Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson will face off in Chicago’s Mayoral Runoff Election on April 4, 2023. Both candidates’ ties to different crucial topics run deep.
WBBM asked the two candidates where they stand on key issues voter’s care about most, we listed their unedited responses on important issues including crime, education, infrastructure, transportation and health.
Related
Crime: What will you do to combat crime within the city?
Brandon Johnson: "Our sense of safety has been shattered in Chicago. The failures of the past have been repeated over and over. Meanwhile, carjackings, property theft, and shootings are skyrocketing — harming every neighborhood. It’s time for a new approach.
A new approach starts with reversing decades of underinvestment in our youth, mental health services, and victim support. As a teacher, I know we can get young people on the right track and steer them away from gun violence and carjackings by treating their trauma and giving them hope. We can enact major policy shifts on day one of my administration for a more efficient approach to stopping violent crime, strengthen police accountability and expand support for victims and survivors."
Paul Vallas: "Confronting the city’s crime problem and ensuring our residents’ safety is my top priority. Our current situation is the direct consequence of a wholesale failure of leadership that has failed to provide police with the strategy, staffing, resources, and support needed for effective and collaborative community-informed policing.
I will rebuild sworn officer staffing from the current 11,710 to the fully appropriated 13,500 level that existed when I was the City of Chicago Budget Director and rebuild the Detective ranks to 10% overall staffing and supplement the Detectives Divisions with hundreds of retired Police officers.
I plan to support the return to a community policing model, which Supt. David Brown inexplicably and with devastating effect dismantled immediately upon his arrival. My community policing strategy would prioritize beat integrity and ensure every Beat Car is manned.
By replacing Supt. Brown and his leadership team, ending friends and family promotions, returning to a normal work schedule, and providing a supportive Mayor’s Office, we will restore the Chicago Police Department and make Chicago a safer place for all our residents."
Education: What will you do to ensure that students receive equal opportunities and resources, regardless of income, so they can succeed in school and beyond?
Johnson: "Student-based budgeting (SBB) and the former SQRP rating policy have had a devastating impact on our schools. SBB, in particular, has contributed to principals whose budgets are strapped to choose between keeping a veteran teacher or having a librarian and a functioning library. Schools struggling with enrollment need to have a process by which root causes are identified and resources are deployed to ensure students still have the richest possible education, and the school has an opportunity to grow its enrollment.
The state, in its evidence-based funding model, has recognized that student and community needs must drive school funding, and that all districts must be brought up to a certain level of resources to meet those needs. Yet CPS has not adopted that approach among its schools. We cannot keep supporting a system that favors choice, but does not provide schools with the same baseline resources and offerings – then punishes students who attend the lesser resources, less frequently chosen school."
Vallas: "We need to ensure that the money allocated for schools follows children into the classroom. Right now, only about 60 percent of funds reach down to the individual children in their classrooms and that needs to change. We can do this by dismantling the central administration and empowering the community to help push the funding down at the local level so that it can flow into the classroom. This will enable principals and teachers to enhance the learning experience based on the needs, interests, and capabilities of the children.
Ultimately, this will enable schools to further reduce class size, expand critical support services like tutoring and mentoring, and keep campuses open longer. We must also work to systematically identify children at-risk and provide early intervention and support to those students. This starts with identifying at-risk children on a school-by-school basis and supporting them both in and out of the classroom - mentorship, tutoring, extracurricular enrichment, work study."
Infrastructure: If elected, what three steps would you take to improve city infrastructure?
Johnson: "Replace lead pipes.
Make 10 percent of Chicago streets safe for cycling by reducing speed limits, adding speed bumps and traffic calming bump-outs.
Use community outreach to launch a citywide assessment of public buildings and empty schools to discuss repurpose possibilities. There are many facilities across the city that can serve as SROs and affordable housing units at cost to address the crisis of the 65,000+ unhoused in Chicago."
Vallas: "I have set forth an extensive Community Economic Development platform which can be found at https://www.paulvallas2023.com/economic. This document contains details that connect to the city’s larger infrastructure needs.
As for what we more traditionally regard as infrastructure, our needs are significant due to neglect and archaic practices, but I believe the resources and capacity to meet those needs are in our control.
