Chicago just endured one of its darkest weeks in years — a teen takeover that ended with nine kids shot and a 14-year-old killed and a horrifying attack on the CTA. These incidents didn’t happen in a vacuum. They landed the very same week homeowners opened property-tax bills showing the steepest increases in three decades. When public safety collapses, the economic consequences follow quickly and painfully — and Chicagoans are the victims.

For months, the mayor has talked about accountability, yet no one is being held accountable for solving these immense challenges. Chicagoans don’t feel safe on transit, families don’t feel safe visiting downtown, and local businesses are paying the price. When people stay home, activity drops, property values fall, and the tax burden shifts back onto neighborhoods. These consequences are exactly what we’re experiencing now.

Leading a Better Chicago’s recent polling makes this clear:

• 44% say crime and public safety is the city’s top issue.

• 42% bring up safety as their biggest personal concern.

• 47% feel less safe than they did just a few years ago.

The mayor can talk all he wants about the statistics that show crime is falling, but public safety is more than a statistic. It’s a lived reality. When people see a woman burned alive on the CTA or watch a holiday celebration erupt into gunfire, no spreadsheet is going to convince them things are improving. They need a real response. They need coordination. They need clear leadership. 

Instead, City Hall is isolated, reactive, and increasingly irrelevant. The consequences of this leadership vacuum keep piling up. Just days after the state stripped the mayor of majority control over the CTA board (at a moment when the CTA is experiencing some of the most frightening attacks in its history), word came that a coalition of City Council members, business leaders, labor, and civic partners are preparing their own 2026 budget, sidelining the mayor from the city’s most fundamental governing responsibility. 

I grew up surrounded by leaders in public service. My father served as the city’s lawyer under Mayor Richard J. Daley and later as a Cook County judge. My uncle served as president of the Cook County Board. They understood what this administration does not: the city only functions when the major institutions operate in sync. The mayor’s office, the courts, the state’s attorney, the sheriff, the county board — they’re not supposed to be operating on parallel tracks. Good leadership brings them to the same table.

Chicago used to operate like that. And it worked.

The current void of leadership is one of many reasons why I launched Leading a Better Chicago: to bring experienced voices back into the conversation and rebuild the coordinated leadership this moment demands. Chicago doesn’t need slogans and statistics. It needs competence, honesty, and a real plan. If downtown isn’t safe, nothing else works. Chicago needs leadership that understands that — and governs like it.

Bill Quinlan

Founder, Leading a Better Chicago