To inform voters and to help the baiduhai Editorial Board make endorsements, the board posed a series of questions to the candidates running for alderman. See their answers below. See how other candidates answered here.
Name: Paul Bruton
Ward: 13th
Current job: Parent
Previous political experience: Currently serve on Local School Council at Blair Early Childhood Center.
Education: University of Chicago, AB ’08 (U.S. History) and Northwestern, MPPA ’12
Spouse’s occupation: Fundraiser at Goodman Theatre
Sources of outside income: Investment income from index/mutual funds, as well as about $500-1,000/yr in freelance writing work.
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The rise in violent crime remains a top priority for City Hall. Homicides, shootings and carjackings are all unacceptably high. Tell us how city government can be innovative in combating crime, and explain what measures you would propose if elected.
Public safety will be my top priority if elected. The citywide spike in violent crime over the last few years has left Chicagoans feeling unsafe, and the voters I have spoken with have made it clear that this is their number one concern. To address this issue, we need to broaden our idea of public safety, reduce the workload on our police officers, and rebuild the fractured relationship between police and the communities that they serve.
Police officers are overworked and burnt out, and we have struggled to recruit officers to replace those who are retiring. Canceled days off and excessive overtime have taken a toll on officers’ mental health and wellness. We need to reduce the workload on police officers and ensure that officers get the rest they need to do their jobs safely and effectively, while still having time to see their families and live their lives. We need better mental health care, support, and resources for police officers to help officers deal with the stress and trauma of the job. To reduce officers’ workload, I want to reduce the volume of calls for service that fall to police officers by advocating for a citywide expansion of the current CARE pilot program in which mental health response teams respond to 911 calls. This program will better serve those experiencing mental health crises while freeing up police officers to focus on preventing and responding to violent crime.
Finally, we need to more rapidly implement policies that build trust between police and the communities they serve, as well as restore trust between police officers and city leadership. The pervasive mistrust that exists between the various stakeholders within our criminal justice system hampers our ability to effectively prevent and respond to crime. Specifically, we need speedier, fairer, and more consistent police discipline procedures; we need greater transparency on violence prevention strategies from CPD and city leadership; and we need to devote necessary resources to improve recruitment and promotions within CPD.
The CTA, one of the nation’s largest transit systems, remains a troubled agency grappling with issues ranging from violent crime and ghost buses and trains, to flagging ridership. Give us your thoughts on what specific measures CTA should take to make train and bus service safer, more reliable and more equitable for Chicagoans.
As an immediate first step, CTA needs to align its bus and train schedules with its actual operational capacity. Riders deserve to have reliable schedules so that they aren’t left waiting for transit that never arrives. Ghost buses and trains can leave riders waiting in the cold, make them late for work, or cause them to miss other important appointments, and Chicagoans deserve better. Providing an accurate, reliable schedule that riders can depend on is a bare minimum first step.
Next, CTA needs to improve recruitment and retention of drivers and other staff to increase its operational capacity back to pre-pandemic levels. Providing a reliable and robust transit service will draw riders back to the CTA and provide a greater sense of safety on transit as fewer riders find themselves on otherwise empty buses or train cars. A fuller transit system is a safer transit system.
Finally, addressing the spike in violent crime citywide will also help address this issue on the CTA. As we implement policies that combat crime, reduce police workload, and restore trust in the criminal justice system, we will also reduce the incidence of violent crime on the CTA and restore Chicagoans’ overall sense of safety. As people feel safer, they will return to the CTA, further enhancing safety on the system.
Ten years ago, enrollment at Chicago Public Schools was 403,000 students. In September, enrollment stood at 322,000 students. Enrollment at CPS has dropped for 11 consecutive years. What specific measures should CPS undertake to reverse the trend of ever-dwindling enrollment?
Declining school enrollment is not a uniquely Chicago problem, and much of the decline in schools across the country – both public and private – has been driven by rapidly changing demographic trends. As more families have fewer children later in life, lower birth rates have resulted in fewer school-aged children across the board. According to Illinois Department of Public Health data, between 2010 and 2020, the number of children born each year in Chicago fell from nearly 43,000 down to 31,000, a change of nearly 12,000 births annually. This demographic shift has been the primary driver of declining school enrollment, and will likely result in continued declines into the near future.
Adding to the issue of declining birth rates, Chicago has seen out-migration of thousands of Black families in recent years, many of whom had children enrolled in CPS. Many of these families cite safety concerns and a lack of economic opportunity as major factors in their decisions. As a city, we need to do more to invest in underserved communities, provide greater safety and opportunity, and keep more families in Chicago.
