wasn’t enough infrastructure  to handle that much construction, he says. And let’s not forget, there was no money for it either.

But despite the significantly changed face of public housing, Michaeli reminds us: “Throughout the plan for Transformation, the pubic housing population in the city has grown. It has not shrunk. But it has grown in the number of people who have housing choice vouchers. You now have more than 130,000 people in the city living in housing-choice voucher-rented apartments. ”

So the CHA, within its 130,00 vouchers and its 25,000 residents in remaining buildings and senior developments, still remains – hands down – the biggest real-estate player in this city.

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CN Sep 20, 2012

Posted on September 20, 2012 by Ken

If you were following the CTU strike, you might have been dismayed by the union’s failure to suspend the strike last Sunday night. Some in the media, including columnists and editorialists who had been largely favorable, started to peel away, suggesting that the union was out of control or even suffering from dissension  in the ranks.

On this week’s Newsroom, we have an inside perspective from UIC Professor Steven Ashby, who helped organize the contract campaign. Here’s how he describes it:

“On Sunday, the big bargaining team, there are thirty members, met before the Delegates’ meeting. And they said we don’t have the contract language. And you know what? You the leadership have been telling us for two years the members run this union. Well, we’re not ready to vote yet. We want to see what the members think. They voted two to one to send it to the members, the delegates endorsed that, the 800 delegates, and actually it was a huge exercise in democracy. ”

That helps explain, at least in part, how the strike suspension vote the following Tuesday was close to unanimous. Ashby said the organizing started a long time ago, sometime after Karen Lewis’s election.

“Every school, a committee was organized,” he says. “Every member was in touch with that committee. If you weren’t wearing a red shirt on Friday, there are gonna be some conversations as to what are your concerns, let’s talk. Every member’s opinion was valued. And it just tansformed, step by step, it transformed this union. This is the most activist teachers’ union in the country.”

It’s probably no surprise that Ashby thinks this contract fight was a big victory for the CTU. “We’re seeing a beginning of an upsurge in this country. I know teachers across the country have watched this extremely closely because teacher union after teacher union have caved in, have not mobilized their membership, have given deep concessions, and they’re looking at Chicago and saying – why don’t we do what they did in Chicago?”

(If you’d like to hear Ashby’s complete list of what he considers the contract victories, click the link below and advance to about 09:30.)

But what about the contract details? Lorraine Forte is the Editor of Catalyst, and Sarah Karp is Deputy Editor. They both spent countless hours covering the strike.  Karp says the big deal was the contract length.

“I think the big win for the union is that the contract is only three years with a one year extension,” she explains. What if they don’t like what’s happening in year three? “… they say we’re not gonna accept the extension. It’s right in the middle – the precipice – of Emanuel’s next election campaign, if he decides to run again. So he’s gotta be nice to them. …  if the union signed a four year contract, it took them out of the conversation” about teacher evaluation methods and school closures in the fourth year.

Mayor Emanuel said repeatedly that he was fighting for principals’ autonomy. The right to develop their own staffs and to work for school-wide reform.

But Karp has written a well researched article in Catalyst showing that, since 2010 almost half of CPS principals have retired or quit “So it’s not as if we have all these experienced principals who are going to be making these decisions,” she says.

And Ashby, reacting to the term “autonomy”, had this reaction. “I think the word autonomy is understood by the teachers to mean either dictatorship or non-union. The charter drive as far as they’re concerned is ideologically driven to get rid of the union.”

School closings remain a thorny issue. With perhaps 130,000 surplus slots in the traditional CPS schools, some closings seem inevitable.  But as Karp explains, “It’s not a natural phenomenon. This has been caused by charter schools. There are some neighborhoods where there has been a decrease in enrollment, but the decrease in enrollment has been exacerbated by charter schools. We have more than 300 schools that have less than 300 kids in the school. ”

And Forte says the move to charters continues despite the thousands of vacant seats. “The school closings, while at the same time the district has said we’re gonna open 60 more charter schools, the two of them together is what has got the union revved up for another fight. And parents see their neighborhood school closed. And maybe it’s the last functioning institution in some poor community…”

And finally, the budget. Mayor Emanuel says the new contract will cost about $74 million extra in the first year. But Sarah Karp says the Board should be able to cope. They’ll probably wait a month, she says, then announce a revised budget.

