With city budget vote looming and crime top of mind, Mayor Lori Lightfoot clashes with aldermen over police spending
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As the City Council considers her election-year budget, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot tried to pressure some aldermen to back her 2023 spending plan by arguing on the radio that they don’t support police.
The move led to a public rebuttal from Southwest Side Ald. Matt O’Shea, 19th, who said her budget doesn’t do enough to retain officers or boost public safety.
The back-and-forth played out over two days on WGN AM-720, after Lightfoot appeared on the station Wednesday to talk up her budget, days ahead of an expected City Council vote. And while mayors often exchange words with their critics, the public clash between Lightfoot and O’Shea this week highlights a recurring theme of the mayor’s administration: fallings-out with former friends and allies.
In response to a question about crime, Lightfoot said residents should ask their aldermen to back her budget and criticized City Council members who say they support police but don’t vote for her spending plan.
“You can’t say ‘I’m pro-law enforcement, I’m pro-public safety’ and not support the budget and the revenue,” Lightfoot said.
Asked who she was referring to, Lightfoot specifically called out “the alderman of the 19th Ward.” She also criticized “downtown” aldermen.
A day later, O’Shea appeared on the program to criticize Lightfoot for not doing enough to hire and retain officers. He also said the city was facing a “public safety crisis” due to crime.
“Since this mayor took office, carjackings are up nearly 100%,” O’Shea said. “Murders up more than 30%.”
Crime is a top issue for voters across the country and also in Chicago, where Lightfoot has acknowledged people don’t feel safe after large spikes in shootings and homicides. The mayor regularly argues that crime is improving, however, pointing to shootings and homicides being more than 10% down year over year.
Still, shootings and homicides are significantly up from when she took office.
In her WGN interview, Lightfoot highlighted her budget’s funding of social service organizations, street outreach workers and police, though she’s also faced criticism for not spending enough of the money allocated to these groups.
And the mayor noted that her administration created a recruitment team to help bring in more cops, which she said “is hitting college campuses, we are going to the military and they are going to every job fair, every community organization, and it’s paying dividends. We’re seeing one of the largest hiring and recruiting classes that we have seen in a number of years.”
She added the city must “make sure that we’ve got the resources to be able to support them. We’ve got to have the resources to support the constitutional policing as mandated by our consent decree. All of those things are paid for by a budget with revenue.”
O’Shea, however, said the city needs to be looking at incentives to keep officers rather than simply trying to recruit new cops. He warned that there are more officers leaving than are coming in.
O’Shea said he “can’t even get a discussion” about a plan he put forward to incentivize officer retention.
“We continue to use the same playbook for three years and we continue to see (more) officers leaving as coming on the job,” he said.
That’s a point made by other aldermen who represent parts of the city where sizable numbers of police and firefighters reside. Ald. Marty Quinn, 13th, similarly expressed concern about police in response to budget director Susie Park talking up recruitment efforts during a public hearing.
“I can’t sound the alarm loud enough that we are losing officers every single day,” Quinn said. “So it’s great to do a victory lap around recruiting but if we’re recruiting and not retaining, it’s all for naught.”
The public exchange between Lightfoot and O’Shea marks another negative milestone in their relationship. O’Shea endorsed Lightfoot in 2019 and she selected him to head the City Council Aviation Committee. O’Shea remained a supporter for a part of 2020, but their relationship soured in the years since due to concerns over crime, policing and communication.
In September 2021, O’Shea cowrote an article with Lightfoot’s former deputy mayor for public safety, Susan Lee, in which they declared Chicago a “city in crisis.”
Days later, O’Shea sent an email to state officials about “the dangerous gun violence on the Chicago expressway system” and stalled plans to add license plate readers to help catch shooters.
“I have made a number of inquiries on the status of this project over the last several weeks. It has come to my attention that IDOT and CDOT are having difficulty settling on an installation plan of providing power to the system,” O’Shea wrote on the email, which included Lightfoot. “Now is not the time for bureaucratic finger pointing. This is an urgent matter of public safety that must immediately be resolved.”
The mayor wrote a scathing response that indirectly alluded to the recent op-ed.
“In the city of Chicago, when we work with our partners in other governments like the state, we have found that the best way to move things forward is to collaborate and approach these opportunities with good faith. Sending poison pen missives, especially with an audience, which you seem to favor, is not the best way to move things forward,” Lightfoot wrote. “Obviously, you have a method and history of dealing and you will carry on as you see fit, but we value our relationships with other governmental actors and nastygrams are not the best strategy. But of course carry on as you like.”
Although Lightfoot is feuding with O’Shea this week, he isn’t the first alderman to break with the mayor after supporting her campaign. Earlier this year, Ald. Susan Sadlowski Garza gave an interview to Chicago Reader journalist Ben Joravsky where she said she wouldn’t support Lightfoot.
“I have never met anybody who has managed to piss off every single person they come in contact with — police, fire, teachers, aldermen, businesses, manufacturing, and that’s it,” Garza said in the interview.
Despite the drama this week, Lightfoot’s budget is likely to pass. While some aldermen are angry with Lightfoot for refusing to create a Department of the Environment, which she promised to do in her 2019 campaign, she dropped her proposed property tax hike and has tried to submit a spending plan that doesn’t have too many controversial items. O’Shea acknowledged Lightfoot’s spending plan will probably get the council’s backing, without his support.
“I would guess she probably will have the votes, but I can’t in good conscience, representing my community, support a budget that doesn’t address public safety,” O’Shea said.
The exchange with O’Shea was not the only notable part of the mayor’s WGN interview. She was asked also about a provision in the SAFE-T Act eliminating cash bail.
The criminal reforms, signed into law by Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker in February 2021, were controversial from the start, passing both state legislative chambers by narrow margins with some Democrats joining Republicans in voting no.
The elimination of bail doesn’t mean criminal defendants will automatically get released from county jails while awaiting trial. Prosecutors will be able to argue before judges that defendants should be detained at their initial court appearance if they’re a safety risk or threat to the community.
Lightfoot panned the new law on WGN, saying, “There are too many violent, dangerous people that are out on our streets and they’re out pending pretrial procedures. And look, I agree with the people who are disgusted by that.”
“I’ve been a unequivocal advocate for the fact that when you get charged with a crime of violence, and particularly if you have a gun history, our state law demands that you are held,” she said.
At the time the bill passed, however, Lightfoot was unequivocal in her support for the legislation, praising Pritzker — who’s up for reelection next week against Republican state Sen. Darren Bailey — for signing the “historic criminal justice reform package.”
“This incredible work, spearheaded by the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus, is a monumental step forward toward addressing the legacy of institutional racism in our justice system,” Lightfoot said in a statement.
“I look forward to working with our colleagues in Springfield and here in Chicago to get these reforms implemented and to moving ever closer to our shared goals of reform and accountability in policing,” she added.
Tribune’s Alice Yin contributed.
