Chicago Sun-Times: All posts by CST Editorial Board

A cease-fire in Israel-Hamas war is a next step to ending the bloodshed

2023-12-13T19:00:00-06:00

A Palestinian girl is shown crying in the arms of an adult. Roughly 8,000 of the 18,000-plus Palestinians killed in Gaza so far have been children, according to reports.

Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty

Many barely had a chance to dream of their futures or a life beyond the cramped, walled-off 140-square-mile enclave they called home.

They were children, and they, like the majority of the 18,400-plus Palestinians killed by Israeli airstrikes over the last two months, had nothing to do with the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.

International support for Israel is waning due to its “indiscriminate bombing,” as President Joe Biden said Tuesday, using uncharacteristically biting language to describe the U.S. ally’s relentless counteroffensive in the Gaza Strip that has snowballed into what United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has characterized as a “humanitarian catastrophe.”

“In Gaza, nowhere and no one is safe,” Guterres told the U.N. Security Council, warning of the potential collapse of public order and mass displacement of Palestinian refugees into Egypt.

In spite of that and other apocalyptic wake-up calls, the U.S. last Friday vetoed the U.N. Security Council resolution demanding a humanitarian cease-fire. When the U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a non-binding resolution with the same demand on Tuesday, the U.S. voted “no.” Halting military action “would only plant the seeds for the next war” and embolden Hamas, U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood unreasonably reasoned last week in explaining the veto.

The reality is that the more Palestinian civilians are killed by Israel’s bombs and ground offensive, the less sympathetic Israel becomes, threatening its security in the long run.

“If you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said recently.

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Sure enough, a wartime opinion poll among Palestinians published Wednesday showed a rise in support for Hamas, including in Gaza, and an overwhelming rejection of Western-backed President Mahmoud Abbas. That wasn’t the case just a few weeks before.

On Oct. 6, just a day before 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals were killed and 240 others were kidnapped by Hamas, another poll conducted by Arab Barometer, a nonpartisan research network, found that 67% of Gaza residents had no trust or little trust in the militant organization that controls the area.

The 8,000 Palestinian children killed in Gaza so far weren’t even born the last time elections were held in 2006, and many of the adult victims weren’t old enough to vote. They shouldn’t have paid with their lives for Hamas’ horrific actions, any more than the Israelis who were targeted because of their government’s oppressive policies against Palestinians.

But clearly, a cease-fire is meaningless unless it includes an end to Hamas’ rocket attacks on Israel, the return of hostages and the free flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza. Cease-fire skeptics have good reason not to trust Hamas, which the U.S. and the European Union have both designated as a terrorist organization.

But the humanitarian toll of this war is intolerable. The road to peace has to start somewhere.

Public opinion favors cease-fire

The horrors that unfolded on Oct 7, claiming the most Jewish lives in a day since the Holocaust, was beyond horrific. What has followed is no less devastating, now approaching what many experts say has careened into a genocide.

Many of those who remain in Gaza are starving, and waterborne diseases and respiratory infections are skyrocketing. The 46,000 injured Palestinians and others in need of health care have nowhere to turn, as only 14 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are barely functional.

Those suffering chronic diseases continually die, like one local Palestinian man’s disabled brother who went three weeks without dialysis before taking his last breath over the weekend, Chicago-area physician Zaher Sahloul told the Editorial Board earlier this week.

These fatalities are not counted in the death toll, but they are a byproduct of the war, said Sahloul, who is president of MedGlobal, a humanitarian non-governmental organization.

The suffering of the Palestinians, the threats against Israel, as well the proliferation of anti-Arab sentiment, Islamophobia and antisemitism in the U.S. and elsewhere, can only be tempered by a cease-fire, foreign policy expert Sara Haghdoosti said.

Several hostages were freed during the seven-day pause in fighting between Hamas and Israel and there was a de-escalation of violence in the region, noted Haghdoosti, the executive director of the public education and advocacy coalition Win Without War.

We urge members of Illinois’ congressional delegation to push for a cease-fire, as have U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D.Ill., and a few other elected officials.

The majority of likely U.S. voters — 61% — support a permanent cease-fire and de-escalation of violence in Gaza, and most prefer our country “prioritize diplomacy and humanitarian aid to curtail violence in the region,” according to a new poll by Data for Progress. Other polls have found similar sentiment.

Even some Israelis feel the same way. Peace is the only solution, said Shira Havron, an Israeli university student with several family members who were either killed or kidnapped by Hamas.

