Morning Spin: Rauner to meet with Chance the Rapper this week

Welcome to Clout Street: Morning Spin, our weekday feature to catch you up with what's going on in government and politics from Chicago to Springfield. Subscribe here.Topspin Gov. Bruce Rauner let it slip that he's planning to meet with Grammy winner Chance...

POLITICS
27 February 2017 Monday 06:33
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Morning Spin: Rauner to meet with Chance the Rapper this week

Welcome to Clout Street: Morning Spin, our weekday feature to catch you up with what's going on in government and politics from Chicago to Springfield. Subscribe here.

Topspin

Gov. Bruce Rauner let it slip that he's planning to meet with Grammy winner Chance the Rapper this week, though his office declined to say when or where.

Rauner mentioned the planned meeting in passing at a Black History Month event at the Thompson Center on Friday. He was praising Dorothy Jean Tillman, a theater and performance artist who was given a young achievement award for her work as a children's book author and ensemble member at the Harold Washington Cultural Center.

"I tell you, Dorothy Jean Tillman, this young lady, 10 years old, extraordinary talent. What an inspiration she is. I look forward to seeing her next week," Rauner said. "She's going to come when I'm getting together with Chance the Rapper, I think the middle of next week."

Last month, Rauner (or the staff member who runs his account) tweeted congratulations to the 23-year-old rapper for his three Grammy wins for best new artist, rap album and rap performance. Chance responded by thanking the governor and saying he'd "love" to set up a meeting.

Emanuel's 'people plazas' program struggling to achieve liftoff John Byrne

When Mayor Rahm Emanuel got the City Council to approve his "people plazas" program in spring 2015, he envisioned it as a way to transform dozens of empty pieces of land and underused public spaces around the city into inviting places for Chicagoans to meet up and hang out.

The parcels would get...

(John Byrne)

The recording artist has been pretty vocal about Chicago's problems and the government's need to fix them.

Despite their very public Twitter introduction and the governor's comments to reporters, Rauner's staff kept details of the planned confab private.

Asked when and where the meeting will take place, the administration emailed back a short statement: "On background, the Governor will be meeting privately with Chance next week to discuss important issues affecting our state." (Haley BeMiller)

What's on tap

*Mayor Rahm Emanuel is set to appear at Chicago Police Department headquarters.

*Gov. Rauner will make a morning Medicaid announcement at Mount Sinai Hospital. He attended the Republican Governors Association meeting in Washington, D.C., over the weekend.

*The City Council Zoning Committee meets at 10 a.m. Agenda here.

*Chicago Cubs owner Tom Ricketts is set to give a lunchtime talk at the City Club.

*The week ahead: Chicago's special election for the 4th Ward is Tuesday, as are suburban primaries across the region. The Illinois Senate is set to meet starting Wednesday, but the House won't be in Springfield this week. Also, a reminder that Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent (Chicago is a big Catholic town).

From the notebook

*More flavored tobacco ban changes coming? Months after the City Council weakened Mayor Emanuel’s rules banning flavored tobacco sales near Chicago schools, some aldermen want to let businesses apply to get exemptions to the remaining restrictions.

The ordinance introduced last week by Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson, 11th, and Ald. Edward Burke, 14th, would allow the city to set up an appeals process. Now, the city prohibits selling flavored cigarettes within 500 feet of city high schools.

The council in December rolled back the ban near grade schools. Daley Thompson was among those who argued Emanuel’s move last year to raise the age to buy smokes to 21 in Chicago made the grade school no-sale zone irrelevant since “an eighth-grader doesn't look 21 years old.”

Daley Thompson had said stores in his South Side ward were suffering needlessly under the tight restrictions, and many aldermen with wards bordering the suburbs joined him in championing the loosening of the standards.

Emanuel, meanwhile, has taken several bows for his fight against big tobacco. He appeared at a City Hall news conference in 2013 with officials from the little-known African-American Tobacco Control Leadership Council to receive the group's Visionary Elected Leader Award for pushing the flavored tobacco restrictions.

And he proclaimed the original tougher standards on sales around schools "a serious thing we're going to do to protect our kids" from addictive products big tobacco companies push to get them hooked at a young age.

