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Eric Zorn: The Picayune Sentinel · Aug 6, 2026

The General Assembly is unlikely to bend to pressure from Chicago schools

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Eric Zorn · Eric Zorn: The Picayune Sentinel

8-6-2026

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A majority of the Chicago Board of Education passed a budget a week ago that assumes into existence $150 million in state funding that isn’t now in the state budget. A three-fifths supermajority in both chambers of the General Assembly will be required to turn this fantasy money into reality and avoid credit downgrades, midyear cuts and other damaging consequences.

Dissenting board member Jennifer Custer, who favored a budget proposal that used staff cuts and furlough days to balance the books, issued a stinging statement calling the budget that passed “political fiction” and “fiscal malpractice.”

Instead of confronting the district’s financial reality, (the Chicago Teachers Union) and its allies are trying to conceal it with invented revenue. … I will not participate in that deception. … Our employees deserve a budget capable of actually paying them. Our students deserve better than discovering halfway through the school year that the money they were promised never existed.

Tribune:

The Chicago Teachers Union and its board allies argued that CPS is chronically underfunded by the state, and that the amended 2026-27 spending plan would restore hundreds of positions lost to layoffs and shield classrooms from cuts.

But CPS leaders, including CEO Macquline King, issued a sharp warning. Building a budget around uncertain money could deter lenders, officials said, threatening the district’s ability to secure short-term borrowing and make payroll. And, if the funding fails to materialize, schools across the district could face even deeper cuts. …

Springfield faces its own financial constraints after closing a $2 billion deficit this year.

“When you talk to legislators about increasing education funding, what they will often say is, ‘OK, what do you want me to cut from higher ed? What do you want me to cut from early childhood?’” said Hal Woods, chief of policy at Kids First Chicago.

Chicago schools are underfunded by the state’s own standards — the district’s adequacy ratio based on the evidence-based funding formula is just 73% this year — but even Democratic suburban and downstate lawmakers are going to have a hard time explaining to their constituents why CPS deserves more money this year given that, since 2019, it has increased staffing by more than 25% and increased spending by 31% adjusted for inflation even as student enrollment has fallen by 12.5%. Meanwhile, 58% of CPS school buildings are at less than 70% capacity, and Mayor Brandon Johnson has declared that closing even vastly underenrolled schools is tantamount to “torment and torture” of pupils.

Capitol Fax blogger Rich Miller notes, “Finding three fifths super majorities in both chambers to spend money the state doesn’t have on a Chicago only bailout would require a magic wand the size of the Hancock Building.”

The CTU and its allies, including Mayor Brandon Johnson, have been notably unsuccessful in their attempts to lobby Springfield for more money, in part because they come off as utterly unconcerned with any other considerations.

Consider this exchange that CTU President — now also Illinois Federation of Teachers President — Stacy Davis Gates had with WLS-AM host Bill Cameron in April 2024 when he asked her about her union’s demands:

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.

Earlier that year when asked a similar question during an appearance at the City Club of Chicago, SDG quipped that her union’s demands “will cost $50 billion and 3 cents. And so what? That’s audacity. That’s Chicago.” When pressed to give a serious answer, she said, “Stop asking that question. 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 and the job of school funding advocates to rally public support — not just union membership support — for more money for schools. And saying, in effect, “screw you!” to concerned taxpayers invites them and their representatives to reply in kind.

The CPS/CTU tactic here is to confront lawmakers with a crisis — major disruptions in learning in Chicago, perhaps even a delayed starting date for the school year — and force them to fork over the money or else own the chaos.

Illinois House Speaker Chris Welch has vowed to lead the union’s efforts to persuade the General Assembly, but his motives appear suspect, as Miller noted in his Sun-Times column:

Welch, of course, has been under fire for weeks because, among other things, he waited almost three years after then-Rep. Harry Benton, D-Plainfield, was accused of sexual harassment to take any sort of action. He’s also faced heat for inappropriate personal interactions with the alleged victim. He obviously needs allies. …

Welch did not consult with his caucus before making his CTU pledge, and some see it as temporarily benefiting himself while setting up his members to look bad this fall when his unilateral promise can’t be kept. …

Besides the obvious regional rivalries, and the fact that CPS put itself into this position by using temporary pandemic money for its permanent base spending, lots of legislators were disappointed in May with the appropriated funding for their cherished programs.