Havron told the Germany-based Deutsche Welle News that she identifies with the pain of Gaza residents. “I see big families with so many names, like erased and crossed, and it reminds me of my family, because we have so many victims as well,” she said.

It’s not necessarily brave to call for a cease-fire when so many people have died. But it is needed now more than ever. If not now, when?

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Suicide prevention is something everyone can play a role in achieving

2023-12-13T06:00:00-06:00

The 988 suicide and mental health hotline is helping people in crisis get help.New provisional data from the National Center for Health Statistics show that nearly 50,000 people in the U.S. lost their lives to suicide in 2022.

Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

Over the last three decades, Liz Riggs has lost her brother, her step-father and a nephew to suicide. Her maternal grandfather and paternal grandmother also died by suicide. That’s why the Winnetka woman worries “all the time” about whether she could lose any more family members to this public health epidemic that’s growing only worse.

Recently released provisional numbers from the National Center for Health Statistics show that nearly 50,000 people in the U.S. lost their lives to suicide last year. And the final count is likely to be even higher, according to the federal agency.

Here’s another shocking statistic: The national suicide rate of 14.3 deaths per 100,000 people reported for 2022 reached its highest level since 1941.

Riggs, a volunteer with the Illinois chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, is rightly concerned about the data. So are we: It’s more evidence of our nation’s mental health crisis, which this editorial board has noted before.

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According to Riggs, the crisis stems in part from loneliness and isolation, which are especially acute among older men, those 75 and up — a group that is now killing themselves at a higher rate than any other age category, among both men and women.

Among women, those 45 to 54 had the highest suicide rate.

The experts tell us everyone can play a part in preventing suicide. Research shows suicidal thoughts are often temporary, but it’s imperative to know the signs and, when we see someone struggling, not hesitate to ask: Are you considering suicide?

About 12.3 million people thought seriously about suicide in 2021, according to the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. And 3.5 million people made a plan, underscoring how important it is to speak up.

If you are with a person in crisis, it’s especially important to keep them away from guns. Firearms were used in more than half of suicides in 2022 — about 27,000 out of nearly 50,000, Angela Cummings, executive director of the suicide prevention foundation’s Illinois chapter, told us.

“We feel very strongly … that we have to address firearms as a public health safety issue, not as a gun control issue,” Cummings said, noting the number of firearms-related suicide deaths has been steadily increasing for decades.

In Illinois, 1,454 suicides were reported in 2021, the most recent year for which state-level statistics are available. Guns were used in 656, or 45%, of Illinois suicide deaths that year.

Another effective tool: the new 988 hotline

Since its launch in July 2022, the 988 suicide hotline has received more than 7 million calls nationwide. People can call or text the easy-to-remember phone number from anywhere in the country to get help for themselves or for others who are suicidal or experiencing a mental health crisis.

Before last year’s launch, Illinois ranked last among all 50 states for the likelihood of a caller reaching a counselor in their area. More than 80% of calls made from Illinois got sent to out-of-state call centers.

“Now that has completely flipped,” Cummings told us. And the wait time to be connected to someone is under one minute, she said.

Federal funding for staffing of the 988 hotline runs out next year, Cummings said. She and other advocates rightly hope the General Assembly will allocate state funding to ensure callers from Illinois continue to get the help they desperately need. It’s a move we fully support as well.

Mike Bushman, 59, has struggled off and on with depression most of his life and contemplated suicide in high school. Now as a suicide prevention advocate, the avid hiker makes a point of wearing a T-shirt that says “stop suicide” or “mental health matters” when he’s out on hikes.

Strangers have approached the North Aurora resident at the Grand Canyon and Pike’s Peak to share their own struggles or confide in him about a loved one they’ve lost to suicide. Bushman suspects it’s easier for many people to talk to a stranger like him — or the person who answers a 988 call or text.

All of us should make it a point to talk openly about mental health and suicide, to help bring down these alarming numbers.

Everyone has a role to play in saving lives.

The Sun-Times welcomes letters to the editor and op-eds. See our guidelines.

Credit card swipe fees raise costs for businesses, consumers. Congress should lower those fees.

2023-12-12T06:00:00-06:00

When customers swipe credit cards for purchases, merchants are charged a fee of 2% to 3% or more, far more than the cost of processing those transactions.

stock.adobe.com

Credit cards and the banks that issue them really ought to take the “swipe” out of so-called swipe fees.

When customers swipe credit cards to pay for something, merchants are charged a fee of 2% to 3% or more, far more than the cost of processing those transactions. Part of that money goes to the bank that issued the card and part goes to the credit card company.

