Latest news with #BrandonJohnson
CBS News
2 hours ago
- Health
- CBS News
Mayor Johnson signs executive order to curb smoking on CTA trains and buses
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson on Tuesday signed an executive order to elimiate smoking on the Chicago Transit Authority system. Smoking is already banned on the CTA, and a group of Chicago alderpeople last month called for enforcement of the ban. On Tuesday, the mayor signed an executive order directing the Chicago Police Department, the Chicago Department of Family and Support services, the Chicago Department of Public Health, and the mayor's office to work with the CTA to end smoking on public transit and improve public safety. "Smoking on our public transit system has got to stop, and I am directing our city's agencies and the Mayor's Office to work together to put an end to this activity," Mayor Johnson said in a news release. "Our public transit system is for all Chicagoans. We have parents taking their young children to school in the morning and seniors with respiratory issues who are inhaling smoke. This executive order calls for the same full-force-of-government approach that has resulted in historic reductions in crime to tackle this critical issue." The order directs city departments to partner with the CTA to "explore possible areas of collaboration," including deploying the Chicago Department of Public Health Crisis Assistance Response and Engagement teams and the Department of Family and Support Services Homeless Outreach and Prevention teams to curtail smoking on trains. In the order, the mayor also calls for exploring whether a team could be assembled, possibly including community violence interrupters and mental health professionals, to engage with people found smoking on the CTA system and offer "on-site counseling, smoking cessation resources, and long-term treatment." Johnson's announcement of the the order focused more on the health risks of smoking and the dangers of secondhand smoke than the nuisance issue of smoking specifically on 'L' trains and other CTA property. Complaints have made headlines in recent years about people smoking cigarettes, marijuana, and other substances on the CTA. But while referring generically to "smoking," the focus of much of the release on the mayor's order was on the health risks of cigarettes. CTA officials released some statistics about the issue in 2023, when it said more than 6,300 citations for smoking were issued. That same year, a CBS News Chicago investigation found more than 90% of those smoking fines went unpaid. According to a recent survey from the Regional Transportation Authority, four out of five riders who use CTA, Metra, or Pace say they've experienced cigarette and marijuana smoking or drinking on Chicago buses and trains, on platforms, and in stations. Noting the CTA is facing a major budget shortfall in 2026, some aldermen last month argued a concerted effort to decrease smoking on trains and buses could increase ridership, and boost revenue.
Chicago Tribune
14 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Editorial: A new CTA day for Edgewater and Uptown. But what about Broadway?
'This is Berwyn,' insisted the voice of the CTA as our train pulled into the new Argyle station on the CTA's Red Line Monday afternoon. Teething troubles, surely forgivable, for the big reopening of four stations on the CTA's Red Line, the transit agency's flagship artery that can take you from Wrigley Field to Rate Field or, for many Chicagoans, from home to work. New stations reopened Sunday with the monikers and (locations of) Lawrence, Berwyn, Argyle and Bryn Mawr, all abutting North Broadway, a street about which there currently is much dissent. We thought we'd check them all out. Our takeaway? None of these stations are architectural marvels and they all have the utilitarian design long familiar to CTA riders. But they're also all improvements. They all have functioning escalators to take you up (but not down) from the turnstiles to the platform. They all have elevators that smell like new cars, not the disgorging of human bodies. We're not crazy about the angled platform seats that seem ready to tip you off at any moment, but we assume the CTA has its reasons, just as it surely does for the endless customer service scrolls that get in the way of what most people at a CTA station really want to know, which is when the next train might be expected. More significantly, all four stations have translucent roofs that, aside from offering decent shade and shelter, feel to us like a bit of a neighborhood nod to the grand terminals of old. At Lawrence, the new design showcases terrific views of the (sadly unrestored) Uptown Theatre and the upper reaches of the historic Aragon Ballroom, just a few feet from the train line. We spent a while drinking in those vistas, which somehow feel more impactful now. But the biggest takeaway? The impact of significantly wider platforms. Not only do these stations feel (and surely are) significantly safer, but the broader expanse of concrete makes standing there all the more pleasant. There's room to walk around (or away) without feeling crammed toward an oncoming train. The stations have more weight and substance. They have the effect of elevating Edgewater and Uptown. Those diverse Chicago neighborhoods have been the subject of much zoning mishegoss of late. In one corner is the 48th Ward's alderman, Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth, and Mayor Brandon Johnson, both of whom want to 'upzone' Broadway from Montrose Avenue to Devon Avenue so it might accommodate taller buildings and more affordable housing. In the other are neighborhood activists who argue this will ruin their quality of life. We published the thoughts of one of them, Steve Weinshel, on Sunday. Wienshel argued that Johnson's desire to eliminate the parking mandate for new multifamily developments would be catastrophic and he foresaw masses of new housing on Broadway, with most needing somewhere to park. 'To contemplate adding 10,000 housing units along Edgewater's adjacent stretch of Broadway with minimal off-street parking requirements constitutes urban planning malpractice,' Weinshel wrote. 