The 2026 fall veto session, when CPS’ plea for more funds is likely to be on the agenda, won’t start until Nov. 17. That gives the administration and the union three months to come up with a workable fallback plan. They should start yesterday.

Here are this week’s nominees and the winner of the Tuesday visual-jokes poll. Here is the direct link to the new poll.

View: He was smart to do so. Republicans braying that invoking one’s constitutional right to remain silent is evidence of guilt are conveniently forgetting that in 2022, Donald Trump refused on the same grounds to answer nearly 450 questions under oath during a deposition in the investigation into the Trump Organization finances.

Yes, President Joe Biden preemptively pardoned Fauci — the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases — for any crimes he may have committed when leading the White House Coronavirus Task Force. But Fauci and his lawyers correctly realized that the entire purpose of calling him to testify was to try to catch him in a perjury trap.

Anything he might have said or remembered that differed an iota from what he’d said before or from the facts — even something insubstantial and irrelevant — would have constituted a new offense and given the crazily vindictive prosecutors at the U.S. Department of Justice the chance to put him in the dock.

Fresh in Fauci’s mind had to be the absurd prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey for posting to social media the image of an arrangement of stones and shells he saw on the beach. He was also clearly mindful of committee chair Sen. Rand Paul’s stated determination to somehow put Fauci behind bars.

If congressional Republicans are seriously interested in studying our nation’s response to COVID-19 in an effort to improve responses to the next pandemic and are merely seeking Fauci’s input, staffers could interview him informally.

They could also interview Donald Trump himself about the sworn testimony to a 2021 House subcommittee of Dr. Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House Coronavirus Task Force for his administration:

According to Dr. Birx, more than 130,000 American lives could have been saved after the first wave of the pandemic if the Trump Administration and certain states had followed the science and implemented proven mitigation measures. She stated: “I believe if we had fully implemented the mask mandates, the reduction in indoor dining, the getting friends and family to understand the risk of gathering in private homes, and we had increased testing, that we probably could have decreased fatalities into the 30 percent less to 40 percent less range.”

Gene Weingarten sums it all up:

Remember when Covid hit? Remember how the president of the United States initially pooh-poohed it, and suggested boneheaded remedies like mainlining Clorox or sunlight? Yeah, I do, too.

Fauci did what he had to do in the face of this criminal idiocy: He countered it with appropriate ferocity and necessary caution. Most of the recommendations he made were right. Some, in retrospect, proved overly cautious. Can you blame him for that? I cannot. I remember when hundreds of thousands of people were gasping to death, terrified, surrounded not by their loved ones but by whooshing machines and nurses in gas masks. If you err in such circumstances, you err on the side of safety.

Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch has a smart take:

The real virus here is anti-intellectualism — a strain that has always existed in American life, as the historian Richard Hofstadter famously wrote in 1964 — that has metastasized from a small, well-contained syndrome to overtaking the entire Republican Party. So-called “rural resentment” leads angry voters to think people like college professors or doctors in white coats are looking down on them.

It’s an antisocial worldview that was encouraged from on high by the likes of Big Oil executives who love it when the masses scoff at climate scientists. But the rejection of expertise reached a whole new level in 2020 when doctors like Fauci started telling Americans to wear masks or avoid social gatherings to slow the spread of COVID-19.

Sure, there were tough calls around issues like how long to close schools, but in real time, health experts were erring on the side of caution — the right thing to do — while shell shocked regular folks stewed about an assault on their liberty.

View: Good to know! “Sixty-four percent say abortion should be legal in all (25%) or most (38%) cases,” according to an AP-NORC poll released in July putting Blanche on the wrong side of this issue politically. His promise has already reportedly cost him the support of Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins as he seeks confirmation for a permanent appointment from the invertebrate Republican caucus in the upper chamber.

