Clearing the record on 'forever open, clear and free'

& correspondence with and from readers on the pressing issues of the day

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Eric Zorn is a former opinion columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Find a longer bio and contact information here. This issue exceeds in size the maximum length for a standard email. To read the entire issue in your browser, click on the headline link above. Paid subscribers receive each Picayune Plus in their email inbox each Tuesday, are part of our civil and productive commenting community and enjoy the sublime satisfaction of supporting this enterprise.

Tuesday at 11 a.m. I will talk with WGN-AM 720 host John Williams about what’s making news and likely to be grist for the PS mill. The WGN listen-live link is here.

No, Daniel Burnham did not say the Chicago lakefront should be “forever open, clear and free”

It was Burnham’s Plan of Chicago that established the idea of a city lakefront that would be “forever open, clear and free.” — Chicago Tribune editorial last week.

Friends of the Parks … questioned the Bears’ financing assumptions and asked why Johnson is allowing “wealth and power to dictate public policy,” particularly on a lakefront that Burnham famously said should remain “forever open, clear and free.” — Sun-Times column last week.

Not to be That Guy, but, actually, that famous saying predated Daniel Burnham’s 1909 Plan of Chicago, by 73 years. Here are the facts from Friends of the Parks:

In 1836, after the decommissioning of Fort Dearborn, citizens petitioned the federal government to set aside 20 acres of Fort Dearborn’s land for a public square. About that same time, Commissioners of the proposed Illinois and Michigan Canal plotted lots near the new Canal, and wrote a proviso that land east of what became Michigan Avenue (to the Lake) and south of Randolph Street to 12th Street should remain “Public Ground – A Common to Remain Forever Open, Clear and Free of any Buildings, or Other Obstruction whatever.”

Burnham wasn’t even born until 1846.

Chicago’s hotel tax comes with a cost, even for those who live here

On his podcast last Wednesday, Reader columnist Ben Joravsky offered an on-point riff about the funding scheme the Bears want to use to to finance their new stadium:

Mayor Johnson, at the press conference (April 24), said … “this will not cost the taxpayers of the city of Chicago…” I mean, come on, Mayor Johnson! How could you say that with a straight face? They go, “Well, it's coming out of hotel tax.”

I remember the Bears saying this back in 2002. We're still paying off the bonds on that deal to renovate Soldier Field to keep them in Chicago. And I remember the publicist for the Bears telling me, “Ben, this will not cost the taxpayers of the city of Chicago one nickel. It's all hotel-motel taxes.”…

Ladies and gentlemen, the hotel-motel tax could go for anything. …We could use it, if we wanted to, for schools. We could use it for police. We could use it for fire. We could use it for anything.

If we choose to use it for the Bears, guess what? You're going to have to raise another tax to fund your schools. You're going to have to raise another tax to pay your police, pave your roads, pay your fire department. It's not free money. It's not like, just like, money falling from heaven. If you spend the hotel-motel taxes on the Bears, you’ve got to come up with more property taxes to pay your schools. The notion that it's not going to cost us? Only a fool would believe that.

Exactly.

Those who want to use a portion of the Hotel Operators Tax to fund stadium construction act like there’s no cost to locals, only tourists. But, as Joravsky observes, money is money, and that money could instead be used to help meet existing revenue demands while keeping taxes, fees and fines on residents lower.

The Civic Federation has a good explainer on the tax here:

ISFA is the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority; MPEA is the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority

Notes and comments from readers — lightly edited — along with my responses

The Bears trying to get the public to help pay for Mulligan Field

Brian Davis — You referred to the proposed stadium as “Mulligan Field” because “some 22 years ago, (the Bears) metaphorically sliced one deep into the woods with an ugly rebuild of Soldier Field that has one of the smallest seating capacities in the NFL and lacks a covered roof that would have made it a much more useful venue for the Super Bowl, the college basketball championships, concerts, monster truck rallies and conventions.” And now they want a quick do-over

But not putting a dome on the stadium 22 years ago wasn’t the Bears’ decision. Mayor Richard M. Daley didn’t want to pay for a dome. Now let’s take a look at a couple of facts:

1. Bears president Kevin Warren is not selling snake oil. He was responsible for getting U.S. Bank Stadium — home of the Minnesota Vikings— built in Minneapolis.

2. It was built on time and under budget, with half paid by the Vikings and half by the city and state ($1.1 billion total). It opened in 2016 and the state and city paid off their portion of the debt 23 years early. Warren knows what he’s doing, not like the knuckleheads who run Chicago.