'Such lunacy will plague Edgewater for generations to come.' Standing on each of those station platforms and looking over at Broadway, you see a streetscape that seems bizarre to defend. Except for the historic Uptown entertainment district, one of the city's overlooked assets, it's a hodgepodge of car washes and mini-malls with surface parking lots that don't feel like they belong, and certainly are no things of beauty. Frankly, they're eyesores. That said, they're filled with small-business owners who fear their convenient parking being swept away by a lobby that often demonizes their needs. And if you live on or around Broadway and struggle to find somewhere to park your car (and most households in this area have at least one), you understandably are nervous about the future. Progressive activists, of course, argue that city leaders should not listen to 'motorheads' and force a change in that behavior. They have a case, and the new stations on the Red Line, making travel by the CTA more attractive, certainly bolster their argument. Meanwhile, the other side says creating an avoidable parking crisis will negatively impact the very people who've worked so hard to improve these neighborhoods over the years, neighborhoods that often offer a first stop for new immigrants to the city and are already dense by the standards of elsewhere. On Monday, we certainly saw a lot more cars on Broadway than people on the CTA platforms, which largely were deserted during the lunch hour. There again, though, it may take time. Thanks to the delays and dysfunction plaguing new public-funded construction in cities such as Chicago, these relatively simple stations were closed for four years (there were some temporary options, at least). People will have to get used to their opening again. And, of course, new stations alone won't get people out of their cars: for that we need more frequent trains, a greater perception of safety and faster journey times. We could use a CTA that expands operations with regard to use and population. All that said, we saw CTA functioning at its best and smoothest Monday afternoon; you might even say the trains glide into the new stations. In an ideal world, denser housing, the elimination of required parking and the end of those mini-malls would be a no-brainer for Broadway because far fewer cars would be needed. But in the meantime, some sort of compromise has to be found that involves Chicagoans respecting the needs of others and refraining from insulting perfectly reasonable positions. These new stations deserve a Broadway that rises to meet them.
Chicago Tribune
14 hours ago
- Politics
- Chicago Tribune
Police Department brass accused Mayor Brandon Johnson's budget office of ‘systemically' delaying paychecks
Chicago Police Department brass accused Mayor Brandon Johnson's administration of deliberately slowing down paychecks for dozens of employees this summer in a fiery email that warned the city was jeopardizing its compliance with the federal consent decree. Police Department Deputy Director Ryan Fitzsimons emailed multiple officials in Johnson's budget office June 2 to alert them of the department's overdue A-forms, paperwork required to process paychecks for new hires and promotions. After following up the next day to confirm that police recruits were not getting their first paychecks, he sent an additional message June 10 saying Johnson's budget office was purposely sitting on the forms. 'Given that we discussed at length via email and on our meeting on May 8th the need for timely approval of A-Forms, it would appear that OBM is pursuing a pattern of practice to delay the approval of A-Forms with the functional result of not paying employees on time and delaying compliance with the Consent Decree,' Fitzsimons wrote. 'What is OBM's plan to systemically approve or deny A-forms?' The unusually contentious email noted, 'CPD is committed to paying our employees on time. It is one of our most basic requirements as an employer and is also required by law. OBM's delay to sign A-Forms is exposing the City to increased legal risk along with diminished morale and increased attrition of our recruits.' A joint statement last week from the mayor's office, the Office of Budget Management and Chicago police acknowledged that about 60 police academy recruits saw late paychecks, along with six Chicago Fire Department employees. The response cast the snafu as an 'administrative' error that has since been rectified. 'We acknowledge that administrative delays affected recently hired and promoted employees, and we have taken corrective steps to ensure the payments were made,' the statement said. 'The City is continuing to evaluate ways to improve internal systems — such as A-form processing and hiring workflows — with a goal of reducing administrative delays and supporting public safety staffing needs.' While the city said the lag was less than a week, Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7 President John Catanzara noted the 54 recruits who started in May only got their first paycheck last month after he spoke with WMAQ-Ch. 5 to sound the alarm. And former city Inspector General Joe Ferguson, who has authored reports on the city's complicated hiring process, argued 'you shouldn't have that situation at all.' 'It appears to be just another manifestation of the general practice in which OBM is actually closely holding their hand on the checker in order to find nickels, dimes, dollars for costs,' Ferguson, now president of the Civic Federation, said. 'It's beyond my imagination to even come up with something (that) looks like … from the perspective of liability and responsibility, a practice that takes this budgetary control mentality to a new extreme.' Johnson is not the first mayor accused of employing budgetary tricks with A-forms in times of austerity. The budget office has traditionally leaned on slow-walking filling vacancies as one of its few tools to free up money, and the city ended 2024 with a $161 million deficit and expects a more than $1 billion gap next year. But delaying A-forms for entire academy classes or police supervisors who have already begun their new roles is an atypical move, Catanzara said. 'We are talking about a guy who bragged about being on payment plans with utilities and not paying his own water bill for years, so I guess it shouldn't be anything new,' Catanzara said, a reference to Johnson paying off thousands in outstanding water and sewer bills during his 2023 campaign. 