To many merchants, it feels as though someone is unreasonably swiping part of their revenue by charging exorbitant fees. They want to inject some competition into the system in hopes the fees will be lowered and rival networks will compete to be the most secure.

“[Swipe fees are] often the second- or third-highest expense our members have, and it is one they can’t negotiate,” Stephanie Martz, chief administrative officer and general counsel of the National Retail Federation, told us.

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Visa and Mastercard share more than 80% of the business of routing credit card transactions, but whichever card a customer uses, only one company is available to process the transaction. Legislation named the Credit Card Competition Act, backed by U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and others, would give each merchant at least two choices of a network to process transactions, instead of just one. The hope is that injecting competition would bring down costs. Backers hope they can pass the bill this month or in the first quarter of next year.

“This legislation would save businesses, including restaurants, an estimated $15 billion a year,” said Sam Toia, president and CEO of the Illinois Restaurant Association.

Credit card swipe fees are doing a number on small businesses. Illinois lawmakers can help.

The total cost to U.S. businesses for credit card and debit card processing and network fees was $160 billion in 2022, Toia said.

Kevin Vaughan, whose Vaughan Hospitality Group operates five Chicago restaurants, said swipe fee costs keep going up.

“There are no guardrails in place,” said Vaughan. “They are talking about very significant increases. There needs to be some control and regulation of these costs.”

Competition might also boost transaction security as competing companies vie for business, he said.

Debit card fees already lowered

A law to cap similar debit card fees was enacted more than a decade ago. As Stephanie Sack, who owned two Bucktown boutiques, told us at the time, “In small businesses, every dollar counts. This type of income leaving before it comes to your bottom line can be really detrimental.”

In September, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a case asking the Federal Reserve to lower the cap on debit card fees.

But, unlike debit cards, there is no cap on the cost of processing credit card transaction fees. And if businesses raise prices to cover those fees, even cash-paying customers are chipping in. Some businesses assess customers a fee to process credit card transactions, but at the risk of driving away those customers — a big risk because many people who formerly tended to spend cash turned to credit cards at the start of the pandemic.

The current system siphons money from consumers’ wallets. It is estimated the average American household pays $1,000 a year for the convenience of swiping credit cards. In theory, if businesses could lower their costs, they could pass the savings on to customers.

Different cards carry different fees, but businesses have no control over which card a customer uses to pay.

In a statement last month, Durbin, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kans., said “Visa’s and Mastercard’s market power and network structure have enabled them to impose fees on U.S. merchants that are among the world’s highest.”

The Credit Card Competition Act would apply only to banks with $100 billion or more in assets, so smaller banks and credit unions would not be affected. A report issued in July by the consulting firm CMSPI concluded margins in the business are large enough that the legislation would have little impact on such customer rewards as cash-back programs and airline miles.

People enjoy the convenience of credit cards, and almost no one wants to go back to the cash-only days. But there’s no good reason to overcharge people when they use those cards.

The Sun-Times welcomes letters to the editor and op-eds. See our guidelines.

Sports Illustrated and other newsrooms fumble badly by huddling with AI

2023-12-11T05:00:00-06:00

Bulls legend Michael Jordan on the Feb. 14, 2000 cover of Sports Illustrated. The magazine, which is now mostly online, recently courted controversy when it was accused of using AI-generated articles accompanied with bylines of fake authors.

There used to be a time when newspaper journalists had to scroll through countless microfiche reels and dig through clips to find old articles for background material for their stories.

Electronic archives, along with the internet, have made our lives easier and restructured the way we disseminate the news and how audiences consume it.

That’s how it should work. Technology should help media workers do their jobs, not impersonate them or actually carry out the tasks of a real human hired to dig for facts.

This brings us to artificial intelligence, or AI, which has crept into some newsrooms. Most media companies have issued strict guidelines prohibiting the tool from being used for publishable content and images. The few that have — unfortunately, in our view — gone a step further by using AI to pen copy at least clearly mark those write-ups as having been produced by a non-human.

No such disclaimers were in sight when Sports Illustrated fumbled the ball with AI. Once considered a media behemoth in the athletic world, SI recently featured product reviews on its website — with the bylines of reporters who don’t exist.

Talk about foul play, for readers and for journalism as a profession.

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The accompanying articles were also “AI-generated,” a staffer told Futurism, a news website dedicated to science and technology.

Sports Illustrated, which is mostly online and churns out a print magazine once a month, maintained the features were written by living, breathing mortals.