All of this is to say that CPS cannot solve the problem of declining enrollment on its own. These trends go far beyond anything to do with the perceived quality of a CPS education. However, for the foreseeable future, CPS will need to adjust its expectations to the reality of declining enrollment, and plan and budget accordingly. This will require thinking carefully about how we allocate funding to schools and whether Student-Based Budgeting is the best way to budget amid declining enrollment. Improving the quality and perception of Chicago Public Schools is important, but it is only one piece of a much larger puzzle concerning public safety, economic security, and family dynamics in Chicago and across the country.
Disinvestment on the South and West sides is a decades-long problem with myriad causes. Give us at least one innovative idea that you believe could play a role in reversing South and West side disinvestment, and explain why the idea is realistic and feasible.
In addition to expanding access to credit and encouraging small businesses, one way the city can reverse disinvestment is to overhaul how we allocate residential infrastructure dollars to local communities. The current Aldermanic Menu program assigns an equal portion of residential infrastructure money to each ward, regardless of the actual needs of any given ward. This penalizes larger, less dense wards that contain more miles of road, streetlights, sidewalks, and other items covered by Aldermanic Menu. The program’s defenders claim that the equal distribution of Menu funds is fair, but it isn’t, and the communities that get hurt most by this program are the very same South and West side wards that have seen historic disinvestment. The Menu program needs to be fundamentally reformed or eliminated altogether, and we need to make strategic infrastructure investments in historically underserved communities that can serve as a catalyst for further neighborhood development.
While the Menu program is only one aspect of how Chicago funds infrastructure, it is emblematic of the parochialism that has long dominated Chicago’s City Council, which has often prevented us from solving our biggest challenges. Changes to Menu and other infrastructure programs have been politically unpopular among aldermen in the past, but with a large portion of the City Council poised to turnover after this next election, we will have a unique opportunity to implement reforms that would have been previously impossible. I hope we use this moment to reimagine how we fund infrastructure in our communities, bring greater equity to all corners of the city, and help promote development in all of our neighborhoods.
Do you support giving Chicagoans property tax relief? If yes, please explain how you would accomplish it. If no, please explain why not.
Yes, in the near term, I support giving property tax relief to Chicagoans who have experienced excessive spikes in their taxes this year. While most Chicagoans saw single digit percentage increases, some communities saw their property taxes increase by as much as 40%-50% since their last bill due to reassessments and changes to the property tax system. These are unacceptably high increases, particularly when the tax bills arrived late and the amount was unexpected.
I’m aware of the current proposal in City Council to provide relief to homeowners by using $10 million in COVID-19 relief funds to provide forgivable loans to income qualified Chicagoans. My preference would be to identify another one-time source of funding within the city budget rather than use federal funds for this purpose, but I would be open to considering this proposal – or a similar proposal – depending on the specific terms and qualifications for the relief.
In the long term, we need to rethink how property taxes affect some of our most vulnerable communities, and determine a solution to avoid this type of unexpected, excessive increase in the future.
Give us your take on the city’s use of tax increment financing districts. Do you feel they have been useful, or do you feel that the problems associated with them outweigh their usefulness? What if any reforms would you want to apply to the city’s usage of TIFs?
I am generally skeptical of the overall benefits of TIF districts in Chicago. Though TIFs certainly can be a useful tool for neighborhood development, Chicago’s government has overused TIFs for decades in ways that mostly serve to divert tax revenue from other taxing bodies and create the potential for abuse. This overreliance on TIFs starves the city and other agencies of needed funds, often without delivering the promised development that the TIF was created to provide. We need to be more selective about where TIFs are created, more targeted in how the money collected by TIFs is spent, and more proactive about sunsetting TIF districts once their purpose has been fulfilled. I would like to see more reliable rules in place to return uncommitted TIF funds to the taxing bodies after a set amount of time if the funds aren’t being used, as well as firmer rules about when and why funds can be ported from one district to another.
Lead in drinking water is a major health concern for the city. It is estimated that in Chicago there are roughly 400,000 homes and small apartment buildings with lead service lines. So far, the city has replaced less than 300 lead service lines. Do you feel the pace of lead service line replacement should be expedited, and if yes, what is the best, most feasible way to accomplish that?
We absolutely need to expedite replacing lead service lines. This is a major public health concern that affects some of our most vulnerable and underserved communities.
This is an area where we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. The city has a program to replace lead service lines, as well as incentives for homeowners to voluntarily replace their own service lines. We need to focus our efforts on replacing as many lead service lines as possible by prioritizing properties where high lead levels have been detected or where service lines can be replaced by less costly trenchless construction. We also need to better market the voluntary programs so that homeowners know they can take advantage of the savings provided by permit fee waivers to replace their own service lines at their convenience. Every service line that a homeowner replaces voluntarily reduces the total cost to the city and moves us closer to the long-term goal of eliminating lead services lines.
