By Steve Rhodes

“There isn’t much glamour in this kind of work, but someone has to do it,” Kristina Strain writes for Inside Philanthropy.
“Since 1890 – that’s right, for over 100 years – the VNA Foundation has been dedicated to community health initiatives in and around Chicago. First as a hands-on care group – VNA stands for Visiting Nurse Association, after all – and later, from 1995 forward, as a grantmaker funding groups doing the hands-on health work, VNAF has been giving out funding to the tune of about $2 million per year.
“And the beautiful thing is, they’re transparent as glass. They’re generous and accessible, and if you’re Chicago-based with a health-access angle, you need to know about them.”

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Posted on May 13, 2014

By Steve Rhodes

“Folks in Bridgeport have been looking to the skies in recent weeks, wondering why they are suddenly hearing hundreds of planes some days headed into Midway Airport about 7 miles away,” the Sun-Times reports.

“In 30 years, I’ve not heard noise like we are hearing now,” said Kathy Krugler, 64, of Bridgeport. “It’s unbelievable.”

“Turns out, since Feb. 6, a new flight path into Midway’s Runway 22L has been sending a barrage of planes over a new swath of South Side and Southwest Side neighborhoods.”
So it’s not just the North Side suffering from new noise patterns.
It’s the sort of thing you think Daley wouldn’t have allowed but that Rahm probably isn’t even aware of.

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Posted on May 12, 2014

By Natasha Julius

If only all Chicago elections were this entertaining.
Special Olympic Edition
Have you heard the news?! Rio’s a disaster, which means we’re still in this thing! Maybe this has been Mayor Emanuel’s plan all along . . . Consider:

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Posted on May 10, 2014

By Steve Rhodes

“Not long after taking over the budget committee of a state agency, Cook County Circuit Clerk Dorothy Brown voted by proxy to channel $5 million to a West Side nonprofit to help continue funding Gov. Pat Quinn’s now-disbanded Neighborhood Recovery Initiative,” Dave McKinney reports for the Sun-Times.
“That vote by Brown came at the same time the nonprofit, Chicago Area Project, employed her husband, Benton Cook III, to oversee millions of dollars in Neighborhood Recovery Initiative programming. The organization subsidized his paycheck with state anti-violence grant money.
“It’s not clear whether any of the grant funds Brown authorized for Chicago Area Project’s use in September 2012 trickled into Cook’s paycheck since the nonprofit says he left its payroll in October of that year.
“But her decision to proceed with a vote on the matter instead of abstaining sparked criticism Thursday from Gov. Pat Quinn’s office and a call from the top House Republican that she resign her chairmanship of the Criminal Justice Information Authority’s budget committee, through which state anti-violence grants are disbursed.”
What’s odd about Brown’s maneuver is that her vote wasn’t even necessary; the funding to CAP was approved unanimously. That’s what they call in sports an unforced error.

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Posted on May 9, 2014

By Steve Rhodes

From my juvenile justice column on Friday:

Michigan Avenue magazine this week named Toni Irving, the executive director of Get In Chicago, one of the city’s most influential women.
Get In Chicago is a pet project of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who founded the organization in March 2013 with private money he had solicited to address violence in the city.
Irving was previously a deputy chief of staff to Governor Pat Quinn, chair of the State of Illinois Human Services Commission and Co-Chair of the Poverty Elimination Commission.
“When I came to the state, we had 1,337 youth in the juvenile justice system reporting to adult parole officers, [and under my leadership] all kids in Cook County were given social workers to track them, so it became a more supporting, therapeutic model of care,” Irving told Michigan Avenue. “The last day I was at the state, there were 850 [kids in the system], and they were doing so much better.”
* I can’t vouch for Irving, I’m just the messenger.

I was interested in Irving for that column because of her work in the juvenile justice system, but boy am I glad I issued that disclaimer; I figured if she was brought aboard by Rahm, she was inherently suspicious. (Call it political profiling.)
Now comes the Sun-Times with this report:

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Posted on May 8, 2014

By Steve Rhodes

“On Oct. 6, 2010, less than a month before the election, Gov. Pat Quinn stood alongside congressmen Bobby Rush and Danny Davis to announce he was plowing $50 million in state funds into an anti-violence program for Chicago neighborhoods,” Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown wrote Tuesday.
“As far as I can tell, the newspapers never even reported it at the time. All I can find are the press releases.
“I have no memory of the announcement myself, but would guess most reporters figured it for an election year repackaging of existing state programs and ignored it. That was probably a mistake on our part.”
As far as you can tell? Your memory? Look it up!
I did.
(And “probably” a mistake by reporters who “figured” it was an election-year repackaging of existing state programs? Ho-hum, reporters are so easily bored. They just “figure” stuff. Like, what’s the big deal about the state spending $50 million to stop violence in the city? It’s “probably” nothing. Oh, gotta go. Another dead kid. Hope she died holding a teddy bear. Now, about that code of silence . . . )
Like I said, I did Brown’s job for him – just put the check in the mail, Mark – and looked it up.

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Posted on May 7, 2014

By Steve Rhodes

“A ProPublica examination shows that officials in scores of school districts do not know the status of their desegregation orders, have never read them, or erroneously believe that orders have been ended. In many cases, orders have gone unmonitored, sometimes for decades, by the federal agencies charged with enforcing them.”
This is a highly recommend, remarkable piece of work – particularly so here in Chicago though most of it takes place in the South.
While not entirely on point, it’s hard to read this story and not recall that a federal judge lifted the desegregation decree governing CPS in 2009 – at the request of Mayor Richard M. Daley – especially against the backdrop of what we learned last week about our selective enrollment high schools.
It’s even more remarkable given the response of the Obama administration (reminder: Obama is black):

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Posted on May 6, 2014

By Natasha Julius

Subtle reminder to all Weekend Desk readers: Mother’s Day is a week from Sunday. Don’t fuck it up.
Market Update
Only in Chicago can you tighten the noose by making the Loop bigger.

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Posted on May 3, 2014

By Steve Rhodes

“Tripped up by a whistleblower, clout-heavy firm McHugh Construction has agreed to pay $12 million in fines to resolve a case involving alleged fraud on government programs intended to benefit women and minority-owned subcontractors, according to the U.S. Department of Justice,” the Sun-Times reports.
In exchange for refusing to answer questions from reporters, the Sun-Times published a statement prepared by McHugh’s public relations department:
“Over the last 26 months, we have not only cooperated fully with the government, but we have taken proactive steps to become an industry leader in . . . compliance issues,” company chairman Patricia McHugh “said.”

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Posted on May 2, 2014

By Steve Rhodes

“A controversial proposal to build a hotel and a new DePaul arena near McCormick Place with public money was approved [Wednesday] before many aldermen even knew they voted for it,” Phil Ponce said last night on Chicago Tonight.
How is that even possible? he asked.
Chicagoland!
No, but seriously, here’s CT correspondent Paris Schutz’s extraordinary explanation:

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Posted on May 1, 2014