Chicago mayoral candidate Brandon Johnson discussed his concern regarding the city suspending ride-share drivers due to ticket debt in an interview with the Southland Marquee published on Monday.
Johnson, who according to his campaign website currently serves as county board commissioner for Cook County's 1st District and announced his mayoral campaign in October, also worked on the "Budget for Black Lives" program, which introduced new investments into health care, public transportation, internet access and affordable housing. He also backed the "Save Our Seniors" program, which focuses on supporting low-income nursing homes. He is one of nine candidates, including current Mayor Lori Lightfoot, running in the Feb. 28 election.
"[Chicago's ticketing policy is] definitely a problem because drivers get suspended or sometimes, even worse, they get criminalized and they're not able to work, and they're essentially being sentenced one way or the other through these awful fines and fees, or held in criminal court," Johnson said in his interview. “All that does is continue to exacerbate the type of economic instability that has led to the type of stratified economy that we have now.”
Johnson said he wants to both encourage Chicago residents to work and prevent any obstacles that may hinder their ability.
“We should be doing everything we can to encourage people to work,” he said. “The city of Chicago should be leading the way to create opportunities to help these workers actually deal with the debt they are accruing because of these aggressive tickets.”
According to a 2018 ProPublica Illinois report, Chicago issues over 3 million tickets each year for a variety of parking, vehicle compliance and automated traffic camera violations. Average ticket costs range from $25 citations for broken headlights to $250 tickets for illegally parking in a handicapped zone.
Chicago ticket debt also disproportionately piles up in the city's low-income, Black-majority neighborhoods. According to both a ProPublica analysis of ticket data from 2007 onward and data from the U.S. Census, eight of the 10 zip codes with the most accumulated ticket debt per adult are Black-majority. Chicago also has the power to both boot and impound vehicles, as well as move to suspend driver's licenses after a total of either 10 unpaid parking tickets or five unpaid traffic camera tickets.
The ProPublica report also found that Chicago drivers highly impacted by debt often resort to declaring Chapter 13 bankruptcy as a temporary solution. Tickets for parking, traffic and vehicle compliance prompt so many bankruptcies in Chicago that the city's courts lead the country in Chapter 13 filings, especially in Illinois' Northern District, which includes Chicago and its suburbs.
The Chicago Jobs Council has been working to support residents' ability to work through the "License2Work" initiative.
"We are pushing not only for the courts not to have this as an option, to suspend someone's license for failing to appear in court, but also to remedy the license suspensions of around 100,000 impacted individuals and to get those reinstated automatically," advocacy manager Annika Cole told the Southland Marquee in an interview published on Jan. 30.