The continuing work on the City's water line replacement will be examined for a rapid change in methodology from present processes to a method that involves far less disruption to streets, greatly reduces the need to remove trees from our already inadequate urban forest, and is faster and cheaper. These advantages and benefits have been proven locally -- in Evanston -- and in other larger North American cities, like Toronto.
I will also work to elevate and prioritize our urban forest as part of the City's critical infrastructure. A robust, expanded tree canopy will improve the health of our children, mitigate the effects of heat islands in parts of the city like the south and west sides where the removal of trees is directly to blame for average summer temperatures being as much as nine degrees higher in the summer than in other parts of the city, which also results in higher energy use and costs."
Transportation: CTA riders continue to complain about the agency’s lack of resources. What would you do to improve transportation in Chicago?
Johnson: "A safe, reliable transit system is fundamentally important if Chicago is to grow jobs and employment. Chicago’s transit infrastructure is a tremendous asset, but we need to do better at connecting residents with jobs and educational opportunities. We will need to address funding shortfalls for transit, but at the same time, we can be doing a lot better with the resources we already have. I want to see the CTA as a customer-focused agency with service frequency and reliability as the highest priorities. As just one example, we need to create a citywide bus lane network and bus rapid transit system that gives buses priority over other traffic.
Every stakeholder in the use of Chicago’s sidewalks, railways and roadways must work collaboratively toward safety. The CTA needs a vast overhaul in terms of reliability and increased access, as well as safety for workers and riders. Reducing or eliminating fares for some, and increasing access to transit will increase ridership and mass transit solvency, and increase employment in communities where unemployment rates are high. We must be responsive to trends and feedback from CTA riders, and make changes such as increased late evening hours, trains and trips. We also need mental health professionals and housing advocates with resources to house the homeless and treat those with mental illness by addressing root causes, instead of criminalizing poverty and creating tension between commuters and those harmed by systemic inequity."
Vallas: "The first thing we need to do is make sure that riding the CTA is safe. I will ensure that we have a well-resourced CTA Mass Transit Unit by using the funds spent for private security on the CTA to hire more Chicago Police Officers. The $100 million spent this year could have paid for almost 300 additional police officers, bringing the CTA police levels to 500. The goal will be to ensure that every CTA station and platform has a police presence and that uniform and undercover officers are riding CTA trains. If we want to increase the ridership at the CTA, we must ensure the safety of our riders and operators.
In addition to safety on the CTA, I will promote multi-modal connectivity to public transportation and expand Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) as a critically overdue and badly needed connector of isolated communities to traditional public transit facilities, including the extension of the Red Line in the coming years."
Health: What are your thoughts on the current COVID-19 policy? How would you handle another COVID-19 wave?
Johnson: "The COVID-19 pandemic is still with us. Should there be another COVID-19 wave, my administration will be ready to work collaboratively and cohesively with the CDPH, city agencies, community organizations and all levels of city, state and federal government to implement the necessary mitigation."
Vallas: "I believe that the city’s existing COVID-19 policy is adequate to meet current public health needs. It is critical going forward to follow the science and not bend to political imperatives. While public health imperatives were clearly the top consideration, the city’s response to COVID-19 and the policies that were implemented were lurching and routinely reflected the influence of special interests. That often resulted in confusion, conflicts, and mixed messages.
Too little has been done to do the needed education and outreach in our Black and brown communities -- where vaccination and booster rates remain low amidst populations whose co-morbidities run high -- to overcome their fear and mistrust of government public health programs. Finally, President Biden has announced the dissolution of all public health national emergency orders related to COVID. That takes full effect only because there is time needed for wind down and transition from the support and resources tied to the emergency orders and not because there is a public emergency that justifies those measures any longer. The State should follow suit, with greater speed, and the City of Chicago should stop hiding behind the repeatedly extended state health emergency declarations as an empty excuse for continuing to hold public hearings virtually and not in person."
Listen to our new podcast Courier Pigeon
Listen to WBBM Newsradio now on Audacy!
Sign up and follow WBBM Newsradio
Facebook | Twitter | Instagram