'There was always some little one-offs here and there, but they were literally one person had an issue, and it was dealt with. This is mass incompetence.' Fitzsimons' email exchange also revealed that the Police Department is now under a hiring freeze until September 'to assist OBM in managing expenses,' which Catanzara said was also the union's understanding. The city and Police Department did not address questions about the pause in new recruits. The Police Department has historically exceeded its annual spending plan thanks to runaway overtime and misconduct settlement costs. 'No, it's not acceptable,' the mayor told reporters when asked about public safety expenditures blowing past budgeted costs by $207 million last year. He blamed police overtime spending on large events and said 'some innovative element' has to happen to drive those numbers down. In his June 2 email, Fitzsimons also asked Johnson budget officials Jonathan Ernst and Joseph Sacks for the status of A-forms for three other groups: youth employment, civilian employees and promotions. It is unclear how Johnson's team responded. For the last category, which concerns officers being promoted to sergeants and lieutenants, Fitzsimons warned, 'These A-Forms are directly tied back to paragraphs 249 – 264. Promotions have already occurred and members have begun to grieve.' The paragraphs he was referring to concern the federal consent decree that the Police Department has been under since 2019. The court order was meant to reform Chicago police after the murder of Laquan McDonald, but progress has lagged, including within the section on recruitment and promotions cited by Fitzsimons. Improving the supervisor-to-officer ratio has been a goal of Johnson's and is part of ensuring compliance with the consent decree. Fitzsimons reminded Johnson's budget officials in his email that the department had to brief the judge overseeing the mandate that month on A-form approvals. The city and CPD joint response did not answer questions on how many police supervisors saw their raises lag as a result of problems with the A-forms. The youth employment A-forms were needed to fill two Police Department jobs, while the civilian A-forms focused on staff that would help implement the consent decree, per Fitzsimons' email. He said Johnson's 2024 budget, which civilianized about 400 sworn positions, netted $8 million in savings and the department wants to hire more consent decree staff as a result. During the past budget cycle, Johnson landed in hot water with police reform advocates and the Illinois attorney general for proposing a spending plan that nixed 162 consent decree vacancies. He later restored them. Figures provided by the budget office show that of the total 439 Police Department positions tied to the consent decree, 222 remain vacant. Some of the largest gaps are in the training officer and victim specialist roles, which are 57% and 50% vacant, respectively. 'CPD remains focused on filling both sworn and non-sworn vacancies while maintaining compliance with the consent decree,' the joint city-Police Department statement said. 'We are continuing to assess resource allocations and hiring procedures across departments to ensure operational continuity and to address the evolving demands of public safety and reform implementation.' Meanwhile, Chicago Fire Fighters Union Local 2 President Pat Cleary said three ambulance commanders, 15 engineers, 44 lieutenants and 29 captains temporarily suffered incorrect paychecks too. The budget office confirmed six Fire Department employees were paid late but did not address whether supervisors did not receive updated paychecks after being promoted. Ferguson said the promise of Johnson's first budget, which was lauded by policing and fiscal experts for converting sworn positions to civilian ones to cut spending, fell flat because of bureaucratic snags such as this recent A-form problem. He doesn't blame the freshman mayor for inheriting a sluggish hiring process that often takes several months, but Johnson's budget office isn't doing itself any favors, he said. 'There's this game going on in which OBM is managing (A-forms) purely for purposes of other budgetary needs that are not known to anybody, and for which there is no transparency,' Ferguson said. 'One hand is holding back the other hand in what is an octopus-like structure, and this does not serve any of us well.'
CBS News
a day ago
- Business
- CBS News
Rebuilt CTA Red Line stops on North Side get grand opening celebration
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, CTA and city officials held a grand opening ceremony at the Argyle Red Line station to celebrate the full reopening of four North Side stops. The mayor arrived on the Red Line L train at the Argyle station which, along with the Berwyn, Bryn Mawr and Lawrence stations, have been closed in full or partially since 2021 to replace tracks, signals and platforms. The $2 billion modernization project also made improvements for riders inside the stations, and brought them into Americans with Disabilities Act compliance. "There's a wider platform at each station," said Andrew Gavrilos with the Chicago Transit Authority. "The concrete structure is going to allow for a smoother ride. They're fully accessible." The Wilson station's west platform also reopened and the stop is now back to operating as a two-platform station.
Axios
2 days ago
- Business
- Axios
Chicago's first Native American affordable housing complex breaks ground
Chicago has moved closer to the city's first affordable housing complex for Native Americans. Why it matters: Chicago's metro area has the third-largest urban Native American population in the United States, about 65,000, WBEZ reported last year. Driving the news: Mayor Brandon Johnson joined developers last week for a land blessing at Jigzibik, an apartment building in Irving Park that will have 45 affordable units for Native American residents. Jigzibik is a Potawatomi word for "at the river's edge." Zoom in: Each unit will have a balcony so residents can burn sage, Shelly Tucciarelli of Visionary Ventures, a Native American housing advocate, tells Axios, and they are working on getting native plants for a rooftop garden. Apartments range from studios to 3-bedrooms amenable to multi-generational households. Prices will be based on the low-income tax credit rate at the time when the building is completed next fall. Follow the money: The Department of Housing contributed more than $6 million to the project, Chicago Housing Commissioner Lissette Castañeda said.
