Spin a globe, and Israel is just about on the other side of the world from Chicago. Sometimes, it takes events half a world away to bring into focus something in our own midst.
For the two of us — each fortunate to have lived or worked there for extended spells, and both deeply committed to the civic life of Chicago — current events in Israel help illuminate a problem and an opportunity that too few of our fellow Chicagoans recognize: Constitutions matter.
The streets of Tel Aviv are flooded with demonstrators protesting the Knesset’s actions to strip from their courts a previously presumed duty essential to a well-functioning democracy: reviewing and passing judgment on the legality of the actions of the other branches of government. Many analysts identify the problem in political terms, whether secular (the right wing implementing changes odious to the left) or religious (a fundamentalist coalition imposing its prerogative on the secular majority).
Politics matter. But the real problem facing Israel is one of governance. Israel is a democratic state with no constitution. Just like Chicago. And the following take-aways of the current Israeli crisis all stem from that fact. Without a constitution:
* Government lacks the structural balance of powers and procedural guardrails needed to check its lesser angels in turbulent times.
* Those in power not only can dictate policy, but they also can alter the existing structure and processes of government, how it conducts its affairs and even who has a seat at the table, and they can do so simply on the basis of whim.
* Decades of comparative stability does not guarantee that tomorrow the procedural status quo, however settled in custom, will hold.
* Government legitimacy can falter, and in the worst case, it can fail.
Surfing the news halfway around the world is a form of travel that initially allows us to lose ourselves. But, as Pico Iyer taught, “We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next to find ourselves.” No matter how bad things appear here, our problems seem to fall away when we see others worse off elsewhere. But if we look closely, the similarities are sobering — and we find ourselves.
Chicago, unlike nearly every peer city in America, lacks a municipal constitution. We have no bedrock rules of governance. We have no higher law or standards that elected officials must follow and no binding procedure to guide the resolution of competing wants and assure optimal decision-making for the people as a whole. The default value proposition is: “Might makes right.” As with Israel, Chicago, in its own way, operates at the razor’s edge that separates majoritarianism from democracy.
Without a constitution, Chicago conducts its affairs under a lesser form of law, the municipal code, which is generally unenforceable. A city council with coequal powers could provide checks and balances to the mayor, but our aldermen possess no such enumerated power. Under the municipal code, citizens are also disempowered: We can’t even file an action to enforce most of the city’s obligations under the municipal code.
Without a constitution, our elected officials ignore procedures or simply change them on the fly. Examples here are legion. A new police superintendent is installed by suspending the laws governing selection. A lucrative 75-year lease on a major revenue-generating asset — Chicago’s parking meters — is granted without public scrutiny. NASCAR and Bally’s Casino were welcomed to downtown, respectively, through unvetted executive fiat and a one-time, special-purpose mayoral hijacking of the legislative processes.
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A municipal constitution would fix this and more. The City Council would have a right to information from mayoral officials, the power to compel testimony, and the ability to issue and enforce administrative subpoenas; this is the norm in all other major cities, along with a provision allowing citizens to legally enforce government’s obligations.
Without a constitution, the only check is a blank one, drawn on our account. The only balance is having the mayor on both sides of the equation. The mayor is both president and speaker of the house, presiding over council meetings, selecting the chairs of the committees that in theory oversee the mayor. The mayor is on both sides of the financial ledger, simultaneously controlling the calculation of the money we have, floating future revenue projections and then dictating how we spend that often imagined money, all without any independent check.
This manner of governance is indeed “the Chicago Way.” And only Chicago “works” this way, until it doesn’t, which is how things increasingly feel.
The Chicago Way means there is no constitution to assure rigor to public administration. It means a litany of chronic ills forever diagnosed, cyclically decried, but seldom addressed: persistent violent crime, police reform, structural deficits, corruption and crushing debt. The increasing municipal pension deficit, which is bigger than what we see in 44 of the 50 states, crowds out equitable and effective service delivery.
Whether or not we ever face a moment like Israel is experiencing, we are unquestionably in crisis. We know it. And the reasons are highly correlated to a lack of a municipal constitution designed for 21st century challenges and opportunities. We are not proclaiming doomsday; when it comes, it will be too late. It is therefore time we paid serious attention to the fundamental importance of creating a constitution for Chicago.
Will it be easy? No. Nothing worth doing ever is. Will it require a long collaborative effort from antagonistically oppositional factions joining together in the pursuit of common aspirations? Of course.
But we’d better get to it soon. If we don’t, the best scenario is that nothing changes. That can no longer be the Chicago Way. In the meantime, let’s keep an eye on Israel, whose history is one of charting brave new courses when all seemed lost.
Rabbi Seth Limmer is the founder of Open Judaism. Joe Ferguson is executive director of governance advocacy organization (re)Chicago and a former Chicago inspector general.
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