GradingRahm

"We must continue working to make sure that our economic growth extends across all parts of Chicago and into every neighborhood..."

— Rahm Emanuel

Our Report

Chicago's economy is getting stronger, but improvements and jobs are not spread equally.

by Shannon Heffernan

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has had some big wins on economic issues. During his term so far, 30 new corporate headquarters have moved to the city, and he has been praised in the media for creating a booming start-up culture. Plus, the city overhauled some job training programs, passed a higher minimum wage, and overall unemployment is down.

But it appears the positive changes are not reaching everyone. While the Central Business District has added a significant number of jobs during Emanuel’s first term, the Southwest Side, for example, has added very few. And it is not just where the jobs are located, it’s who gets those jobs. As of 2013, black unemployment was hovering around 25 percent, not significantly different than it was when the mayor took office. Poverty, too, has barely budged.

It is a growing and improving economy, just like in other cities across the country. But just like those other cities, Chicago’s economy is only growing for some, not for all.

Of course, the city only has so much control over private sector employment. But gaps between different communities also appear when you look at what has happened in the area of employment the city has the most control over: local public-sector jobs.

The impact of these jobs is not insignificant. Public-sector jobs have long been a door to the middle-class for communities of color. Crain’s Chicago Business rankings put the City of Chicago as the third largest employer in Chicago. Chicago Public Schools is number two. Both have seen jobs disappear under Emanuel.

According to numbers WBEZ analyzed from the Chicago Teachers Union, more than six times the number of black teachers than white teachers have disappeared from district, non-charter classrooms. Analysis by the Chicago Reader showed that residents on the South Side lost many more city jobs than residents on the North Side. City officials say some of those employees were rehired by private companies partnering with the city.

On Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s campaign website a banner reads: “Making Chicago’s economy work for everyone.” The numbers suggest that parts of the economy have improved since 2011, but there are still big swaths of the city yet to feel that growth.

"When it comes to improving our schools, I will not be a patient mayor."

— Rahm Emanuel

Our Report

A tumultuous series of decisions around schools hasn’t led to dramatically different academic results.

by Becky Vevea

Mayor Rahm Emanuel recently told a crowd of supporters about how his parents used to hang his report card on their kitchen fridge right next to those of both his brothers.

“I usually moved mine away from Zeke’s,” he said, referencing one of his brothers. “Today, I’d like to post Chicago’s education report card on our civic refrigerator. It’s a report card to be proud of….”

The mayor touted rising graduation rates and record high average ACT scores.

“The arrow is finally pointing in the right direction,” Emanuel said.

But that arrow has been moving in that direction for a decade. And Emanuel left out some important grades. Grades on a few big tests he’ll likely be most remembered by. The audio piece on this story will take you through some of the major tests the mayor faced over the past nearly four years.

Those tests include his push for a longer school day and year. The strife it caused with the Chicago Teachers Union, leading to a teachers' strike -- the first in 25 years. And finally, Emanuel's decision to shut down 50 public schools.

The closings caused a kind of diaspora. Only about 60 percent of the students at closed schools went to the designated receiving school. Research shows most did not end up at dramatically better schools. It’s unclear how much money, if any, the district saved. Emanuel's approval rating among African Americans, who were disproportionately affected by the school closings, plummeted. And in all, CPS lost almost 8,000 students in the last four years, twice as many as it lost in the previous four.

Emanuel technically passed all of these tests and delivered on several campaign promises, but in doing so, he lost a lot of points. He made a lot of enemies and alienated entire communities.

And those lost points may matter as he faces his biggest test yet: re-election.

"We will not rest, we cannot rest, until every parent in every part of this city enjoys the same sense of security that others experience and have come to expect."

— Rahm Emanuel

Our Report

Homicides are down slightly, but the mayor's still far from achieving his goal of getting the city's most violent neighborhoods closer to the safety of more affluent ones.

by Chip Mitchell

The month before voters elected Rahm Emanuel mayor, he laid out his public-safety priorities. “The next mayor must work hard to reduce crime in every neighborhood across our city,” he said.

But he didn’t promise to address underlying problems such as poverty and inequality. His game plan sounded a lot like what Chicago had heard for years from the outgoing mayor, Richard M. Daley. Emanuel said his strategy was to “put more police on the beat and get kids, guns and drugs off the street.”

How has he followed through?

Regarding the cops, Emanuel has shifted officers from desk duty and boosted overtime spending. But he has not added police officers to the department. City payroll records dating back to the day before Emanuel took office show that the number of cops is down by almost 400.

On guns, Emanuel’s push for tougher penalties sparked criticism from criminal-justice experts and was stalled in Springfield. On drugs, the most prominent police efforts targeted open-air dealers. But the narcotics remained within easy reach.

To get kids off the street, Emanuel forged a city partnership with Cook County that boosted the number of jobs and mentoring slots for school-age youths. Researchers who tracked some of those kids credited the program with reducing violent-crime arrests among them by nearly half during a 16-month period.

For all ages, Chicago’s homicide rate spiked in 2012 but has edged back down. Last year’s rate was the lowest in a half century — something Emanuel and police Supt. Garry McCarthy have been touting.

But they leave out important context. The city’s homicide rate has hovered near 1960s levels for the past decade. The big drops in violent crime came between 1992 and 2004. And Chicago’s improvement is part of a national trend. Violent crime has gone down in most big U.S. cities.

And what about Emanuel’s goal of reducing crime in “every neighborhood”? We tallied annual homicides in each of Chicago’s 77 community areas. Last year the total for 11 of them — all on the South and West sides — exceeded the total for the other 66. That homicide gap remains as vast as before the mayor took office.

"The most open, transparent and accountable government the City of Chicago has ever seen."

— Rahm Emanuel

Our Report

If it's city data you want, there's a gold mine online. But it's not so easy getting something the mayor doesn't want to share.

by Lauren Chooljian

The term “open government” gets thrown around a lot by politicians, especially during election season. But the thing is, that term is not just some high and mighty phrase for posters or stump speeches: According to city watchdogs, throwing open city hall doors--and records and information--is the best way for the public to trust that their mayor has got their backs.

And that can be especially important in a city like Chicago, where taxpayers really do want to be in on the big decisions that shape the city’s future (Remember those hearings about the President Obama library?). Not to mention--you may have heard that our fair city is in a bit of financial trouble.

None of this is news to the current mayor, Rahm Emanuel. When he was campaigning for his job, he promised to create the “most open, accountable and transparent government that the City of Chicago has ever seen.”

How’d he do? Well, no surprise, it depends on who you ask.

One of the big promises Emanuel made in his transition report was to post a ton of city data online and in easy-to-find places (information like city salaries, lobbyist info, even GPS data from snow plows) and many folks from the city’s tech community say he did just that.

But what if you’re searching for information the mayor might not want to share? Reporters like David Kidwell of the Chicago Tribune will tell you that information is sometimes harder to come by.

“When it comes to how he governs, and the decisions that he makes in the mayor’s office on the 5th floor, what happens in there on a daily basis, who he talks to, who his staff talks to, who they meet, what’s going on, how they reach decisions--it’s a complete mystery,” Kidwell said.

Emanuel has said he needs some secrecy in order to govern effectively. And his supporters have backed him up: Ald. Joe Moore, for example, says in order for politicians to speak freely, there needs to be some protection that what they say won’t be made public.

But the city’s inspector general--no stranger to digging for information--believes a transparent government is a useful tool for any leader who faces the kind of tough decisions that are ahead for Chicago. He calls 2015 a ‘year of reckoning” for big financial issues facing the city, and says the more citizens know about how and why decisions are made, the better for them and their leaders.