Still, the mayor supported the rollback in December. Asked whether the mayor would support the latest proposal, Angel Hawthorne, spokeswoman for the Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection, said the department was reviewing it. (John Byrne)

*Biss to make decision on governor in “few weeks:” State Sen. Daniel Biss of Evanston said he will decide in “the next few weeks” if he will seek the Democratic nomination for governor.

He said his decision is more about leading a movement than one race.

“The state of Illinois is in an incredibly terrible situation now, and we need someone who’s prepared to lead us out of it,” Biss said Sunday on WGN AM-720.

“We need someone to lead us out of it by laying out a progressive economic vision for Illinois — a vision that is about protecting the middle class, lifting up the middle class and fixing the budget by going to the billionaires who have gotten off scot-free and finally, for the first time in generations, having them pay their fair share,” he said.

Biss said that vision needs to be laid out “in a clear, direct, progressive and bold way” that will “build a movement that’s going to be used not just to win a governor’s race but to transform governance in the state of Illinois.”

Biss, who served a term in the House before being elected to the Senate in 2012, said to create such a movement — and campaign — will require time.

“If we want to do this properly, it’s going to require building something over the course of many months. It’s not going to be quick. It’s not going to be turnkey. It’s not going to be automatic. It’s not going to be all television. It’s going to be a slow, gradual movement of people across the state, and that’s what’s needed, again, not just to win but to really transform Illinois,” he said.

Biss, who got his bachelor's degree at Harvard University and doctorate in mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, formerly taught math at the University of Chicago. He considered, then dropped, a bid for the Democratic nomination for state comptroller last year.

He has sought in the past to present an alternative vision for Democrats to contrast with Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner’s messaging that included a series of web videos that can be found here. He also led a federal super political action committee that spent $10 million in the last election seeking to tie Rauner to now President Donald Trump.

“I have been saying for years that Bruce Rauner is a terrible, terrible failed governor with a huge negative impact on Illinois. Democrats need to point that out, but we also need to say what we’re for,” Biss said. “We need to explain how we’re going to fix things. We need to lay out a vision for the state that’s positive, that’s bold and that people can excited about.”

Biss acknowledged he’s sought to do that “sometimes with wonky, long web videos, and I’ve tried to do that with shorter, more punchy messages.” If he runs for governor, he said it “wouldn’t be a campaign based on seven-minute wonky videos about tax policy” but instead would focus on “ideas and a vision and the concept that we’ve got to build a statewide grassroots movement around that vision, not just to win races but to fix Illinois.”

Biss is among several people considering a bid, including businessman J.B. Pritzker. Already announced candidates for the Democratic nomination include businessman Chris Kennedy, 47th Ward Ald. Ameya Pawar and Madison County schools superintendent Bob Daiber. (Rick Pearson)

*Charter schools coalition presser: A coalition of charter schools, school networks and supporters is scheduled to announce Monday its study of Chicago Public School data for last year and tout its successes.

The “Elevate Chicago” coalition contends its findings show that among city charter high school students, 20 percent are more likely to attend college than traditional CPS students and that of the Top 20 Chicago high schools that send students to college, half are charter schools.

The coalition’s findings come as 2017 marks 20 years since the first public charter high school opened in Chicago. (Rick Pearson)

*The Sunday Spin: On this week's show, Chicago Tribune political reporter Rick Pearson’s guests were state Sen. Daniel Biss, D-Evanston; Brad Cole, executive director of the Illinois Municipal League; and Christopher Mooney, director of the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois. Listen to the full show here.

What we're writing

*Emanuel's 'people plazas' program struggling to achieve liftoff.

*Employee alleged by prosecutors to bribe Dorothy Brown faces sentencing.

*King boasts political advantages in 4th Ward special election.

*Violence endures at Parkway Gardens, even with deep-pocketed owner who has contributed to Emanuel.

*Jesse Jackson Jr.'s workers' compensation benefits troubling, says expert.

*Beware Ashland Avenue, Chicagoans.

*Chicago police dispatchers now trained in mental health awareness.

*CPS restores $15 million from spending freeze to hardest-hit schools.

*Metra CEO Don Orseno is retiring at the end of the year.

*State's Attorney Foxx announces fraud hotline for immigrants.

*Despite city tweaks, court extends order blocking Chicago Airbnb rules.