Artificial Intelligence is good for many things, but it doesn’t work so well in journalism

AdVon Commerce, the external, third-party company hired for the licensed content, had its employees “use a pen or pseudo name” to protect their privacy, a spokesperson for the magazine’s publisher, The Arena Group, explained in a statement. Which, if true, would be especially galling, given that journalists put their real bylines and names out there for public consumption every day. It’s part of the job.

Missing in the statement was the reasoning behind the use of AI-generated headshots, advertised online as a “neutral white young-adult male” and “joyful Asian young-adult female.”

Even if the stories, and whoever or whatever wrote them, didn’t give false information, there is no question Drew Ortiz, the “neutral white guy,” and Sora Tanaka, the “joyful Asian,” aren’t real people. Their attached “biographies” also reeked of hardcore phoniness.

When you “create somebody from the ether,” you don’t have to pay them, as the Sun-Times’ Rick Telander pointed out last week in his column about the controversy.

Using names like Ortiz — even though it was assigned to a Caucasian bot — and Tanaka also gives the false illusion of diversity, allowing readers to believe Sports Illustrated is serious about hiring people of color.

The smiling faces of these fictional scribes have since been scrubbed off SI’s website and The Arena Group has severed ties with AdVon, as well as two of the publisher’s senior executives.

No ceding ground to AI

Newsrooms will always have to adapt to certain trends or risk extinction. The essence of what a journalist does, however, will never change. That torch can never be handed over to AI. Whether it’s asking tough questions or the basic 5Ws — who, what, where, when and why — no technology will be as adept or qualified at the job as a newswoman or newsman.

AI knows it, too. “AI should not be used in journalism,” opined an experimental St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial created by Microsoft’s Bing Chat AI program over the fall.

“... it can undermine the credibility and trustworthiness of news. AI can generate fake news, manipulate facts, and spread misinformation.”

That’s the truth.

Gannett over the summer “paused” using LedeAI for some of its high school sports coverage for “errors, unwanted repetition and/or awkward phrasing” that LedeAI CEO Jay Allred admitted to.

We at the Sun-Times Editorial Board concede reporters aren’t perfect. They can make mistakes, too, and when those happen, corrections are issued immediately in print and online.

Bad apples, like Fox Sports reporter Charissa Thompson, also exist, scarring the reputation of countless hard-working sports journalists who don’t fabricate quotes as Thompson copped to doing in her NFL sideline reports. Such behavior is especially egregious when most journalists champion ethics and accuracy, yet are constantly accused of spreading misinformation by politicians and some members of the public.

Throwing AI into the mix will only embolden those who want legitimate media institutions to crumble, which in turn erodes an essential institution of democracy.

When AI spits out inaccuracies, it’s referred to as a “hallucination.”

Most reporters aren’t seeing things when they scribble down notes or type on their laptop.

Newsroom leaders dabbling with AI shouldn’t lose sight of its limitations. It’s delusional to think tech can ever replace real journalists.

The Sun-Times welcomes letters to the editor and op-eds. See our guidelines.

West Loop crimes shouldn’t be an invitation for political horse-trading

2023-12-08T19:30:00-06:00

A man was shot and wounded early Thursday near North Clinton Street and West Washington Boulevard in the West Loop. He later died. Ald. Bill Conway says the shooting was the result of a “drug deal gone bad.”

Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times

City Hall and the Chicago Police Department have to make curbing crime a priority, whether it’s in the West Loop or West Garfield Park.

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration seems to have lost sight of that, even after a 59-year-old man was shot and killed early Thursday near a crime-ridden tent encampment in the vicinity of Lake and Clinton streets.

Local alderpersons say the camp no longer is a peaceful refuge for homeless individuals but rather an open-air drug market that has sparked a series of violent crimes. Overt drug dealing has been going on, even during daylight hours as commuting pedestrians from the Green Line and the Ogilvie and Union train stations hurry by.

In Friday’s Sun-Times, Mary Norkol and Isabel Funk reported that area residents “see drug deals every day” and people “are fearing for their lives.” Conway said he walks by the encampment daily with his 4-year-old daughter and sees drug dealing in the tents.

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On Nov. 30, police said they arrested a man with a gun and about $60,000 worth of heroin, crack cocaine and codeine near the encampment, another sign of the danger the encampment poses to the community. Also in November, 1,500 area residents signed a petition asking for help with the encampment.

Yet, so far, the city’s reaction has been, at the least, disappointing — just as some residents feel about the response to the spike in armed robberies around the city.

