So why are we talking about this in 2026? I mean, why now? Why hasn't it happened before now? What's different?

Yeah, well, it's really been proposed basically twice in the past 120 years.

120 years ago, the Civic Federation, working with something called the National Civic League, which was established in the 1800s to help growing cities avoid corruption, create efficiency, create effectiveness.

And out of that, basically all of our peer studies, in the early 1900s adopted charter, that was proposed here in the city in 1907, and it was turned down.

It was seen as a threat to the entrenched system of current mayoral power, even at that time in the early formation of the machine.

Then in 1954, the city council also created a commission to look into home rule, and it then said, we have a very archaic or anachronistic system of government, and those changes were recommended.

But that ran contrary to the power of the traditional machine politics that we have in Chicago, and so it was rejected.

IT'S TOTALLY DIFFERENT TO ACTUALLY SEE THIS IN PLAY.