A.D. Q&A with A.D. Quig Crain's Chicago Business

If you read Crain’s, you’ve probably spent a good amount of time thinking about the future of work – e-commerce, automation and telecommuting. Even if you don’t spend much time thinking about it, it’s abundantly clear that covid has rapidly accelerated those trends. Remote schooling and telehealth became necessities. Online shopping that might’ve been limited to clothes or homewares pre-covid exploded, with more people getting things like groceries delivered much more often. And there’s a heightened awareness of the importance of lower-wage work classified as “essential” during the pandemic. That’s why last year, the Illinois General Assembly created the “future of work” task force – a mix of current and former state officials, union folks and business representatives – to look into “how the state can best produce a broad-based post-pandemic recovery, confront the worsening crisis of poverty and create high-quality jobs for all.” A.D. Quig's two guests this week participated in the task force’s work: Professor Bob Bruno, director of the Labor Education Program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and Harish Patel, from the advocacy group Economic Security for Illinois. They discuss the findings of the report, including the highs and lows of the state’s current labor market, whether we might see more union agitating to boost conditions for frontline workers, and whether the business groups that participated in this task force think the recommendations are a good idea.

The Chicago Reader is one of the city’s best-known free papers and one of a few remaining alt-weeklies to survive the media crunch that killed dozens across the country. Until recently, the Reader seemed like it was about to go under, too.
Our guest this week is the Reader’s publisher, Tracy Baim. She’s been in the Chicago media world since she was a kid. Her mother, father and stepfather were all in the biz. Fresh out of college, she founded the LGBTQ publication the Windy City Times. In 2018, she stepped in to lead the Reader. And what a ride it’s been. When print advertising from bars, restaurants and venues dried up in the early COVID days, the paper survived thanks to a federal PPP loan, another loan from the city, a series of innovative fundraising measures and leftover investment from the paper’s co-owners, lawyer Len Goodman and real estate developer Elzie Higginbottom. But in recent months, a spat with Goodman almost brought the Reader down. He wrote a column detailing his concerns about getting his daughter vaccinated for covid. It led to an uproar and an outside fact-check that found several errors. Editors wanted a correction, an editors note, or for the story to get taken down. Goodman cried censorship, and the fight hit pause on the paper’s transition to nonprofit status, a transition that would have allowed for money from foundations and philanthropists to flow in. In this episode, Baim brings us behind the scenes of that tussle, explains where the Reader goes from here, and forecasts what a broader shift to nonprofit status for legacy media means--for example, is the Sun-Times/WBEZ merger good for all the other, smaller independent publications dotting Chicago? And is there a way for Chicago foundations to pool their money for media in a way that spreads the wealth to smaller outlets?

Chicago's Office of the Inspector General has published many blockbuster reports over the years. Its job is to investigate corruption, misconduct, waste, fraud and abuse big and small. In recent years, it's found a culture of sexual harassment in the Chicago Fire Department, blasted the Chicago Police Department’s response to summer looting in 2020, and helped U.S. Attorney John Lausch secure indictments of City Council members. But despite its importance to chipping away at city waste, the office’s top post was left vacant for roughly eight months. Deborah Witzburg, this week's guest, was confirmed to take over in late April. She headed up the IG’s public safety section starting in the Spring of 2020, but left when the last IG, Joe Ferguson, announced he was stepping down. She wanted the job. And she got it. But what’s she in for? It’s no secret that Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Ferguson had a rocky relationship in the last few months of his tenure. She suggested Ferguson wasn’t staying in his lane and hadn’t delivered on all of the investigations he said he would. We’ll talk to Witzburg about whether she thinks the IG’s office swerved out of its lane while she was there, how she plans to counter the “trust deficit” that’s built up among citizens after years of Chicago corruption, and what it’s like being the first woman to lead the office.

When the U.S. Supreme Court draft opinion leaked suggesting Roe v Wade would be overturned this summer, immediate reaction came from the political sphere. What did President Biden say? Gubernatorial candidates? Pro- and anti-abortion groups? And what did this mean for Illinois as a so-called abortion access oasis? But reaction from the medical community trickled in slower. This episode presents a conversation A.D. Quig had with the CEO of the American Medical Association, Dr. James Madara, last Thursday. It was supposed to be a sit-down in front of AMA staff marking the organization’s 175th anniversary, but it came shortly after the draft opinion leaked. Dr. Madara was surprised about the leak and its contents, which would have major consequences for practicing doctors and patients alike. In a statement last week, the AMA said the ruling, as drafted, amounted to government interference in the patient-physician relationship, a dangerous intrusion into the practice of medicine, and the potential criminalization of care. There are Roe implications beyond abortion in the draft, Madara warned, including simple conversations between doctors and patients about whether there are handguns in the home. Madara discussed what the AMA plans to do if the decision does go through this summer. He also addressed the drop in trust in physicians following the covid pandemic; physician burnout and a looming doctor shortage; progress the AMA is making in its racial equity pledge; and whether the country has made as much progress as he thought it would following passage of the Affordable Care Act.

The name of this week's guest, Chad Williams, might ring a bell if you’ve followed the lengthy debate about how the Chicago Police Department is meeting its reform mandates as part of the consent decree. Williams made a splash when his letter resigning from CPD’s audit division was made public in the Chicago Tribune in November. In it, Williams accused department leadership of pursuing superficial compliance with the court-ordered reforms. Their aim, he says, was to get better media coverage by “checking boxes” instead of creating lasting cultural change. Shortly after sending it, he was formally accused of “failure to promote the policies and goals of the department.” In this interview, he says that accusation came from top CPD brass as retaliation. This is the first time Williams is speaking out since he left the department. He offers new revelations about what happened during his three years at CPD. For one, he says CPD purposely buried reports his division completed, including about the use of dash and body cameras and administrative tickets. They've left others, including policies for treatment of juveniles under arrest, unresolved. Regarding that ticket report? He says senior reform leadership told him they wouldn’t turn it over to the consent decree monitor because it made the department "look bad." Williams also says hiring plans were held up by the current first deputy in the department, who he says had no business getting involved in auditing. He’s referred a complaint about that alleged interference with the city’s Inspector General.

This week, we examine the state of the Loop. If you read Crain’s, you know the recovery is… uneven. Let’s take a quick look at some headlines at chicagobusiness.com about the Loop area office scene, in case you missed them: Downtown office vacancy jumps to another record high... Louis Vuitton's Mag Mile landlord ready to cash out... Chicago Law firm Skadden starting a new lease with about half the space... you get the picture. The Chicago Loop Alliance reports as of March, hotels are only 52% occupied compared to 2019 levels. CTA ridership overall – which passes through the Loop regularly – was 44% of what it was in 2019… Similarly, Metra ridership as of February was even lower: just 22% of 2019 levels. According to the city's violence reduction dashboard, year to date, violent crime victimizations in the Loop are up 200% compared to last year, and last year was bad. All that said, there are reasons for hope. Our guest this week, downtown Alderman Brendan Reilly, says there’s a good-news metric that isn’t regularly reported: how packed his own schedule is with meetings about business relocations, new buildings and creative ways to transform the Loop. Reilly’s represented the 42nd Ward since 2007. That includes most of the downtown, River North, Streeterville and the Mag Mile. He gives his diagnosis of the Loop – the good and the bad – plus major issues facing it in Council, including crime and his grade of Superintendent David Brown’s tenure; his pushback to the city’s casino selection process; and how mayor Lori Lightfoot stacks up with other mayors he’s worked with.