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Originally Posted by the urban politician
Agreed.
Rahm pissed off a lot of people when he correctly closed all of those nearly vacant schools. Sure there was a lot else he didn't reform, but that was a bold move for sure.
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It's silly to say Rahm was a "fake reformer", he certainly took the first steps towards reforming Chicago's image world wide. There's a lot he didn't do, but the guy spent almost the entire time he was in office dealing with one unpopular task after another. And yes, history will frame him as such especially if Lightfoot follows and mops up. But someone has to turn over the couch and send the roaches scurrying before the exterminator can come in and spray. That's very much what he did.
In fact, I've been starting to wonder if his surprise retirement isn't in some way related to the big corruption crackdown on the likes of Burke and Solis. Solis' sudden retirement was very similar to Rahms just a few months earlier. I almost wonder if Rahm didn't somehow decide "this is so fucked up, I'm calling the Feds" and wear a wire on Solis getting the ball rolling.
People act as if Rahm did nothing to attack corruption, but the first things he did when elected was strip Burke of his personal security detail and then take control of garbage collection and street sweeping, two oft abused aldermanic powers, away from the aldermen. Sure he focused on more big picture financial issues like underenrolled schools, pensions, funding infrastructure improvements, etc, but he didn't totally ignore the festering culture of corruption.
It's easy to overlook what Rahms impact has been, but during his tenure we basically saw all branches of the CTA overhauled and brought back to the 21st century, all gas sewer and water infrastructure rebuilt, all streetlights replaced, serious issues with the school system at least mostly addressed, a serious attempt to fix the pension issue, park building boom (Riverwalk Bloomingdale, etc) funded by federal dollars, the beginning of reform of the buildings department, a turn around of our flagging tourism image (literally setting records for visits every year of his tenure), and a littany of smaller things.
Pretty damn impressive.
The point is whoever comes next has a much much better jumping off point than Rahm did when he took office. This election is critical because it is a choice between a Trump style "let's undo everything Obama did" regressor and the option to continue to build on what is essentially a clean slate.
I'm in favor of poisoning and stomping every last cockroach, not righting the couch so they can all go back to their nests.