Also useful for voters to know is that congressional Republicans have blocked a proposal to expand military healthcare coverage of in vitro fertilization treatment, a procedure that’s supported by more than two-thirds of Americans.

View: I’m not a book fetishist, so this doesn’t bother me. The destruction is part of the scanning process and impacts just one copy of titles whose contents can now be accessed by millions. Amplifying the contents of a physical book is not “destroying” anything other than cloth and paper.

View: Though I would strongly advise anyone not to get inked above the collarbone, doing so is clearly an expressive act and should therefore be a protected right. And as one who has lived close by several tattoo parlors on the Northwest Side for many years, I can attest that they are innocuous places of business of no greater threat to worshippers or children than a book shop, cafe or hardware store.

A 2023 Pew Research Center survey found a third of American adults have tattoos, including nearly half of those ages 30 to 49. South Carolina’s limits and prohibitions should fail.

View: This is inexcusable. The Chicago Teachers Union and the Illinois Federation of Teachers have filed suit against Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas over the late payments. Here’s NBC-5:

It all stems from ongoing troubles the county has had modernizing the property tax system, leaving taxpayers waiting and local agencies like CPS drowning in red ink.

The overall problem is more than a decade in the making, stemming from a troubled 2015 contract with a company called Tyler Technologies to modernize the county’s property tax system. It’s caused the county repeated delays in sending out property tax bills, meaning agencies like CPS have to borrow to make ends meet. …

A spokesperson for the Cook County Treasurer’s office said “money is being held due to a collection adjustment” and blamed “ongoing distribution and reporting defects in the Tyler Technologies System.”

Pappas, who wants to be mayor, has been the treasurer since 1998.

Chicago Budget Director Annette Guzman abruptly resigned Monday, a week after the city’s acting chief financial officer, Steven Mahr, and Deputy CFO Noor Shaikh hit the exits. Their departure comes half a year after former city CFO Jill Jaworski left to take a job at Navy Pier.

Fran Spielman at the Sun-Times lays out why this instability is worrisome:

Chicago faces a $90 million midyear shortfall, a $1 billion budget gap next year and a $36 billion pension crisis that has two of four city employee pension funds hovering dangerously close to insolvency — even after receiving a city loan to avoid selling assets to pay liabilities.

The city is weeks away for a grueling election year budget season and days away from an all-important investors conference.

All this comes after Public Health Commissioner Dr. Olusimbo Ige resigned in May, Chicago police Superintendent Larry Snelling abruptly retired in July and Deputy Mayor for Community Safety Garien Gatewood was fired in March.

Johnson insisted at a recent news conference that this level of change is no big deal.

Chris Tye of CBS-2 Chicago: When you campaigned for this job, you talked about the value of relationships and relationship building. When you have these relationships fracturing — I mean, by virtue of people leaving their job — relationships have fractured. … The relationships that existed with counsel no longer are there with Ms. Guzman and a whole list of others… Is there no net effect of that?

Mayor Brandon Johnson: Annette Guzman going to take care of her mother is not a fractured relationship. … And to characterize someone making a personal decision, and then coming to a conclusion that has no basis, I find that to be reckless and irresponsible.

Tye: … I’m not talking about Ms. Guzman in particular—but the totality of the departures has to have some net effect, I would think.

Johnson: Do you want to know if those individuals who have transitioned out have an impact on me building the safest, most affordable big city in America? It hasn’t, right? Because, again, even with those transitions, has it stopped us from building affordable homes? It hasn’t. Has it stopped us from investing in hiring more young people? It hasn’t. Who put that vision forward? I did. Has it stopped us from investing in public and mental and behavioral health services? It hasn’t. Whose vision was that? That was mine.

While Johnson’s goal is to make Chicago the safest and most affordable big city in America, his phrasing suggests an assertion that this has already happened. In fact, Chicago is the 38th safest of the 50 largest cities in America and is the ninth most expensive big city to live in.

Again, for me, it’s not that I quibble with many of Johnson’s goals; it’s the weak, defensive, divisive leadership style he employs in service of pursuing those goals that gives me such pause and may be inspiring these top aides to take a powder. He throws down the class and race cards as often as he can and sees self-righteousness as a negotiating strategy.

