Welcome back. As summer winds down, I’m thinking about two major countdown clocks for Chicago: September 4, when CPS has to make payroll on money Springfield hasn't sent, and September 30, when Council decides whether ICE's airline gets the parking meters until 2083. Petition season for elections is running next to both. Until I can keep track of more than 3 deadlines at a time, in my mind everything is due in September, especially now that the primary is over and on Tuesday, Abdul El-Sayed won Michigan's Democratic Senate primary, beating the superPACs that spent $30 million to stop him.

This week in Chicago Politics: the school board bets on funding, the meter fight continues, "ICE On Notice" turns out to be neither, and the left looks at the mayoral field.

Let's get into it.

The Board of Education passed a $10 billion budget 11–7 that reverses hundreds of layoffs by assuming $150 million in state funding the state has not agreed to send.

Every prior CPS budget started from "how much will the state give us" and cut services to fit. This one starts from what schools cost and bills Springfield for the difference — the state's funding formula says CPS is owed far more than it gets.

Why It Matters: This is the first CPS budget in memory that refuses to pre-negotiate with a round of layoffs and cuts. The members of the school board who voted no are saying it’s “fiscally irresponsible” over and over again because this is an extreme move, by design: without substantive changes to how Springfield funds Chicago’s school district, the ‘moderate’ approach will mean slow fiscal decline, especially as Trump continues to aggressively defund the Department of Education. The CTU is citing the recent CTA financial crisis, resolved through a special Springfield session, as a precedent for how this can be resolved.

Whichever way this goes, it decides how every future CPS budget gets written.

The September 30 deadline for Council to accept or reject Stonepeak's $2.5 billion bid for the remaining 57 years of the parking meter deal is now eight weeks out. Block Club reported that the Johnson team's buyback offer was $3.3 billion — $800 million more than the next-highest bid.

Why It Matters: Every week of organized pressure so far has moved the timeline — the September 30 window exists because people showed up in June and July. Eight weeks is enough time to win this, or enough time to watch it get sold quietly in the last one. The toolkit is here.

Six months ago, Mayor Johnson signed Executive Order 2026-01 — "ICE On Notice" — directing CPD to investigate and document illegal conduct by federal immigration agents, with referrals to the State's Attorney for prosecution. "Chicago is leading the way," the announcement said.

Via WTTW: CPD didn't actually update its policy to allow those investigations until July 18 — after Johnson spent March insisting existing policy already complied. There is no public evidence CPD has opened a single investigation of a federal agent, through the entire period when the mega-courts were deporting people in absentia by the thousands.

Why It Matters: Measure the distance between the press conference and the paperwork. The order took five months to become actual CPD policy — “It shouldn’t have taken five months,” per Ald. Andre Vasquez — and the version that finally arrived lost its teeth on the way: the referral-for-prosecution language is gone, dropped after State’s Attorney O’Neill Burke called it “wholly inappropriate.” What’s left is an accountability program that has investigated no one, during the exact months it was needed most. This is how sanctuary dies — not repealed, just unenforced.

Last week, Alexi Giannoulias (and his $22 million) he was running for Mayor with the backing of major trade unions.

Brandon Johnson is letting supporters circulate petitions while saying he hasn't decided — "I just want to hold on to the city of Chicago a little bit longer" — with about $631,000 on hand.

There are also eight other declared candidates — a comptroller, a congressman, a Board of Review commissioner, a corporate litigator, a venture capital guy, a cardiologist, a wealth advisor, and a casino lobbyist — with the eccentrics well represented, because this is Chicago and running for mayor is something some people seem to enjoy for some reason. Maria Pappas is still expected to make it a round ten after November. With a field this size, where somebody could sneak into a runoff with a fraction of the vote, is also a reminder that Chicago needs ranked choice voting like, yesterday.

With all this in mind, I want to know where 312 readers actually are at on this.

We'll run this again in October to see where we’re all at. Whew.

A Heritage Foundation defense lobbyist — the Project 2025 people, the "send the military to the border to stop fentanyl" people — walked into a Senate office building in July with a loaded pistol magazine and pills that field-tested positive for cocaine and fentanyl, per NOTUS. He was charged with one misdemeanor and went home the same day. One outlet reported it; a handful of aggregators rewrote it; Fox — which ran at least half a dozen Hunter Biden stories the same month off a podcast interview — ran nothing. Just an update on the national right wing flywheel: this story is striking bc it’s WILD, but got almost no coverage, in part because there was no incentive to make this a story from any part of that flywheel.

A new study, covered by Block Club: after CPS closed 50 schools in 2013 — still the largest mass school closing in American history — the buildings sat empty, and gun violence around them rose. With the closure moratorium expiring right as the first fully elected board is seated in 2027, this is a good reminder that schools as community hubs are doing far more than Illinois Policy and other ‘blame the teachers’ groups would have you believe.

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A few more reads for the week, imperfectly added to the end this week because I was distracted by Michigan: Niketa Brar — founding director of Chicago United for Equity — has a piece in Next City on "civic trauma": the idea that people don't withdraw from local government out of apathy, but because the system taught them their voice changes nothing.

A City Hall panel is recommending Chicago require data centers to disclose how much water and energy they use — the unglamorous fight that decides who pays for the AI boom.

An explainer from the Institute for the Public Good's explainer on Just Cause & relocation assistance that would end no-reason evictions and pay relocation costs for tenants displaced through no fault of their own.

And the 312 Reader Census is still open until TOMORROW — you're entered to win the $75 Loaves and Witches gift card when you finish it.

I am truly grateful for all those who have already filled it out, especially the readers who described this newsletter as “understands important topics are nuanced and weird and is unafraid to get granular” and “a nice weekly lefty recap if you hate SOUND and VIDEO” (WOW!) and, “doesn’t feel like work and isn’t run by assholes.” It means a lot!!

See you soon,

-H

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