At a Thursday press conference, Ald. Bill Conway (34th), whose ward includes the site, said City Hall called off a joint mission weeks in the planning by the police, Streets and Sanitation, and the Department of Family & Support Services to clear up the camp.

The mission was aborted, Conway said, because he did not vote the way the administration wanted on two ordinances — one of which would have authorized a referendum to raise the real estate transfer tax on properties over $1 million to help pay for homeless services, and one that would end subminimum wages for tipped restaurant workers. The ordinances passed without Conway’s votes.

Conway said Jason Lee, a senior adviser to Johnson, in a personal conversation clearly spelled out the quid pro quo, which simply smacks of “the Chicago Way” at its worst. Alderpersons should not be shaken down for votes.

This was a moment for Johnson to make it clear he takes it seriously when people don’t feel safe on their blocks or in their communities. He could have clearly stated there was no place in his administration for denying city residents needed and deserved services just because City Hall didn’t like the way an alderperson voted.

Instead, when pressed by reporters about Conway’s political horse-trading complaint, Johnson essentially dodged the questions, saying in part he is not privy to every conversation in the city. That was an obvious blunder, and Chicagoans deserve better than a flip comment when public safety and quality of life is at stake.

Johnson can continue to push for such priorities as helping the homeless, but he also should be pulling out all stops to fight crime. This is no time to talk in platitudes or continue to give campaign sound bites when asked important questions.

The larger significance is Johnson faces important decisions on the city’s migrant crisis, which, as in other cities, is straining local resources and the municipal budget. The mayor and alderpersons will need to work together if they are to make headway against a big challenge. Now is not the time to be at unnecessary loggerheads.

Chicago faces other serious problems as well, and crime has been at the top of the list for many residents. Johnson’s job is to assure people he has the will to tackle it.

The Sun-Times welcomes letters to the editor and op-eds. See our guidelines.

Landmarks commission must move to protect historic Century and Consumers buildings

2023-12-07T19:30:03.269-06:00

The city’s landmarks commission is set to vote Thursday on whether to give preliminary landmarks designation to two Loop skyscrapers, the Century and Consumers buildings.

Richard A. Chapman/Sun-Times

For the past four years, this editorial board and other voices around Chicago have argued in favor of saving and renovating downtown’s Century and Consumers buildings rather than wrecking and hauling them away, as proposed under a $52 million plan by the federal government.

The city’s Commission on Chicago Landmarks has the opportunity Thursday to take a stance against the buildings’ demolition.

The commission will vote on a city proposal to preliminarily landmark the two early skyscrapers on the southwest corner of Adams and State streets.

We strongly encourage the commission to approve the preliminary designation. (Update: The commission approved the designation Thursday.)

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The federal government wants to demolish the Century Building, 202 S. State St., and the neighboring Consumers Building, 220 S. State St. — both vacant — to create a security plaza for the Dirksen Federal Building, located a half-block west of the site.

The federal government has owned the Century and Consumers for 20 years.

Judges at the Dirksen have been championing the building’s demolition, backed by a tightly-held security analysis by federal law enforcement agencies that hints the skyscrapers, if reoccupied, would place jurists in peril.

But razing the buildings instead of reusing them would be a major and needless loss for both downtown and the struggling-to-rebound State Street.

And it also would be a startling blow to the city’s architectural history. The Century, built in 1915, was designed by the famed Chicago architecture firm Holabird & Root. The equally well-noted Jenney Mundie & Jensen designed the Consumers, built in 1913.

Normally, preliminary landmark status would protect the buildings from being demolished or altered without city approval, and would generally place the site on a pathway toward a permanent designation approved by the City Council.

But in this case, city landmark status in any form could be largely symbolic because the federal government has the power to overrule the designation and reduce the buildings to rubble anyway.

The one possible barrier to demolition would be a favorable outcome of a federal review — required for federally-owned historic properties — that assesses the possible impact of razing the properties.

The review is months from completion.

Meanwhile, symbols are important. A yes vote by the landmarks commission is a gauntlet thrown; a line in the sand drawn, telling the feds the city wants the two historic properties saved.

And designation would also place the building’s owners, the U.S. General Services Administration, in the tough spot of sidestepping the wishes of an architecturally important city and smashing to bits two landmarked vintage skyscrapers in the heart of downtown.

The landmarks commission has an important decision before it. A vote in favor of the designation for both buildings is the right way to go.

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Chicago scofflaws and debtors, it’s time to pony up

2023-12-07T05:30:00-06:00

A Chicago ticket awaits the owner of a car parked outside the Leighton Criminal Courthouse. Out of the more than $6.4 billion in delinquent payments the city is owed, more than $2.3 billion is for old parking, speed and red-light-camera tickets, Sun-Times reporters Mitchell Armentrout and Tim Novak found.

Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

Municipalities struggling to collect money from scofflaws is an age-old problem.

More than a half-century ago in 1971, a court official in Chicago told the New York Times that 25% of parking tickets issued by the city each year were unpaid or uncollectible, despite a relatively new computer system meant to help.

Technological advances have simplified data processing in the years since, yet debtors and scofflaws remain a dime a dozen. City budgets — and ultimately taxpayers — pay the price.

Chicago has amassed more than $6.4 billion in unpaid fees, fines and other debts since 1990, going way back to Mayor Richard M. Daley’s first full year in office, according to an analysis by the Sun-Times’ Mitchell Armentrout and Tim Novak.

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That amount is nearly 40% of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s $16.77 billion budget. It could go a long way to help both longtime Chicagoans and newly arrived migrants, as Armentrout and Novak pointed out in their Dec. 1 Watchdogs report.

Yet the city, always in need of more cash long before the Johnson administration, hasn’t been as diligent as it could have been in recouping what debtors owe. A good chunk of the oldest debt will likely never be recovered, but the city has to be serious in its efforts to recoup as sizable a portion of that money as possible.

Chicago City Hall is owed billions of dollars it hasn’t managed to collect

Ald. Pat Dowell (3rd) said the Finance Committee will do its part by “aggressively” seeking out institutions, companies and organizations that have flouted the law. We’re hoping Dowell, who chairs the committee, will put her money where her mouth is.

Collecting old debt isn’t a walk in the park, as City Comptroller Chasse Rehwinkel said. And no one expects the city to go after, say, a father of four who blew off paying a parking ticket worth a few bucks in 1992.

But many of those with more recent debt from the last few years, and especially businesses and other institutions that could afford to pay, shouldn’t be let off the hook.

In fact, the biggest offenders should be called out publicly for their delinquency.

The city told Armentrout and Novak that listing all debtors would be cumbersome and cited pending litigation as its rationale for staying mum about identifying scofflaws. But shouldn’t the public, including journalists, be able to access the data?

The ball has been dropped too many times by past administrators, and the burden now falls to the Johnson administration. Now that reporters have reminded city leaders of the potential cash cow that’s been sitting untapped for far too long, City Hall must do its best to reclaim what it can.

Chicago can’t afford to ignore it.

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Gov. Pritzker took the right step by ending Chicago’s Brighton Park migrant tent plan

2023-12-05T19:15:00-06:00

Tents can be seen at the Brighton Park site where the city was supposed to set up a winterized base camp for asylum seekers, until Gov. J. B. Pritzker killed the plan.

Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

Kudos to Gov. J.B. Pritzker for shutting down the city’s bid to build a migrant tent camp on a former industrial site in Brighton Park.

Armed with findings from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, the governor rightfully stepped up and halted construction Tuesday, citing “serious environmental concerns” about the location — despite the city’s claims that heavy metals and other potential toxins on the property could be removed or remediated as part of the camp’s construction.

The governor’s move ends what was shaping up to be one of the biggest blunders in Mayor Brandon Johnson’s attempts to provide housing for the busloads of asylum seekers being sent to Chicago by Republican governors of states along the southern border, mostly Texas.

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The Johnson administration picked the known industrial site at 38th Street and California Avenue without any thought to its environmental ramifications. Then it rushed through soil testing and started construction last week — while test findings were still pending, and telling the public as little as possible.

“My administration is committed to keeping asylum seekers safe as we work to help them achieve independence,” Pritzker said Tuesday in a statement. “We will not proceed with housing families on a site where serious environmental concerns are still present.”

Pritzker rejects toxic migrant shelter site in Brighton Park

Slapdash and slipshod from the start, the tent camp plan had all the warning signs of developing into a hot mess of the first order.

And yet Johnson and his administration pressed on. Pritzker was right to stop it.

City clean-up plan insufficient

Pritzker’s decision came just days after the city released an awaited environmental report that said the camp site required cleanup of heavy metals and other toxic chemicals. Mayoral advisors then claimed the hazards could be fully remediated as part of the camp’s construction.

But the Illinois EPA reviewed the city’s 800-page report and differed with its findings. The agency said there was “insufficient sampling and remediation at the Brighton Park site [that] does not meet state cleanup standards for residential use.”

