“One City, 50 Wards: Does the City That Works Really Work?“, a joint series from Crain’s Chicago Business and the University of Chicago Center for Effective Government, explores the connections between how Chicago’s city government is designed, how it functions, and how it performs. You can learn more and read other articles from the series here.
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By Steve Hendershot
Ameya Pawar served two terms as alderman of Chicago’s 47th Ward from 2011 to 2019. While on the City Council, he spearheaded the creation of the City Council Office of Financial Analysis, which provides aldermen with forecasts, analysis and recommendations related to Chicago’s budget. He is now senior fellow at the Economic Security Project and co-founder and principal of Okay Cannabis. This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
CRAIN'S: How do aldermen balance ward services and their legislative responsibilities?
PAWAR: When I first ran for alderman, I talked to constituents about the idea that aldermen have to also be legislators—that the City Council should be a deliberative legislative body that works on citywide policy, in addition to taking care of things at home. Prior to that era (2011), aldermen were primarily feudal lords and occasionally legislators. Chicagoans sometimes decry the idea that their alderman is a feudal lord, because they want a legislator with big-picture thinking. But when it comes to an issue on their block, or on their street, or in their neighborhood, they want the feudal lord.
The council today is more focused on citywide issues, and a lot of that change is rooted in the class that came in in 2011, which was really a changing of the guard—it was the beginning of the end of the machine.
So is the council set up for success now, from a legislative perspective?
Wanting to focus on legislation isn’t the same as having time to do it. Ward offices are dramatically understaffed, and our commitment to legislation required us to work double time. If I had been completely immersed in service-based issues with my staff, I couldn't have done the citywide stuff.
Another aspect there is that I had the privilege of working on citywide policy because we didn't have the kind of issues in the 47th Ward that some parts of the city deal with. We had some alders who were dealing with a shooting every night and dealing with the trauma that comes with that. Ironically, I had the privilege of being a champion for social and economic justice because I represented a ward that was well-off.
The culture of hyperlocal, hyper-responsive ward offices is unique to Chicago. Aside from the demands on staff time, what are the pros and cons of that system?
In that first election, I ran on grid garbage, saying, "It makes no sense to pick up garbage based on ward boundaries. It should just be done based on what's most efficient, not on a political boundary." And Chicago implemented grid garbage.
But there was a cultural shift, and some people were up in arms at first because it took a while to realize that under this new system, I couldn’t do anything if there was a garbage can full on Lincoln Avenue. The centralized system removed me from the equation, where before, I was able to provide hyperlocal service delivery with a customer-service touch. Grid garbage probably has resulted in significant cost saving—people said they wanted this—but then they were upset when they didn't get exactly what they were used to. That's the tension that we're always going to have in the city.
Do you think the City Council is due for a structural shake-up? What changes would you make?
I used to think that perhaps we should reduce the size of the council and double or triple the staff, to end up with a body that's more deliberative on citywide issues. Or you could keep the same structure, double the staff, and still end up with an interesting structure.
But what I come back to is that Chicagoans need to think about what they want from their government: Do we want an inbound neighborhood call center or a legislative office? There are good things about the current system and the way it provides a mechanism for community members to voice concerns, compared to what it’s like calling a massive bureaucracy at any other level of government where it’s impossible to get someone on the phone. But there are lots of other things that would be better if they were handled centrally, including affordable housing decisions. So I think we should have this conversation as a city, and to think together about what we want.