“The CPS budget is kind of a crazy document,” she says. “But it can’t be hard for them to find $75 million. I mean, I’ve been covering the CPS for long enough to see 400 million dollar deficits disappear in, like a night. Because they decided they’e gonna turn off the lights at night or something like that. They’re gonna make a big deal over how they’re gonna find the money, but truthfully, it’s not gonna be that hard.”

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CN Sep 13, 2012

Posted on September 13, 2012 by Ken

As of Thursday evening,there’s so far been no settlement in the teachers’ strike, but optimism prevails. There’s still time for what Catalyst Chicago’s Rebecca Harris calls “a deal that both sides will be able to spin as a win.”

As we awaited a settlement today, we tried to get a clearer understanding of the two big issues everyone says are still on the table – teacher retention rights and teacher evaluations.

Retention – the right of a teacher who’s been laid off when a school closes or is reconstituted – could become a big deal if CPS makes good on its plan to seriously reduce the 100,000-plus surplus “seats” in the system.

“What CPS is currently offering is a procedure that would allow first dibs at interviews and in some cases limited recall rights for some teachers but it would only be available for teachers with proficient or better ratings.”, Harris explains. “CTU is looking for something a little bit more like the interim agreement they reached with the CPS last summer that would guarantee that if a certain number of displaced teachers applied for a position, a principal woud have to choose one of those, as long as the teachers were qualified.”

No matter what, CPS will have to find a bunch of money to pay for the modified contract, and one way is to close schools. But Columbia College’s Dan Weissman, a journalist who’s covered school issues for years, says that, in his experience, closing buildings can be deceiving.

“It was surprising how little money you ended up with at the end of the day, if you were going to close a building as a CPS site. The tradition they’ve been employing is that they would continue to operate that building as a site that’s run by someone who’s going to operate a charter network or who is contracting to you, so you’re still operating that building. ” And since you’re probably not going to tear the building down, you have to keep it heated if it’s unoccupied.

Teacher evaluation is a real sticking point, not just in Chicago but in school districts everywhere, large and small.

“The state has mandated hat at least 30% of a teacher’s evaluation be tied to student performance,” Harris explains.  “CPS had originally said they wanted to make that up around 40%. Now they’re saying they want to phase it in to be eventually around 35%. But there’s still this push and pull with the union where the CTU would like to factor in only the amount mandated by state law and not any more.”

And, she says, the idea is that there will be categories of teacher proficiency levels.

“Under CPS’ current proposal, the district is estimating that the bottom 1.5 percent of teachers would be rated unsatisfactory, another 28% would be rated as “developing” or “needs improvement” so that’s one of the things the union is taking issue with. They think the second category should be made smaller, so more teachers are proficient.”

So we don’t know where these issues stand, but we have an idea how complex  and controversial these issues are.

Weissman, however, says it’s all those other issues – the ones not being discussed at the bargaining table, that have been animating the picket lines.

“There are all these other issues that this is an opportunity to talk about. One teacher told me yesterday, I can’t be fired for what I say while I’m out on strike. That this is an opportunity to talk about the jobs they want to do, that they’re trying to do. All the teachers are saying to me, look, it’s 115 degrees in my classroom, I proposed to buy air conditioning units myself and they said great, we’ll also send you the electric bill.

“There’s such a long list,” he says, “of grievances that teachers have that involve management decisions that can be variously interpreted as arbitrary, misguided or malicious. Or incompetent. And they have so few opportunities to protest that whole menu of things. And so the energy that I’ve seen on teacher picket lines I have to say I find quite moving.”

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CN September 6, 2012

Posted on September 7, 2012 by Ken

We’re days away from a possible teachers’ strike in Chicago, but Kate Grossman, Deputy Editor of the Sun-Times Editorial page, remains optimistic that a strike will be averted at the last minute.