This editorial board has opposed the idea of tent camps for migrants from the start, particularly as winter months — normally followed by a damp, cool spring — set in. Surely among the many vacant or lightly-used buildings in Chicago, space can be found to house migrants and get them out of police stations and O’Hare Airport.

But if the city just had to build a tent camp, shame on the Johnson administration for selecting an industrial site for it — a move that is just asking for trouble, while potentially and needlessly endangering the health of the migrants, especially children, who have to live there.

“It makes sense to find the safest way possible because we don’t want situations where, years from now, we find out people are ill — especially when you’re talking about kids that are on that site,” said Ald. Andre Vasquez (40th), chair of the Chicago City Council’s Committee on Immigrant and Refugee Rights.

“It makes sense to do all our due diligence to treat people the way we would all want to be treated in that situation,” he said.

Questions still outstanding

The city must now look to other places to house migrants. We’d prefer using, constructing and rehabbing actual buildings.

Showing the sure-footed leadership that City Hall’s Fifth Floor should be providing, the Pritzker administration said it will speed up plans to turn a Little Village building into a 200-bed shelter for families and people with disabilities.

And the governor’s office said the state requested alternate housing sites from the city and is working with the Archdiocese of Chicago to find more options.

Clarity begins at home: No need for mayor to visit the border to understand migrant crisis

“My administration remains committed to a data-driven plan to improve the asylum seeker response and we will continue to coordinate with the city of Chicago as we work to expand available shelter through winter,” Pritzker said.

As for Johnson, the public now needs to know if it’s still on the hook for the full $29 million contract for GardaWorld to build and operate the Brighton Park camp and another proposed for 115th and Halsted streets.

And does the city still have to pay $91,400 a month in rent to the owners of the Brighton Park site? Taxpayers would like to know.

Brighton Park was an especially wrong move for a mayor who ran for office promising a progressive, competent and transparent government. What happened at 38th and Cal is just the opposite.

And for a mayor given to quoting lyrics from Beyoncé in news conferences, we’ll offer up something in return from her song “Hold Up.”

The words embody what every Chicagoan knows when City Hall starts talking too fast and playing fast and loose with information: “Something don’t feel right. Because it ain’t right.”

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New cars should have technology to keep drivers from speeding

2023-12-04T19:00:00-06:00

With no signs that speeding is slowing down, the National Transportation Safety Board is recommending that automakers install speed reducing technology that, at the very least, alerts drivers if they are going too fast.

stock.adobe.com

Speeding has become so normalized on American roads, even motorists who attest to “driving like a turtle” aren’t fazed when a vehicle occasionally zips by as if it’s competing in the Indianapolis 500.

Drowsy driving, activities that lead to distracted driving, and driving under the influence of alcohol are rightly considered very or extremely dangerous by many Americans. But speeding is viewed as less risky, and it’s a behavior many readily admit to engaging in on residential roads and freeways, according to a recent survey by AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.

But this need for speed is deadly: Speeding contributed to one-third of driving deaths in the country in 2021, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. Illinois, in particular, had the fourth highest number of speeding-related fatalities — 487 — that year.

With no signs that speeding is slowing down, the NTSB is recommending that automakers install speed reducing technology that, at the very least, alerts drivers if they are going too fast. It’s a move we support.

Editorial

There will always be some drivers who have no regard for their passengers or others on the road. Neither a scared traveling companion nor a computer could convince these speed demons to ease up on the accelerator. But most drivers with a tendency to go over the speed limit would probably obey the rules of the road if they were given a nudge.

Safety features, including air bags, forward-collision systems, automatic emergency braking and backup cameras were nonexistent in cars decades ago. They have since proven they have the potential to save lives, and many drivers are thankful they exist. Requiring automakers to fit their products with another mechanism that could prevent more injuries — something like the seatbelt alarms that have become a standard feature — is a practical step.

The European Union will require vehicles be equipped with intelligent speed assistance starting in July. And so far, research in that region has concluded that such technology does work.

“Speed warning systems can be especially effective to counteract unintentional speeding caused by inattention over the control of speed,” a 2020 report published in European Transport Research Review concluded.

Another study conducted in the U.K. found that drivers are open to such technology if it allows them choice and control — concerns that drivers in the Chicago area also expressed when speaking with the Sun-Times.

If the technology imposed is more than a notice to drivers and makes speeding difficult or impossible, motorists should be able to override the system if they have to quickly escape a dangerous situation.

“I don’t love anything that restricts your ability to get out of a situation,” as 27-year-old Coleman Connolly, of Edgewater, told reporter Isabel Funk.

Because many intelligent speed assistance systems use GPS to track cars’ locations in real time, laws also must be put in place to protect privacy.