3. The $640 Million still owed on the existing Soldier Field is not on the Bears. They have been paying the City $5.7 million a year rent for the field and parking. The rest, the city makes on everything else, concessions and other events.

4. A lot of that $640 million debt is due to the city skipping payments for several years, not anything the Bears did.

Marc Blumer — I 100% agree that no public money should be used for new Chicago stadium. The Arlington Heights offer was a much better win/win ,and that suburb will regret playing hardball with no leverage.

However, for those of us, like you, who were here at time , it is proper and honest to restate the environment when the renovation was negotiated and the many, many actors beyond the Bears who played a self-interested role

The Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority offered to include a domed stadium as part of McCormick Place expansion. It would have been in use more than 200 days a year,and the financial commitment to the Bears would have been minimal. It would have been used for exhibition space, a Super Bowl, a Final Four, tractor pulls, concerts, you name it.

So, who killed this obvious golden goose besides the Bears?

• Bears fans and influential sportswriters who gave the Bears an out with their incessant chatter about the glories of "Bear weather."

• The owners of the United Center. They feared that the competition for major events would kill them and lobbied intensely against it

• Friends of the Park. Their refusal to give an inch on anything forced a design decision that could never work

• Mayor Richard M. Daley. He refused to put his fist down (for the first time ever) and played a back seat role.

In the end, the failure to build a dome is at the feet of all the above and marks both an architectural and financial tragedy.

Zorn — The Bears had options in the early 2000s and I don’t remember team officials saying at the time they’d been thwarted by Daley or griping about any lack of action on his part.

The $1.1 billion price tag for U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis seems like a great deal compared to the bill we’re looking at here.

Quoting the Sun-Times:

The Bears’ pitch for a new domed lakefront stadium came with a $4.7 billion price tag. In reality, though, Chicago and Illinois taxpayers would end up paying $5.9 billion to help the Bears build and finance the stadium and retire existing debt used to renovate Soldier Field and Guaranteed Rate Field, where the White Sox play.

Add to that the $1 billion already paid to revamp Soldier Field and Guaranteed Rate Field, and the overall cost to taxpayers is $6.9 billion, says Frank Bilecki, executive director of the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority.

The Tribune analysis is similar

Team officials said during their public unveiling Wednesday the Bears would pledge $2.3 billion in private money while asking the state agency charged with stadium development projects to borrow less than half of that — $900 million — to build a long-sought, year-round indoor replacement for century-old Soldier Field.

But a deeper look at the financial details of the Bears’ full plans shows the costs, especially over the long term, are drastically higher. Counting interest and other long-term costs, the proposed new borrowing would tally up to at least $4.8 billion over four decades, said Frank Bilecki.

Garry Spelled Correctly — A covered stadium on the lakefront makes no sense. Currently the TV networks like to have a blimp over Soldier Field so they can show the playing field and the skyline. This won't be possible if there’s a roof on the place.

The McCaskeys paid $200 million for Arlington Park and now realize they'll have to pay high real estate taxes so they want out of the deal. The city offered to sell them the vacant Michael Reese site that the utterly stupid Mayor Richard M. Daley had flattened for his asinine Olympics dream, but they turned that down.

And our utterly clueless and incompetent current mayor is showing us again that he’s out of his depth. These overblown monstrosities never are profitable, as Allan Sanderson of the University of Chicago has been pointing out for decades now!

Zorn — Broadcasters seem fine these days with aerial shots of covered arenas (are they really still taken from blimps instead of drones?) with cityscapes in the background. The view of Mulligan Field on the lake and the Chicago Skyline would still be spectacular.

I’m guessing that the Arlington Heights notion has not been totally mothballed and that last week’s presentation was at least in part a negotiating gambit. The Bears say the former site of Michael Reese hospital — see the pin in the map below — is “too narrow” for what they’d like, and doesn’t meet the “NFL’s security protocols,” whatever those are.

The Michael Reese site — pin — is right by the 31st Street Beach

My sense is that Mayor Johnson is really looking for a PR victory here — “I kept the Bears in Chicago!” — but has not adequately taken the pulse of Chicago residents, who don’t seem to favor throwing good money after bad when it comes to stadiums.

I am among those who consider the Bears to be a TV show and who don’t care much where the studio is located.

Marty G — NFL teams rake in on average close to a billion dollars per year. The Bears are reportedly worth 6.3 billion. So here comes the McCaskey family with their hands out, and our goofy mayor who can't wait to spend taxpayer dollars to have them eat up more of the lakefront. Oh, and the White Sox — worth $2 billion — also want support for a new stadium.