This is a bonus supplement to the Land of Linkin’ from veteran radio, internet and newspaper journalist Charlie Meyerson. Each week, he offers a selection of intriguing links from his daily email news briefing Chicago Public Square:

■ ‘Leave the man alone.’ Your Local Epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina comes to the defense of COVID-19 response leader Anthony Fauci: “He absolutely made mistakes. … But … at some point … we need to start turning anger into something that actually fixes what’s broken.”

■ Columnist and former Illinois U.S. Rep. Marie Newman: “The magical fairyland Corporate Dems made up so they can take tons of corporate and conservative donor money and then talk in vague terms with no real solutions is not working very well.”

■ House Democrats are adding a dozen Republican congressional seats to a list of those they think they can take in November.

■ Author and Emmy-winning veteran NBC and NPR broadcast journalist Jeff Kamen fears “Trump’s panic is going to explode in our faces before the midterm election, probably manifesting in an attempt to deploy our military as well as ICE and his Jan. 6 marauders into blue and purple states.”

■ Stop the Presses columnist Mark Jacob appeals to reporters: “Stop saying Trump is joking when he’s not.”

■ Jeff Tiedrich at Everyone is entitled to my own opinion: “Republicans don’t have a single idea right now for how to improve the lives of We the People, so they’ve decided instead to … keep the cultists distracted by reviving their six-year-old grievances against the hero who did his best to keep President Horsepaste McBleachguzzle from botching the COVID crisis.”

■ “I sell with my daughter because there is no one else who can care for her”: A single mother from Ecuador talks to the Tribune (gift link) about the growing number of migrant kids selling flowers on Chicago’s streets—often at night, sometimes alone.

■ Hey, Google, pay up. Tech columnist Kim Komando: If you owned a Google or Nest thing or used Assistant between May 2016 and March 2026, the company may owe you up to $56—to settle complaints you were recorded without saying the devices’ “wake words.” You can file here. Your notice, including a unique ID and PIN, may have gone to Spam. Search for “GoogleAssistantPrivacyLitigation.com”—although you can also file without those things. They don’t make it easy. You’ll need receipts and device serial numbers—which you may find here.

■ “Beware of Apple Upgrade”: Advisorator Jared Newman flags sketchy things about Apple’s new way to buy its products.

You can (and should) subscribe to Chicago Public Square free here.

While I was on vacation, the Tribune slipped one of its “premium issues” into the Sunday home delivery editions. The little postcard the paper sends out when it wants to raise your subscription price is quite clear on this.

Your subscription may include up to 17 Premium Issues per year. For each Premium Issue you'll be charged additional fee of up to $19.99 in the billing period when the section publishes. The charge will shorten the pay-through date listed above.

I try to remind my readers and spread the word that you can still get the Sunday paper home delivered — we do — but opt out of paying for these absurdly expensive and often unwanted insert publications by calling customer service at 312-546-0790 and asking to opt out of this ridiculous and somewhat stealthy charge. Seventeen times 20 is $340 per year.

■ Former New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan: “Adam O’Neal … at the command of Jeff Bezos … wrecked the Washington Post opinion section but at least he’s out.”

■ Award-winning former radio reporter-turned-media critic Rob Archer worries about “what happens if mainstream news media goes the way of Blockbuster Video.”

■ The Wall Street Journal has corrected a story highlighted in Friday’s Chicago Public Square (gift link): “Chicago’s new bike lanes spark a rebellion from businesses” after Streetsblog Chicago complained.

■ Pink slime vs. higher ed: Columbia Journalism Review reports that several local news sites owned by a paid partisan network called Metric Media sent “simultaneous FOIA requests to administrators at (among others) … the University of Illinois, seeking emails and statements that included terms such as ‘Indigenous’ and ‘Diversity.’ But it didn’t end there.” Here’s a list of Metric’s Illinois outlets … and pink slime defined (2020 link): Websites masquerading as local news but in fact promoting a partisan agenda and gathering data on users.

