Afternoon Edition: Chicago City Hall owed billions of dollars it hasn’t collected

Good afternoon, Chicago. ✶

In today’s newsletter, we look at thousands of scofflaws who have dodged city debts over the years, depriving City Hall of massive sums of money at a time when the city could badly use it.

Below, we’ll catch you up on how the city is looking to collect on the debt as Mayor Brandon Johnson faces steep budget challenges.👇

Plus, we’ve got the community news you need to know.

⏱️: A 7-minute read

— Katelyn Haas, audience engagement specialist (@khaas96)

TODAY’S TOP STORY

Chicago City Hall is owed billions of dollars in uncollected debt

Reporting by: Mitchell Armentrout and Tim Novak

Mountain of debt: The city of Chicago is owed more than $6.4 billion in unpaid fees, fines and other debts that have piled up since 1990, according to a Sun-Times analysis. The delinquent payments include $2.9 billion in outstanding administrative hearing debt, more than $2.3 billion in old driving tickets, and roughly $723 million in unpaid water bills.

No big windfall is coming: Mayor Brandon Johnson’s city comptroller acknowledges that most of that money is unlikely to ever be collected. But with budget troubles expected to get worse, officials agree more should be done to boost the city’s collections. “If city operations are running so ineffectively as to leave enormous amounts of money on the table, then the city’s failing to meet its basic obligations ... in the service of Chicagoans,” said the city’s Inspector General Deborah Witzburg.

Tracking debtors down: The main recovery targets are “relatively recent scofflaws who owe the city a lot of money and have the means but are skirting responsibility,” city Comptroller Chasse Rehwinkel says. Such debtors — who likely number in the hundreds — are “mostly not from Chicago” and own properties that have racked up debt while the owners have taken advantage of legal mechanisms and loopholes “to skirt responsibility,” according to Rehwinkel, who won’t name names with city lawsuits pending.

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WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?

Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times file

• Jussie Smollett conviction upheld: A three-justice appeals court panel affirmed the conviction and sentence of the former “Empire” TV series actor for lying to police about being the victim of a hate crime.
  
• Cyclists, pedestrians get big win: The Illinois Supreme Court ruled Thursday that insured pedestrians or bicyclists struck by a hit-and-run or uninsured driver should be entitled to uninsured motorist coverage from their insurance companies.
  
• Charges filed in fatal Highland Park hit-and-run: A woman from Mundelein has been charged in connection with a hit-and-run accident that killed a cyclist as she rode her bike in Highland Park on June 2. The father of the victim, Maureen Wener, told the Sun-Times earlier this year that his daughter was a “volunteer for the good of mankind.”
  
• Don’t forget the winter parking ban: A whopping 263 vehicles were towed Friday as Chicago’s annual winter parking ban went into effect. That’s an increase from last year, when 242 cars were towed on the first day of the seasonal parking rule.
  
• Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor dies: The former justice, an unwavering voice of moderate conservatism and the first woman to serve on the nation’s highest court, died Friday in Phoenix. She was 93.
  
• Chicago’s Spotify Wrapped: On Wednesday, the streaming service released its 2023 data allowing listeners to dive into their listening habits throughout the year. To no one’s surprise, pop superstar Taylor Swift, who took over Soldier Field for three nights in June, was both the city and the world’s most-streamed artist in 2023.

WEEKEND PLANS 🎉

© Todd Rosenberg 2021

🍑 ’The Buttcracker — A Nutcracker Burlesque’
Friday-Dec. 30
📍Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln
Some of the city’s most talented night life entertainers star in this saucy, alternative, adult retelling of the holiday classic.
Admission: $22-$102

🎁 Pre-Kwanzaa Holiday Marketplace
Friday, 11 a.m. - 8 p.m.; Saturday, 11 a.m. - 7 p.m.
📍Harriet Harris Park, 6200 S. Drexel
Africa International House presents an event highlighting small-business vendors offering an array of holiday gifts, including books, jewelry, handmade arts and crafts, clothes and more.
Admission: Free

❄️ Hyde Park Holly-Day
Saturday, 10 a.m. - 4 p.m.
📍 Locations throughout Hyde Park, including Harper Court, 5235 S. Harper Ct.
This family-friendly day of activities features ice sculptures, a movie screening, crafts, live reindeer, a visit by Soul Santa and Mrs. Claus and much more.
Admission: Free

🩰 ’The Nutcracker’
Saturday - Dec. 27
📍 Lyric Opera House, 20 N. Wacker Drive
Joffrey Ballet presents Christopher Wheeldon’s reimagining of “The Nutcracker,” which sets the holiday classic on Christmas Eve 1892, in the home of an immigrant family months before the opening of the 1893 World’s Fair.
Admission: $36+

🎄 Christmas Bazaar
Sunday, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.
📍Irish American Heritage Center, 4626 N. Knox
The annual Irish American Heritage Center’s Christmas Bazaar is a family-friendly event with more than 60 vendors, music, Irish dance performances, children’s activities, a visit from Santa and more.
Admission: Free

BRIGHT ONE ✨

Provided

In Lake View man’s tattoos, a nostalgic cast of characters

Reporting by Katie Anthony

From a vintage library robot to characters straight out of a Shel Silverstein book, Nick Yokanovich’s thigh tattoos spark a sense of nostalgia with a black-and-white comic book style.

“I loved reading comic books and cartoons as a kid,” says Yokanovich, 26, of Lake View. “I thought it was such a cool way to read. It felt almost like cheating.”

One of the tattoos comes from a book almost every elementary school kid has flipped through: Chicago-born Silverstein’s “Where the Sidewalk Ends.”

Yokanovich, who’s now a writer for a technology company, was teaching Silverstein to high school students at ChiArts when he decided to get the tattoo.

“Reading those poems as an adult, one of them will be about forgetting to wear pants, and the next page will be about the absence of absolutes in human behavior or something like that,” Yokanovich says. “To see that kind of sincerity that is both fun and demonstrative of the complexities of human experience is really cool.”

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YOUR DAILY QUESTION ☕️

It’s the first day of December. How are you getting into the holiday spirit this weekend?

Email us (please include your first and last name and where you live). To see the answers to this question, check our Morning Edition newsletter. Not subscribed to Morning Edition? Sign up here so you won’t miss a thing!

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Editor: Satchel Price
Contributing: Katelyn Haas
Copy editor: Angie Myers