We need to be clear, though, that although this problem is urgent and must be expedited, it will take decades to achieve the long-term goal of total replacement. Even the most ambitious projects in other cities are projected to take at least 15 years, and Chicago has more lead service lines than any other city in the country. Solving the problem of lead service lines will require both urgent focus and a long-term commitment that will take years, if not decades, to fully resolve.
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If you are an incumbent, please explain what is it about your service on the City Council that makes you most qualified for the job. If you have never served on the council, please explain what is it about your background that makes you most qualified.
I can deliver the honest government that my community deserves. My education and experience have prepared me to take on Chicago’s problems with thoughtful, evidence-based policy. For too long, the 13th Ward has only looked inward, acting as if the city’s larger problems are not our problems, as if only the things that happen within our ward boundaries affect us. When I’m alderman, I will work with stakeholders across the city to come up with bold solutions to big challenges that benefit the entire city, not just one corner of it.
My background is in government oversight. I spent four years as a Performance Analyst with the Chicago Office of the Inspector General. During my time with the OIG, I worked with a wide variety of city departments and sister agencies to review programs and make recommendations for improvements. I got a front-row seat to the inner workings of city government, and all the good and bad that comes with that. I attended City Council meetings, shadowed frontline workers, and briefed department leadership on the findings of audits and reviews. I have worked with thoughtful leaders who were always seeking to improve their departments, and I have had to deliver difficult, sometimes unwelcome, news to leaders who would have preferred to look the other way. I understand how city government works, I understand how it can work better, and I will not shy away from tough choices or hard truths.
I care deeply about honesty and integrity in government, and right now, we don’t have honest government in the 13th Ward. The current alderman, Marty Quinn, is a close associate of former Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan, and the 13th Ward Democratic Organization is directly implicated in the ongoing Madigan corruption scandal. The federal indictment against Mr. Madigan names the 13th Ward Democratic Organization as being part of a “criminal enterprise” that has engaged in “intimidation and extortion”. As of now, Mr. Madigan still serves as the Ward Committeeman for the 13th Ward, where he continues to provide resources and support for Mr. Quinn’s reelection campaign.
As I’ve canvassed the community, I have spoken with many voters who have been intimidated and harassed by the 13th Ward Organization. I have talked with business owners who are afraid to work with me out of fear that they would face harassment from local leaders. I have spoken with city workers who were afraid to sign my nominating petition out of fear of on-the-job retaliation, which is both wrong and illegal. I expected some amount of apathy from voters, but I did not expect the level of fear that I encountered while talking with voters. No one should ever be afraid of their elected officials. It doesn’t have to be this way, and, when I’m alderman, it won’t be.
What is the most pressing issue facing the people of your ward, and how would you address it?
The most pressing concern that I hear from residents is about public safety, but as I’ve already discussed that in a previous question, I will focus on another pressing issue that I frequently hear from voters: local business development.
There are too many vacant storefronts in our community. Local businesses obviously struggled through the pandemic, but even before that we had fewer local businesses than we should. The new 13th Ward is bordered on two sides by suburbs, and many residents drive to nearby suburbs to do their shopping due to a lack of local retail options. All of the 13th Ward’s major commercial corridors – Archer Ave, 63rd St, Central Ave, and Pulaski – are less developed than they should be, and I intend to help remedy that.
As alderman, I plan to advocate for more small businesses in our community. I will study what types of businesses our ward is lacking and actively recruit and work with local entrepreneurs to fill those gaps. I will work with developers to find creative uses for vacant buildings, invest in parks and green space that draws foot traffic to commercial corridors, and use my platform as alderman to encourage residents to patronize local businesses. I want all of our residents to have easy access to a variety of services and goods close by, which helps create a more walkable, livable community, allows seniors to more easily age in place, and keeps tax revenue within city limits.
Sum up why should voters elect you and not your opponent(s)? (Please limit this to policy and approach, not a biography recitation.)
For decades, the 13th Ward Democratic Organization has worked to avoid giving voters in my community a choice. They have worked behind the scenes to ensure that their handpicked candidates run unopposed, and then govern in the knowledge that they will not be challenged. Despite scandal after scandal, the 13th Ward continues to operate with impunity. I’m sick of it, and I know I’m not the only one.
I decided to get into this race when the Madigan indictment first came down in March 2022, laying out in great detail what many of us had long suspected. Our officials are – and have been – corrupt, and they’re selling our vote to enrich themselves and their friends. It’s no wonder that so many in the 13th Ward and across Chicago are cynical about city government. After decades of flagrant corruption, it’s certainly hard not to be.
But I’m not cynical. I’m hopeful about what we can accomplish together if we’re open and honest about our challenges. I want to engage the community through public meetings and encourage participation in decision making; I want to be respectful of all my neighbors, whether they vote for me or not; I want to restore trust in city government and our criminal justice system; and I want to build a fair, inclusive, welcoming neighborhood that we can all be proud of.
This time, voters have a choice.