Trying to drown Montefiore

Privatization advocate Grover Norquist of the Americans for Tax Reform and other right-wing groups has said, “My goal is to cut government…to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”

            That is the way privatization—taking government services and turning them over to private industry—is done. Cut the funding and staff of the government agency, then cut it more, and more again, until it cannot do its job. Then privatization advocates say, “See? It isn’t working. Turn it over to private industry!” Of course, had the cuts never been made, there would be no need to turn the government agency over to private industry at all.

            Chicago under Mayor Richard M. Daley has privatized more than 40 separate functions of government, including custodial services, office product purchases, tire collection, traffic signal design, towing abandoned cars, and drug and alcohol addiction treatment. He is running Chicago more and more like a private business.

            Yet, privatization has not helped. The City budget is ever-expanding, taxes rise to help pay for it, City jobs are lost, and workers end up getting paid less from private companies than they would have from the City.

            As University of Illinois President Joe White has said about his institution, “You don’t want me to run it like a business.” Because a business is there to make a profit, and cuts its nonprofitable parts. A university or a city has to have some unprofitable parts, however. There are services required by the public or by our responsibilities to the least of our brothers that do not make a profit if they are done well. One of them is taking care of troubled children. If you do it right, you will not make a profit. In fact, you have got to spend money that you are never going to make back.

            We see that the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) is taking the Norquist approach to Montefiore School. Cut some faculty, cut some tutors, cut vocational education. Pretty soon, the school is barely functioning, and the solution of—surprise—privatization is suggested. Sure enough, the CPS Office of Specialized Services is looking for outside companies to open and run six private therapeutic day schools for the type of boys served at Montefiore.

            Instead, by putting resources into Montefiore, that would not be necessary. Montefiore did a great job for decades until the CPS decided to cut, cut, cut. It could do so again. Privatization will not necessarily do better by the youngsters; in fact, it will probably do worse, as those schools will have to look at the bottom line. If they decide they are spending too much on tutors, they will cut tutoring. If they decide they are spending too much on lunches, they will buy cheaper food. Society’s most needy will get the short end of the stick yet again.

            As Montefiore Local School Council Chair Blanche Ivey said, "We haven't had any demonstrations yet, but if that's what it takes…."

            If Mayor Daley and the CPS move to privatize Montefiore's functions, parents should demonstrate—and much more. Mr. Mayor and CPS officers, do not privatize schooling for troubled children. Instead, put the resources into Montefiore; keep it open, improve it, and let it be the success it used to be. Do not drown it in the bathtub.

 

Neighborhood, not Cubs, should come first

Whether the new owner of the Chicago Cubs or the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority (ISFA) renovates Wrigley Field, it is inevitable that the Cubs will play at U.S. Cellular Field for a year, just as the New York Yankees played at the New York Mets’ Shea Stadium when Yankee Stadium was being renovated in the 1970s. Shea is in a wide open suburban area, however. The Cell is in a neighborhood where people live.

            It is certain the Cubs’ new owner and former governor Jim Thompson, head of the ISFA, are not thinking about Bridgeport residents’ comforts, so we will. The Cell will be in use virtually every day from April to September if the Cubs move there, instead of half the days as it is now.

            As Alderman James Balcer said, the neighborhood will need more police presence. The rowdiest games of the year at the Cell are the Cubs vs. Chicago White Sox matches, and they are the ones causing the most trouble in the community. Some Cubs fans, because Bridgeport is not their community, think nothing of littering, yelling, or worse in residential areas. A strong police presence will be necessary to discourage that.

            Residents’ visitor parking placards should not mean carte blanche for their friends’ going to baseball games. The City must come up with a better system to regulate who parks on residential streets—and it should not be baseball fans. Perhaps for a year prices should be reduced for both Cubs and White Sox games in official parking lots, encouraging fans to park there instead of on the streets. The lost revenue would be made up from the money the Cubs should provide for playing at the Cell.

            Parking regulations could be strengthened around playgrounds and schools so community residents could park there, but baseball fans could not.

            Some community education programs would be necessary as well to train local residents and business owners to deal diplomatically with the inevitable tensions between neighborhood residents and baseball fans not used to Bridgeport.

            All these programs would cost money, but it would be money well spent.

            Money poorly spent, however, is the ISFA buying Wrigley Field. Various potential new owners of the Cubs have not asked for this, yet Thompson and other State officials think that such corporate welfare would be just dandy. Besides their seemingly genetic need to dole out our tax dollars to rich people who do not need or want them, they want Wrigley Field to be under the State’s control for the 2016 Olympics—which Chicago is in no way guaranteed of hosting.

            We would like to point out that there are better ways for the State to spend our tax dollars.

            How about:

Creating a State fund to help bail out the increasing number of homeowners facing foreclosure? Funding Healthy Returns: The Illinois Bill of Health, which would provide more money to State health colleges so more underserved people could get medical and dental care? Providing employees at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) with higher than the usual 3% raises, which does not allow these workers to even keep up with inflation? Providing more than the zero percent increase to higher education that Governor Rod Blagojevich’s budget calls for, so students in Illinois can get a better education? Providing a capital budget to repair UIC buildings, as no such budget has existed since 2002? Funding State employees’ pension plans, which are among the most underfunded in the nation? Funding the Chicago Public Schools teachers’ pension fund adequately, which the law requires the State to do, but which it has not been doing?

At a time when the State fails to even come close to meeting its financial and legal obligations, Big Jim and his cronies act like children trading baseball cards, only this time they are trading our money for a baseball stadium.

State officials need to grow up and meet their responsibilities, not try to set up play dates for themselves at Wrigley Field.