“A fair contract is still doable without a strike.” her editorial page had stated a couple of days ago. Does she still believe that? “There’s a handful of issues,” she says.  “It’s pay. It’s recall for teachers whose schools closed for low enrollment or poor performance, it’s the teacher evaluation. These are not that hard, really.”

But she acknowledges that this past year has been difficult for the teachers. “I have talked to umpteen teachers who just feel beleaguered, disrespected, overwhelmed, but a lot of those issues cannot be resolved in the contract”, she explains.

NPR/Chicago correspondent David Schaper also exprsses some optimism that things will be resolved in the end. But, he says, at this point it’s still all about posturing.

“Nobody wants to reveal too much of their hand – what they ’re willing to give in these final days and hours of negotiations,” He says. “I think that one of the things the teachers want to do is move this away from just a conversation about money.  And being portrayed as just wanting more money. And make this a bigger issue about conditions in the classroom and how they do their job – and how well they do their job.”

One of the big pay issues that might still be on the table is so-called “step increases” which provide a guaranteed salary bump for some number of years after a teacher is initially hired. And as Grossman points out, it’s a thorny issue.

“There’s pretty clear evidence in teaching that on average the fifth-year teacher is better than the first-year teacher,” she says. “But is the tenth-year teacher really better than the fifth-year teacher? Or the thirteen-year teacher? And that’s where it kind of rubs up against your basic notions of fairness, right? And also, some people hang on to the job, because they know their gonna get (the benefit) and do you really want a hanger-on in your daughter’s classroom?”

But Schaper points out that school districts also benefit from step increases in some cases.

“School districts as a whole have a very difficult time retaining teachers after that three to five-year mark. There’s enormous turnover – forty to fifty percent within the first five years,” he says.

Also in the discussion: Could a strike actually benefit Emanuel politically? And some admiration for Karen Lewis, who our guests say has installed very strong leadership at the top and his imposed a level of respectful discipline (unanimous votes, etc.) not seen in a generation.

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CN August 30, 2012

Posted on September 7, 2012 by Ken

The republican National Convention was in full swing as we recorded this week’s show, so we invited local Republican activist and pundit Chris Robling to sit with us and explain what’s been going on.

Unfortunately, the program happened before the Romney speech and the now-infamous Clint Eastwood appearance, but Chris, through the ingenious use of some hastily hand-drawn graphics, is able to explain the financial cliff to the edge of which the United States has driven itself – and the demographic challenge the Republican Party faces.

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CN August 23, 2012

Posted on August 23, 2012 by Ken

“Two weeks ago I did a community education forum in Rogers Park”, says Matt Farmer, who blogs for Huffington Post and is active with the CTU, “and an audience member asked each of us the question whether or not there would be a strike. My answer two weeks ago was ‘I haven’t the foggiest idea.’ Now I’m not a gambling man, I buy a lotto ticket about every five years. But if you asked me today, I believe there will be a strike. Whether that srike begins on September 4, September 24, October 4, remains to be seen.”

Farmer is making reference to the claims being made by many teachers that the terms of the”interim agreement” announced a few weeks ago simply aren’t being implemented at the local school level.

“From everything I pick up,” he reports, “talking to teachers, talking to folks in union leadership, it just seems we’re moving in that direction, I think in part because I think teachers are viewing what’s going on as not just a one-time let’s-get-this agreement-signed deal, but they’re viewing the future of their profession in the balance.

There are two entirely different world views, he says. One at the central office and one in the classroom.  There are still issues around merit pay and tying salaries to standardized test scores. But, he says of the teachers at this point, “They are equally, if not more interested in making sure that the classrooms for the kids in Chicago are providing the types of education for those kids that the Mayor wants to see for his own children.”

Achy Obejas, who writes at wbez.org, says when Mayor Emanuel came onto the scene, by pushing for the longer school day, he completely ignited emotions on both sides. By insisting that teachers work up to a couple of hours longer each day without pay, and then portraying them as “jerks” when they resisted, he took sides in the dispute from the beginning.

