Chicago City Wire

City Council is coming together on July 26 to start the task of crafting new ward boundaries that will set the stage for Chicago politics for the next ten years.

Pilsen area resident Javier Ruiz is hoping it all ends in a new look for his community.

“I made a hypothetical 25th Ward map,” Ruiz told the Advisory Redistricting Committee during public comments. “I chose these boundaries because it reflects the 25th Ward’s historical boundaries before Solis stupidly gerrymandered it out of spite for losing a bunch of precincts in the 2011 election. It also goes a little west as did previous maps in the '80s and '90s.”

For the chance to use specialized computers loaded with mapmaking software, alderpeople will crowd into the so-called map room to craft the boundaries for each of Chicago’s 50 wards, just as they did a decade ago on the way to rejecting calls made by Lori Lightfoot to leave the job to an independent commission.

Lightfoot referred to the process used back then as “a relic of the past.” “If you look at the ward boundaries, they don’t make any sense and they don’t respect neighborhood boundaries,” she said. “Aldermen have a very specific role to play, and they should, but this can’t be a backroom, closed-door deal that the public has no insights into.”

The new map is slated to take effect prior to the municipal elections of 2023. The process is expected to kick in high gear in mid-August, once data from the 2020 census is released to city officials.

The process is expected to be as contentious as ever, with race being an overriding factor in a city where the makeup is approximately one-third Black, one-third Latino and one-third white.

Neither the City Council’s Latino Caucus nor the Black Caucus endorsed calls to empower an independent commission to draw the maps. “Chicago’s Latino population is strong, despite what we know is significant undercounting and it’s important that our communities have the power to change the political structures that have long worked to disenfranchise communities of color,” said Ald. Roberto Maldonado (26th Ward), the chair of the Latino Caucus’ redistricting subcommittee.    

Maldonado is among a group of Latino members who angrily contend the 2011 remap did not reflect an accurate portrait of the city’s Latino population and vowed earlier in the year not to “get played again.”

At the same time, Ald. Jason Ervin (28th Ward), the chair of the 20-member Black Caucus, has pledged to do all he can to insure the city’s 18 majority Black wards are represented by Black alderpeople.

The remapping effort will be led by 8th Ward Ald. Michelle Harris, the chair of the City Council’s Rules Committee and Lightfoot’s floor leader.

State law requires Chicago wards to be “nearly equal as practicable” while being as “contiguous” and “compact” as possible.

Set up by the nonpartisan group CHANGE Illinois, the Advisory Redistricting Committee is completely separate from City Council and began holding public hearings of their own back in June. The group now counts 13 commissioners, with CHANGE Illinois’ Chicago Project Manager Chaundra Van Dyk saying the members were selected to represent the city’s age, geographic and racial diversity.