■ LateNighter: Fake Jimmy Kimmel monologues are multiplying on YouTube.

■ After 61 years, a California rock radio station has laid off all its human DJs.

■ The E.W. Scripps company is cutting 268 jobs at its dozens of TV stations across the country.

From writer Willy Staley’s New York Times article in which he followed the recommendations of Dr. Sean O’Mara, “who has reportedly been giving dietary advice to several members of the Trump cabinet.” (gift link, no need to thank me)

At one point in our conversation (O’Mara) pulled up the Bristol Stool Chart, which ranges from Type 1 (“separate, hard pellets”) to Type 7 (“watery, no solid pieces”). O’Mara is consistently delivering Type 4 (“smooth, soft, like a snake”), with pointed ends, indicative of healthy rectal function, he told me. “When you start eating healthy, you don’t need toilet paper,” he claimed. “Animals in the wild have no residual stool on their anus.” He described a proper bowel movement to me this way: odorless, wipe-free, over in three to seven seconds and “nearly orgasmic.”

“I could have a bowel movement behind a sheet at a dinner party in the corner of the room,” he said, “and nobody would know.”

The reactions on social media were quite amusing:

A collection of compelling, sometimes appalling passages I’ve encountered lately

Jerome Adams, former U.S. surgeon general — U.S. measles cases in the last 2 years already exceed the total from 2000–2024 combined. A record Cyclospora outbreak is causing explosive diarrhea and scaring Americans off fresh produce. The current Ebola outbreak in Congo is spreading faster than any in history. There are clearly more urgent public health issues for the media, Congress, and the public to discuss than Dr. Fauci’s musings about Barbra Streisand from 5 years ago.

Dave Barry, from his screenplay for “The Odyssey” — The men tie Odysseus to the mast. As the boat nears the Sirens, Odysseus hears their voices. SIRENS (singing): “She wrecked the car, and she was sad, and so afraid that I’d be mad, but what the heck...”ODYSSEUS: No! Not “Honey,” by Bobby Goldsboro! MAKE IT STOP!!

Scott Galloway — The message I would have for young men is (that) you need to take less risk on a screen and more risk off a screen. Don’t retweet your aunt’s conspiracy theory. Show up to your aunt’s place and help her move. Don’t watch as much porn. Don’t swipe right. Approach a woman at a bar in a Starbucks line. Learn how to express romantic interest while making her feel safe, and get used to “no” because that’s what you need to get to a great “yes.” Don’t shit post someone online who has different political views than you. Vote. Don’t gamble. Gamble with your person. Show up for jobs you’re not qualified for. Apply to colleges that you aren’t qualified to get into. If you play (in online casinos) long enough, you’re always going to lose. In real life, in relationships, in friendships, in taking risks, you play this game long enough, you’re going to win. Less risk online, more risk offline.

Rick Aaron — The United States has threatened to drop their biggest bomb on Iran. B-52s are being loaded with DVDs of the Melania documentary.

The Volatile Mermaid — The Lying, The Mitch and The War Crimes.

Donald Trump — I know Europe better than anybody. Better than the people that run it.

Donald Trump — I probably was abused more than anybody in the history of our country.

U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island — We've got these two new pieces of paper, one signed only by Todd Blanche, one not signed by anybody. Neither of which has any legal effect whatsoever. There is enough weasel room in these documents to drive a truck through. You could get rid of the anti-weaponization fund for $1.8B, and in a month put out the Trump Justice Fund for $1.9B. Nothing in this document prevents anything like that from happening. You could open a drive-up window at the Department of Justice for cop beaters from January 6th.

I, Robert — The problem is not that (Wisconsin) voters think a Governor Francesca Hong would abolish prisons or defund the police. She wouldn’t and couldn’t. The problem is voters think anyone who uttered those phrases is not smart enough to do anything about the cost of living or anything else.