But, she says, “No matter how you slice it, no matter who the mayor is, three, four, five years from now, this thing is going to be just waiting to explode. There is an economic bomb embedded in the budget at CPS, it’s just that simple. ”

We veer off into national politics this week, as Achy points out that Paul Ryan has essentially no connection with America’s Latinos, and is on what she perceives to be the wrong side of all of the major issues -especially education and health care – that Latinos, and, in fact most new immigrants, care about.

Regardless, she says, the Democrats will still let the Republicans control the message.

“The democrats are remarkably either complacent or arrogant, I can’t figure it out, in assuming that their message is in and of itself so fantastic that people will see the reason for it. So the way it ends up playing out is that no matter how solid the issue is for the Democrats, the Republicans manage to turn it around and put them on the defensive. The fact that they’re playing defensive on Medicare is absolutely astounding to me.”

Finally, Matt Farmer says he took a closer look at the numbers released yesterday by CPS that played positively in the news media  – increases in ACT and Prairie State test scores over the past year. But the news wasn’t so rosy, he says, at the AUSL-managed schools that Mayor Emanuel and Sup’t Brizard praise so heavily. He cites the example of Dyett High School, which is being phased out due to poor academic performance, its students being moved to Phillips.

Dyett, he says,  “had an ACT score, reported yesterday, that exceeded the ACT score at Phillips High School. Not only that, Philips High School’s ACT score dropped from last year. Its Prairie State Achievement test score was lower.”

“other AUSL schools – Collins High School dropped. Orr High School dropped. So to the extent that the Mayor wants to hold this group and these schools out as the beacons on the hill, let’s take a look at the test scores that you’re using to close other schools, and use the same standard and see what happens. ”

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CN August 16, 2012

Posted on August 16, 2012 by Ken

Young people, according to Carol Felsenthal (Chicago Magazine, The Hill) may be the surprise in the November election, finding Paul Ryan attractive for his youth and fresh ideas about the economy. But that will be more than offset, she predicts, by the revulsion older people may exhibit over Ryan’s health care proposals.

“I think people don’t want to get on the telephone and haggle with an insurance company. I think however many of them may say they’re Republicans and conservatives they don’t want that and their children don’t want it for them either,” she says, concluding that “I don’t see how they win Florida, and if they don’t win Florida I think they’ve lost the election.”

But Felsenthal thinks the real impact of the Romney-Ryan ticket will be felt in our local races. In the Tenth District, for example, Mark Kirk succeeded as a social moderate, she says, something his successor, Bob Dold, has emulated while running in the most Democratic district currently in Republican hands.

“Dold has followed in his footsteps to such a great degree. He makes every move toward being a moderate…but with the Paul Ryan candidacy I think I would bet on Brad Schneider now”.

Joel Hood, who writes about education for the Tribune, is cautiously optimistic that both sides in the CTU/CPS contract negotiations will come to an agreement before  school starts for the remaining CPS schools on Sep. 4.  The recent agreement about the longer school day, he argues, has taken the most explosive issue off the table because it allows fired teachers first priority for rehiring.

“This week was the week that they scheduled to talk seriously about compensation,” he says. “It’s sort of the big issue still, but it’s not as big as it was prior to the longer day thing because that’s when the district was facing the reality of maybe having to pay 15 or 20% more to teachers. ”

But the clock is ticking, and the teachers are legally permitted to call a strike any time after Saturday, with ten days’ notice.

Hood also talks about a recent article he wrote highlighting a UCLA study finding that four in ten African American students in the nation’s schools were suspended at least once during the 09/10 school year.

“They talk about the cumulative effect of all of these out-of-school suspensions,” he says.  “Anybody can sit out of school a day or a couple of days and probably get caught up but when you have these repeat offenders who are routinely suspended for long periods of time, how do you make up a week’s worth of school?”

