The Death of a Reformer

I saw the obituary of David Schulz in the Tribune today. Mayor Harold Washington's first budget director, Shulz left Chicago after just eight months with the Washington administration, losing a power struggle with Washington's then Chief of Staff, William Ware. The Tribune obituary cites Shulz work on Washington's first budget, working with the former mayor to reign in a record $150 million deficit. A Tribune editorial in 1983 called him a financial whiz, who "seemed to know where every dime was going and why."

To get a sense of how much money that was in 1983, I turned to the Consumer Price Index for answers, it comes to $313,500,000 in 2007 dollars. Washington's budget balancing act was far more contentious than anything Daley has seen recently - he cut his own pay by 20 percent and laid off 700 city employees. Stymied and fought at every turn by an angry and bitter voting block in the City Council, Chicago inched forward in those years, and Washington oversaw change in the city, putting more of a focus on neighborhoods and the people that live there.

I was pretty young when Washington became mayor, and I don't remember much of those years; they were divisive, but aside from a few family members talking about supporting Washington and the emotions that support elicited in their neighborhood, I was far removed from the racism and pain of those years. As I watch the city struggle to balance a budget that is hovering around a $300 million deficit, however, I'm reminded of the kind of mayor Washington was.

Which takes me back to David Schulz. After leaving Chicago, Schulz went on to work in Milwaukee, a city with a long history of progressive politics. He taught at Northwestern University, and published academic research. He was a specialist in transit issues, commenting on the CTA, in good times and bad. Politically astute, surely, but we versed in the language of management science.

And as I sit here writing this, listing to This American Life's story of Washington 15 years after his death, I'm stunned, again, at the lack of foresight, wisdom and planning of the mayor and his administration in city hall today.