That isn’t a big ask.

Steps should be taken to ensure that any proposal “aimed at public safety or personal convenience does not become a tool for surveillance and tracking,” a spokesperson for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois says.

The NTSB came up with the recommendation for cars to have speed reducing technology following its investigation into a deadly Las Vegas crash that claimed the lives of nine people in 2022.

“This crash is the latest in a long line of tragedies we’ve investigated where speeding and impairment led to catastrophe, but it doesn’t have to be this way,” NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said.

No it doesn’t.

Unless you’re a race car driver, burning rubber behind the wheel shouldn’t be an option. Ultimately, drivers are responsible for their actions. But if car is engineered to help keep many of them from driving recklessly, we’ll be a big step further on making our roads much safer.

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Chicago must keep pushing forward on O’Hare expansion project

2023-12-03T12:09:27.699-06:00

A rendering of the planned new domestic and international Terminal 2 at O’Hare, designed by Studio Gang.

Studio Gang

Last year about this time, the feds gave the official green light to the centerpiece of the massive O’Hare modernization and expansion plan: the $7.1 billion project to replace the airport’s 61-year-old Terminal 2 with a new global hub to handle both domestic and international flights.

The project, as this editorial board noted at the time, is a must when it comes to bringing O’Hare up to modern standards, befitting its standing as one of the world’s busiest airports.

Especially as air travel continues to bounce back post-pandemic, a fully modernized O’Hare — new runways and a new international Terminal 5 are already complete — has to remain high on Chicago’s agenda. The airport is an essential cog in Chicago’s economy, providing hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions in revenue. Modernizing it is key to O’Hare remaining competitive with other big-city airports, national and international.

It’s the type of massive capital project that can’t — and shouldn’t — be done by tinkering around the edges, as then-city Aviation Commissioner Ginger Evans made clear to us back in 2017. That sentiment still rings true today.

Editorial

Yet United and American Airlines, the largest carriers at O’Hare, now reportedly want to scale back, slow down or — in a worst-case scenario that shouldn’t be part of the discussion — even indefinitely ground the project because of rising costs, the Sun-Times’ Fran Spielman reported last week. Negotiations on the matter between the airlines and City Hall are ongoing.

It’s a high-stakes test for Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration. Holding the two powerful airlines to the deal they signed in 2018, under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration, will be a tough task for a new administration.

But City Hall cannot afford a misstep on this.

It’s a measure of how essential this project is that last Friday, U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, who chairs a Senate subcommittee on aviation, issued a joint statement saying United and American “signed a contract which we expect them to honor” for the terminal project.

That echoes what Emanuel told Spielman: A deal’s a deal. The airlines got additional gates, modernized runways and other benefits, and they should now stick to their end of the agreement regarding the terminals.

“Across the globe and everywhere, people are modernizing their aviation systems and Chicago should be no different,” Emanuel said. “They signed onto it. It’s a contract.”

Do the math on costs

There’s no doubt that other big-city airports are surely hovering in the wings, salivating at any chance to take away business from O’Hare.

As Ald. Matt O’Shea, chairman of the City Council’s aviation committee, told Spielman: “Top airports throughout the country continue to come after us, looking to take passengers, looking to become stronger hubs. And we need to stay competitive.”

Jobs are at stake, too — construction jobs to finish the terminal project itself, as well as jobs at an expanded O’Hare and in surrounding businesses. That includes jobs and contracts with women- and minority-owned businesses; as one point of reference, the Chicago Department of Aviation, which manages both airports, is expected to spend $177 million with women and minority businesses in 2023, 37% of its overall budget.

The airlines say they remain committed to modernizing O’Hare, which is in their best interests even as they try to cut a deal with City Hall. A state-of-the-art, easier-to-navigate “global hub” is in their best interests, too, as a big selling point to would-be travelers who would be able to catch connecting flights back home to Detroit or Omaha in the same terminal where they arrived back in the U.S. from France or Ghana or China.

From the airlines’ standpoint, the concern over rising costs is understandable. The entire O’Hare expansion had an initial price tag of $8.7 billion, but that’s now soared to $12.1 billion. The terminal project is supposedly $1.5 billion over budget.

Cost overruns are practically inevitable when it comes to construction. The first order of business should be to do the math and figure out some way to keep the price tag manageable.

But here’s the bottom line: O’Hare has gone longer than most other airports without a major rebuild. Now is not the time to step back, with new runways and other amenities already in place.

The new “global alliance” hub must be prepared for takeoff.

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