At CPS, which has one of the most stark disparities between percentages of white and black students getting suspended, the administration recently took steps to modify its Student Code of Conduct in an effort to reduce out-of-school suspensions.

Is Jesse Jackson Jr’s stay at Mayo an opportunist effort to avoid political scrutiny? It’s cynical, but Felsenthal says – maybe.

And both guests agree that the thousands of people lining up for their two-year “deferred action for childhood arrivals” registry at Navy Pier yesterday represents a  positive direction for the future of our Republic.

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CN August 9, 2012

Posted on August 9, 2012 by Ken

Here’s something to ponder if you or your friends are driving along enjoying some of that newly-slightly-deregulated marijuana. Sam Hudzik (WBEZ) explains the scenario:

“If you get pulled over or are a passenger in a car that gets pulled over and you’re found to have marijuana, yea, you’re still elegible for a ticket. They won’t arrest you but they will take you to the station and test it and if they find that it is marijuana they will impound the car. So you have the $250 to $500 ticket, but then you have a $2,000 – plus car impound fee.” But here’s the good news – so far, in the first week, the police have only issued 11 tickets for marijuana. So that implies that many, many cops are back on the street fighting crime. Those stats, though, aren’t readily available.

Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. will be coming home in September from his Mayo Clinic treatments, just in time to hit the trail for the November election. John Dempsey (WLS-AM) has the political analysis. “As long as he has a pulse he will win in this heavily Democratic district,” John explains. He faces only nominal opposition for his Congressional seat, and he shouldn’t have much to worry about.

His wife Sandi, who happens to be the 7th Ward’s Alderman, is  facing some political whitewater of her own, because constiuents are complaining that she’s been AWOL from her job as crime rates have been spiking in Jeffery Manor and other places in her Ward. But Hudzik says “Sandi Jackson is the shrewdest politician in that family. She knows she’s not up for re-election for a while, and there’s plenty of time for her to make her mark at this point.” And besides, some of the complaining could be coming from allies of the Beavers family, the Jackson’s long-time rivals.

Oh, and just in case you had high hopes that Gov. Quinn’s call for a Special Session of theLegislature will result in significant, dramatic pension reform,  John and Sam have disappointing news.

“This back and forth, the power games over the special session/regular session with Cullerton and Quinn, I think that just underscores the difficulty they’re gonna have if the Democratic leaders can’t get together on this and they’re going to fight over whether to get there,” says Hudzik.  “My expectations are not very high for August 17.”

Also this week: George Ryan will be let out of prison each day beginning in January for work release. Then, next July, incredible as it seems, his 5-year sentence will be completed.

 

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CN August 2, 2012

Posted on August 3, 2012 by Ken

How, we ask Catalyst Chicago’s Sarah Karp, will this compromise between the CPS and the CTU work? How will adding, on average, one teacher to each school reach the goal of a longer school day yet not require elementary teachers to work one extra minute per day?

It doesn’t, she calmly explains.

“The real reason why the compromise allowed for the longer day is because originally when they talked about the longer day they wanted teachers to come in early for planning. They wanted teachers to work their lunch, so have their lunch with the kids and be with the kids…well now they’re not doing any of that…basically what they did was they took away a lot of the planning time or professional development time that was built into the day and said fine. You teachers don’t have to be here. You schools are on the line for getting some college student or parent volunteer or some aide to sit in the lunchroom with the kids, and now the teachers, they just don’t have to work as many minutes. ”

Make you feel more confident in the big compromise?

“And that extra teacher doesn’t really have anything to do with anything because, for one thing it’s not necessarily an art teacher or a music teacher. It can be anybody,” she adds.

And what about in the high schools?

“Originally the high schools had one day a week where the kids leave 75 minutes early and the teachers would have to stay and do professional development. Now, the kids leave 75 minutes early and the teachers leave 75 minutes early. So …it doesn’t change anything for kids. ”

There are a couple of very sticky issues still on the table, according to Karp. One has to do with pay, but specifically the implementation of merit pay. “Emanuel offered two percent for one year and then merit pay. The Teachers’ Union is completely against merit pay. So maybe they would accept two percent for two or three years and maybe a merit pay system being piloted in,” she explains.