CNN contributor Van Jones on Tuesday night on the rise of the progressive left — A credibility gap has opened up between the Democratic Party establishment and this insurgency. People are … saying, “You’ve been telling us the same thing for a long time, and our lives are not getting better. We got Donald Trump twice.” There’s also an innovation gap. Why can you spend $60 million and get whooped like (losing establishment Michigan Democratic U.S. Senate primary candidate U.S. Rep. Rep. Haley Stevens did)? Because the old model was, you get the donors to get the consultants to buy a bunch of ads and you win. That’s how you get attention. This movement says, “I don’t need donors, ads, I don’t need consultants. I’m going right to the people with TikTok and grassroots.” And they’ve disintermediated the entire donor class, disintermediated the entire consultant class, and this is a revolution. And so, this is going to happen again and again. The Democratic Party is now Blockbuster; these kids are Netflix. We are selling CDs out the trunk; this is Napster becoming Spotify, and it’s happening tonight.

Here’s my list of declared and likely candidates for Chicago mayor along with campaign website links where available (updated August 12).

Hopefuls must acquire 12,500 valid voter signatures in order to make the Feb. 23 ballot. The deadline for filing petitions is Oct. 26.

In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite tweets that rely on visual humor. Subscribers then vote for their favorite. Here is the winner from this week’s summer-reruns contest:

Anyone can vote in the contest, but to have it delivered fresh to your email inbox each Tuesday morning along with the rest of the Picayune Plus, to participate in the comment forums and to ease your conscience, you can become a paid supporter:

  • I used to sneak out of my house to go to parties. Now I sneak out of parties to go to my house. — @dougboneparth

  • Breaking News: An overnight earthquake has completely wiped out Etchisketchistan. — jerrymabbott1

  • How old do you have to be until people are nice to you because they think you’re going to die soon? — @Cornjerker78

  • I don’t have any tattoos because I’m the type of person who deeply regrets his restaurant order even before the food arrives. — @MelvinofYork

  • In my remedial math class we were told to divide ourselves into two groups and it was a clusterfuck. — @splendidhobo.bsky.social

  • Opening the refrigerator door every 15 minutes, not because you expect new food to magically appear, but because your standards lower each time you look. — @AlanFelyk

  • If you and I ever have to do math in our head to figure something out, remember I’m just pretending and it’s all on you. — @I_am_aspen

  • Entering your username and password letter by letter in a streaming TV app is the rotary phone of logins. — mariashehata

  • In climbing the corporate ladder you realize that some people have built entire careers on saying “let’s circle back.” — @marsfirelight

  • Christmas is less than five months away. I’d be crazy to take down my decorations now. — @UncleBob56

Vote here and check the current results in the poll.

The Associate Press reports:

The Big Ten and Southeastern Conferences agreed Friday night to support a Senate bill that seeks to regulate college sports, ending a breakneck week of negotiations and pulling the bipartisan measure out of what looked like a certain death spiral.

The combination of paying college athletes what the market will bear for their services while also giving them the option of changing schools over and over is toxic to the ideals of college sports. A solution would be a contract system that dispenses with the quaint idea that the star athletes in big-money sports are students who happen to perform well in competition — allow the players to shop around for the best offer, but then have them sign binding agreements to stay for a certain number of years. To make it even closer to a professional sports model, schools should have “salary” caps.

I concede there might be a better idea out there to maintain competitive balance and restore a bit more of the spirit of intercollegiate athletics, but whatever it might be, I see no reason why it’s the business of lawmakers. Let the NCAA and similar institutions decide.

Green Lights features recommendations from me and readers of songs, TV shows, streaming movies, books, podcasts, products and other diversions that, with only rare exceptions, can be enjoyed at home.

The recent death of singer Glen Hansard at 56 in a motorcycle crash made posting his 2012 performance of “The Parting Glass” seem appropriate. The song hits a little harder for me these days because the woman I learned it from — we were teenagers then, and dating briefly — is now in hospice care.

I’ll gently rise and softly call, good night and joy be with you all.

Last week when I was on vacation:

If you would like to offer a traffic light for the Rascals podcast, email a voice memo to johnwilliams@wgnradio.com.

I am a former opinion columnist for the Chicago Tribune. I began publishing the Picayune Sentinel on Sept. 9, 2021, roughly two and a half months after I took a buyout from the newspaper. 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. Browse and search back issues here.

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