Alders Project Featured on Joan Esposito Radio Show
Pris Mims, member of LWV Chicago’s City Government Committee and leader of the Zooming with the Aldermen project, appeared on the Joan Esposito: Live, Local and Progressive radio broadcast on Monday, August 15. The Emmy award-winning journalist hosts a daily radio program from 2 to 5 pm on WCPT 820 that covers politics in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan.
On last Monday’s program, Pris acquainted listeners with the Zooming project and what it is accomplishing. She explained that the City Government Committee of the League of Women Voters of Chicago sponsored “Zooming with the Aldermen” to interview the Chicago City Council members and share the videos of those interviews so League members and the public can get to know the people who represent them as well as learn a little bit about the different wards.
In addition to interviews with nearly all of the city’s alders, Zooming with the Aldermen has precipitated a proposed change to the operation of the City Council. Transparency was one of the issues raised during the interviews. Following Ald. Brendan Reilly’s (42nd) interview with the League, he, along with several co-sponsors, filed a proposed ordinance amendment that would require legislative items to be posted publicly before they are considered by City Council committees. Currently, the mayor and city department heads may propose items directly to a City Council Committee without posting the text of that item for the public to see. Reilly’s proposed ordinance, Item R2022-687, has been referred to the Rules Committee.
About the Project
The pandemic and the use of Zoom in lieu of meeting in person served as the initial inspiration for this project. Interviewing alders is nothing new for the League. In the past, the League has periodically asked its members to reach out, meet with, and interview the alders in their wards. Zooming provided an easier way to schedule interviews, and it allowed the League to record and make the interviews available for anyone to watch “on demand.”
Most interviews are about 30 minutes long, and they follow the same general format. Each video opens with a map of all 50 wards, highlights the location of the interviewee’s specific ward and then presents a detailed map of that ward. A League interviewer asks the alder to describe the ward and the key issues facing the people of the ward. Following some questions about the alder, the interviewer asks a series of questions about the alder’s views on different issues and finishes with a question about what the alder would like to accomplish, or at least start, before the end of the term in 2023.
Interviews were scheduled with 44 out of the 50 alders from January 2021 through July 2022. The links to all the interviews are on the League website. On that page, there are two lists of the interviews: one by ward number and one in order of when conducted, with the most recent one at the top.
About Priscilla Mims
Pris is a 25-year member of the League of Women Voters and has been active with different levels of the League, including and especially with the Cook County League of Women Voters, which focuses on county-wide government. She joined the Chicago League when she moved into the city from Oak Park in 2010. One of the things that she was interested in was learning how city government works, so she joined LWV Chicago’s City Government Committee when it was formed a few years ago. It was this interest in learning more about city government that led Pris to suggest and then spearhead the Zooming project.
Pris has a law degree from DePaul University, and prior to her retirement was an in-house counsel to an energy company. One of her other major volunteer activities is being a docent for the Chicago Architecture Center, for which she leads a number of different tours all year long.
The radio interview between Joan Esposito and Pris was arranged by Catherine Mardikes, executive vice president of LWV Chicago.