Zorn — Chicago loves and is excited about the Bears. And if that team doesn’t get stadium funding I don’t like the chances for the White Sox, who are beloved by half the city, at most, even when they’re playing well, which they aren’t.

Campus protests

Laurence E Siegel — Many are seeming to forget why Israel exists. In the 1930s, when Hitler came to power and started enforcing his anti-Jewish laws, many Jews saw the coming storm and wanted out. But Jews were unwelcome almost everywhere. At the height of the pogroms, almost no country would adjust their immigration laws to allow in more Jews. That includes the United States. When World War II was over, there was still an issue of where to go. Antisemitism was not limited to Nazis, especially in Eastern Europe . So what did Jews get? A small sliver of land on the eastern Mediterranean coast, smaller than our smallest state and mostly desert. It was a piece of land where Jews had lived for several thousand years until emigrating or being kicked out. Jews didn't see it as taking land from Palestinians. They saw it as a type of homecoming to land that had always belonged to them.

History is rife with conquests and expulsions. Are the winners always right? Should we give California and most of the southwest back to Mexico? Should Washington and Oregon be given back to Russia? Let's give Puerto Rico and the Philippines back to Spain. For that matter let's give Israel back to the British, who were in charge before Israel was created.

David Leitschuh — Palestine was simply the word the Greeks used in reference to this geographical area, and also the name for the Roman provide there in the 2nd-4th centuries. The name of this area before that? Judea, the Israeli Nation state. And this area had always remained home to a Jewish population.

The underlying reason for the ongoing conflict between Israel and various Arab states and the people in Gaza and the West Bank? The refusal of a large segment of the Arab population to acknowledge Israel's right to exist.

Israel has attempted to move forward with a two-state solution several times, but on every occasion they have not had an Arab partner who was genuinely willing to make peace with them. Israel previously occupied all of the Sinai Peninsula as well as Gaza, and voluntarily withdrew in 2005, forcibly removing Israeli settlements, as a start to providing people there with the opportunity to have their own country and live in peace with Israel.

But what have the people in Gaza done with this land since that time? Despite massive foreign aid from the UN, U.S. and international community, instead of developing a thriving economy they have continued to use it as a base of attacks against Israel.

Sadly, polls that have been done over time reflect that the majority of people in Gaza support the position of Hamas. Schools in Gaza that exist because of UN and US funding tell young children that Jews are sub-human and that it is holy to kill them. Shockingly, a poll of Gaza residents taken shortly after the October 7th terrorist attacks reflected a strong majority in support of those attacks.

Israel, just like the US, is a very imperfect democracy, but yet they are a democracy that believes in freedom and individual rights as witnessed by the large number of Arab-Israeli citizens and Arabs serving as elected members of parliament. Israel has always been a staunch U.S. ally, and we now owe them our full support on both a moral basis and for our own geopolitical interests.

It is incredibly frustrating that the U.S. government is mute on the U.S. citizens who were abducted and continue to be held by Hamas. Where are the demands for their release? Why are the names of these U.S. citizens who were taken not being talked about by our government as well as our own media? Why are our colleges and universities allowing open anti-Semitism on their campuses to the extent that Jewish students have been assaulted and are in fear of going to their own classes? Why isn't our government speaking out more forcefully on this?

Laurence is correct that there is an ongoing history of anti-Semitism in the world, and including the U.S. where President Franklin Delano Roosevelt shamefully refused to accept Jewish refugees attempting to flee Hitler. But it has truly reared its ugly head very openly today, and we all have a moral obligation to call it out and actively oppose it. Local government resolutions demanding a ceasefire but remaining totally silent without any call for release of innocent civilian hostages, including US citizens being held by terrorists are disgraceful. We all must speak out!

Zorn — The Tribune published an op-ed counterpoint to these views Monday, “Post-Oct. 7, I’m finally questioning the narrative about Jewish inheritance”:

By the end of 1948, nearly 750,000 Palestinians had been expelled and displaced, much the same way that Jews have historically been expelled and displaced for millenniums. People were forced from their homes so that Jews could come in and settle. That’s the historical reality of the Nakba — an Arabic word often translated as “catastrophe,” and one I’d never heard until last year, even though I am 56 years old. How is it possible that none of my Jewish educators ever mentioned this history of dispossession?

I can and do blame myself for not knowing or understanding the Palestinian people’s reality until 40 years after my formal Jewish education ended. I have spent my whole life aghast at the idea that people would be expelled from their homes, their countries, simply because of who they were, where they were born, because of a religion or creed or race. And yet, it had happened at the hands of my own people.

