This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, September 30th, 2015.

I'm Caleb Brown.

There's good news and bad news for folks in Chicago.

The good news, the city has thrown out its ban on food cards.

The bad news is some of the details of how they did it and what might be coming next.

Hillary Gowans is managing editor at the Illinois Policy Institute.

We spoke at the State Policy Network's annual meeting this week.

So Chicago is supposed to be this great culinary city, right?

We've got the deep dish pizza, we've got Chicago style hot dogs with all the fixins on them but when it comes to new

innovations like food trucks like food carts the city likes to protect the established players, meaning brick and mortar restaurants.

So we have a history in Chicago of regulations being put in place that restrict food trucks

from being able to compete with their

brick and mortar counterparts and then up until last week the city banned food carts

altogether. So if Chicago has overturned its ban on food carts, that's all to the good, right?

Sure.

In theory, the problem is that within the ordinance that lifted this ban, there is a provision that says if that

there is a provision that says if there are public safety or health concerns

that alderman and individual wards can restrict where food carts can operate. Individual alderman may make individual as a concern. They are.

It's very loose.

You can manipulate the rules pretty much any which way you want.

Like many big cities across the country, alderman or city councilman or whatever they're called

wherever you are. They have a lot of power and a lot of

...