The other is displaced teachers, which could become a huge issue in the next few years.

“There’s a lot of speculation that a lot of schools will be closed over the next year. The next couple of years maybe fifty to a hundred schools – and that leaves a lot of displaced teachers. I think the members want some security for those displaced teachers. They want, really, preference for those displaced teachers for future jobs, and I know Chicago Public Schools are against that.” And, by the way, those displaced teachers tend to be more experienced, and therefore more expensive.

Also on our panel this week is Charlie Meyerson, until recently the Chicago Bureau Chief at the late FM News 101. He’s started blogging a daily digest of three things of interest, but because he’s Charlie, he often exceeds his own limit.

Charlie noted this week that the New York Times has become, technically, a reader-supported organization, since, in the second quarter it raised about 220 million from advertisers, but about 230 million from subscription revenue. But he notes, there are dangers.

“It insulates them from the vagaries of the ad market. As any media organization walls off more and more content, the circulation tends to stabilize and advertisers, always looking for bigger and bigger audiences may find more reasons to pull out,” he says. But it’s always good to see an audience willing to pay for content they think is entertaining, informative and unique.

 

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CN July 26, 2012

Posted on July 27, 2012 by Ken

Does the president of a chain of privately-held chicken restaurants have the right to express his opinion that gay marriage is not in conformity with his understanding of Biblical teaching? Should a Chicago alderman then have the right to deny him the legal documents to build a new restaurant in a thriving commercial district based on that alderman’s disagreement with the owner’s religious beliefs?

There was some hot-headed rhetoric flowing in Wednesday’s City Council meeting about Chick-fil-A, and it appeared that, for a while, even Mayor Emanuel seemed to favor denying the permits. But as Tribune City Hall correspondent Hal Dardick points out this week, there are serious First Amendment issues here, and denying zoning could be difficult since the requested site in front of the Elston Home Depot is already home to dozens of restaurants, retail and commercial businesses.

(Here’s Eric Zorn’s take on it, along with related links)

Lots of firefighters and police officers – perhaps hundreds of them – receive endless disability benefits from the City for injuries they incurred, either on or off the job, during their careers. While many are truly disabled, a large number are simply taking advantage of a system that the Sun-Times’  Tim Novak says is “set up to be abused”. In his recent series he and Chris Fusco unearth a police officer who had a medical issue on his tenth day in the training academy and his been on disability ever since.

Some of the people he profiled are in line to receive well over a million dollars in payouts during their lifetimes, all the while holding full-time jobs elsewhere, often in the suburbs or in other states.  That includes “one officer whose injury is described as having slipped on a pencil.”

A major issue, according to Novak, is why many of these individuals can’t come back to the City to work, even in another Department, in a different capacity.  After the series ran, Mayor Emanuel appointed someone to look into these concerns.

We also talk about food trucks, the Koschman case and the settlement in the Burge case.

“Why did the City settle the Burge case, offering Michael Tillman over 5 million dollars in compensation for the 23 years he spent in prison for a rape and murder he didn’t commit?” Dardick asks. “Had they gone to trial, could a jury have given him twenty million? Did the City settle this strictly because they thought they were going to lose more money if they went to trial? I think you could conclude that.” In addition, the settlement releases Richard M. Daley from deposition in the case, something neither he nor presumably Mayor Emanuel relished.

And Novak, speaking about the Koschman case that he and his newspaper doggedly kept in the public eye, says the Grand Jury that Dan Webb has impaneled will be operating in Webb’s law office rather than at the Criminal Courts building as is customary. That’s because his investigation has to be done way from the States Attorney’s office, which will likely be investigated for wrongdoing in the case.

As Novak explains, “There’s an overriding question of how is it that the police couldn’t determine eight years ago that Daley’s nephew did this, but then they could do it last year without any additional evidence. So at what point did they decide – we’ll just say that he did it – and why did you do that if you couldn’t do it eight years earlier?

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