The context and circumstances of how Israel became a state bear many painful but crucial truths that my Jewish education too conveniently elided. Jews — themselves persecuted through the ages simply for being Jewish — displaced an entire people, simply for not being Jewish. Hamas’ violent uprising of Oct. 7 and the wider Palestinian resistance need to be understood from that starting point.

Janet — Some students are undoubtedly anti-Semitic, but I truly believe that many are acting out due to the crimes against humanity that the Israeli government is now dealing the Palestinians. They are young people who are still learning, but seem to have a heart for anything unjust. They are choosing ways that incite their elders, methods that will probably backfire. But I think we are missing the fact that many of them are looking to end suffering.

Zorn — I share the concern with the suffering of innocents and understand that grievances run deep on both sides. But those now celebrating Hamas and praising its leaders are as naive as those who romanticized Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, Che Guevara and other repressive, ruthless murderous leaders.

Same-sex conduct is punishable by 10 years in prison in Gaza, so the nexus here between Queer Liberation and Palestinian is unclear. Yet Swarthmore College anthropologist Sa'ed Atshan, who identifies as queer, tried to square that circle for us here.

The Mayor and his former employer

Michael Gorman —How much of the visceral dislike of Mayor Brandon Johnson is fueled by animosity toward the Chicago Teacher’s Union, where he used to work as an organizer? It’s comical to see Johnson being singled out as a "tool of the CTU," as if previous mayors were not heavily beholden to one interest or another (banks, union haters, real estate companies and individuals, developers, etc.). Alsod the demonization of the CTU seems exceptional even among the usual union-bashing suspects.

Zorn — It’s very hard to tell if and how the connection between MBJ and the CTU will play out in the court of public opinion. Taxpayers may be watching warily to see if Team Johnson is metaphorically sitting across the table from union negotiators or next to them. And they may find themselves more than a little put off by the airy dismissal of the budgetary concerns so far shown by union president Stacy Davis Gates.

Here is a snippet of transcript from her interview with WLS-AM host Bill Cameron on last weekend’s “Take 1” program and podcast where they discussed the union’s proposals, which include for a 9% pay hike for teachers and an expansion of student activities and services.

CAMERON: Even if we don't count what the proposals you have would cost, the (Chicago Public Schools) system is facing a deficit of $391 million. Where's the big new money gonna come from?

DAVIS GATES: It’s gonna come from Springfield. They are supposed to fund schools. They're not funding schools …

CAMERON: Where should the big new revenue come from specifically? Are we talking an increase in the income tax?

DAVIS GATES: No, I'm not talking about that at all. That's not my job, actually. You know, my job is to tell these people that, if you want to have schools that are fully staffed with people who love being in that school community, with programming and curriculum that speaks to the needs of students and families, then they're gonna have to fund the formula. That's the part of my advocacy that I am fully committed to. The part of their advocacy that they have to recommit to is making sure that the funding formula is actually funded. That's their job.

I was reminded of SDG’s response when reporters made a similar query in March about where the money is supposed to come from to meet union demands: "“Stop asking that question!” she scolded them. " Ask another question.”

And yes, it’s not her job to craft city and state budgets or suggest whose programs or pockets the additional funds are supposed to come from. But it is her job to rally public support — not just membership support — for her proposals. And saying, in effect, “screw you!” to concerned taxpayers invites them to reply in kind.

Sorrow over DeJoy

Daniel FitzSimmons — I’m at a loss as to why President Biden hasn’t replaced Louis DeJoy as Postmaster General. Trump had no trouble installing him; why has Biden seemingly been unable to act. Any light you can shed will be appreciated.

Zorn — The Federal Times explained in 2022 why DeJoy is controversial, and offered this explanation

In 1971, the United States Post Office Department was re-organized into the U.S. Postal Service, a special agency independent of the executive branch that is not funded by appropriations.

The Postmaster General is not a member of the Cabinet and is not in line to be president. … The Postmaster General’s office has no fixed term … The U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors has sole authority to hire and fire the postmaster general, the highest position in the organization. Though pressure mounts from Democrats and watchdogs to remove DeJoy from his seat at the top of the agency, Biden lacks the power to do so.

Ya gotta see these tweets!

Here are some funny visual images I've come across recently on social media. Enjoy, then evaluate:

Vote for your favorite. I’ll share the winner in Thursday’s main edition.

Usage note: To me, “tweet” has become a generic term for a short post on social media. And I will continue to call the platform Twitter if only to spite Elon Musk:

There’s still time to vote in the conventional Tweet of the Week poll!

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