This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, July 3rd, 2019.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Chicago is a special city with special problems,

and many of the biggest problems facing Chicago can be traced to its structure.

And that structure gives the mayor, whoever it might be, incredible unchecked power.

Ed Bachrock and Austin Berg are authors of the new book The New Chicago Way in which they

detail Chicago's problems and some possible ways out.

You tell a story about Chicago and how we probably ought not to think of this as the problems associated

with Chicago as partisan problems, that these are problems of structure, that the

mayor is the guy who's on top and everybody else derives some benefit or if they don't work at the

pleasure of the mayor their lives can be difficult if they defy the mayor.

And this is from city administration, from the top all the way down, the mayor runs things. Why is that so wrong? Why shouldn't the mayor runs things. Why is that so wrong?

Why shouldn't a mayor be the head guy,

the guy who's making decisions?

As we point out in story after story in our book. The city is in the shape it's in because it consistently

makes poor decisions. And why does it make those poor decisions? Because all of the special interests

and all of the stupid ideas that feed into a poor decision

have only one focal point and that is the fifth floor of City Hall,

the mayor's office.

If you had power distributed, and not atomized but distributed, then you'd have enough time to give

deliberation to decisions, you'd have contrary opinions, and you'd come up with a better solution to the problems.

Well I would say I agree with all of that. We are the last true strong man mayor in America. And while most other cities often get a choice in their

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