Some claim conflict of interest in Chicago Teachers Union student voting rally
CHICAGO (CBS) -- The Illinois primary is coming up a week from Tuesday, and a push to get Chicago high school students to the polls has raised some eyebrows.
The Chicago Teachers Union this coming Friday is rallying voting-age high schoolers to get out to vote. The event itself is not a problem, but one group with which the union is partnering – Bring Chicago Home, the group behind a real estate transfer tax referendum – has some questioning whether the CTU has crossed the line.
The event the CTU is planning for Friday is titled a "student power forum." The union has encouraged eligible CPS high school students to attend.
"The idea of marching students to the polls and have a celebration of voting is a good, positive idea," said former Chicago alderman and University of Illinois Chicago professor Dick Simpson.
Yet Simpson said the CTU is teetering on the line too.
In a letter, the union talks about how it is teaming up with the organizations Chicago Votes, La Casa Norte, and Bring Chicago Home.
"They should drop the connection with Bring Chicago Home for this particular event," said Simpson.
The teachers' union supports the Bring Chicago Home ballot referendum, which would ask voters to authorize the City Council to restructure the city's real estate transfer tax to create a tiered system for taxing the sale of property in Chicago:
- The transfer tax for properties valued at less than $1 million would drop from 0.75% to 0.60%.
- Properties sold for between $1 million and $1.5 million would pay a 2% transfer tax, nearly triple the current rate.
- Properties sold for $1.5 million or more would pay a 3% transfer tax, four times the current rate.
Supporters have estimated the Bring Chicago Home referendum would generate an additional $100 million in annual tax revenue. The money would go toward the city's efforts to fight homelessness.
The CTU invested money into the referendum, and now the student rally is being called into question because Bring Chicago Home is a partner. Some consider it a conflict of interest.
The CTU insisted in response to critics, "The Student Power Forum is a nonpartisan voter education forum."
"There's too little civic engagement talk in our schools," Simpson said. "We passed a state law saying now that you have to have civics classes, for the first time as a state mandate - so all that's positive."
But Simpson said if Bring Chicago Home remains a partner, there is one thing that must be done.
"They should simply not have any speakers or promotion of the referendum as part of the program, since they've taken a position on the referendum," Simpson said.
Just over a year ago in the race for mayor, the CTU criticized then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot's campaign, when that campaign asked teachers to get students to volunteer for Lightfoot for student credit.
The union's headline aet the time read, "Lightfoot shakes down CTU members for student campaign in appalling failure of ethics … again."
Now, the union is under fire for a possible ethics violation of its own.
"I think they may well get a statement from the inspector general that for future reference, this should not happen," Simpson said.
The Illinois Policy Institute is calling on the Chicago Public Schools Office of the Inspector General to investigate and look into what the CTU is doing. But again, the CTU said the rally planned for Friday is simply nonpartisan.
On Tuesday, the Chicago Public Schools issued this statement on the issue:
"Chicago Public Schools (CPS) encourages student civic engagement with the electoral process through our nonpartisan election and civic engagement curriculum. We do not endorse specific campaigns or advocate for specific election results. CPS has shared with the CTU our concerns that the March 15 event be non-partisan and that it must comply with our ethics policy. The CTU has assured us that they will adhere to our policies and procedures, including our ethics policy."