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Chicago Local News by Mark Brown of the Chicago Sun-Times
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Metering is ON

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Mark Brown biography

Mark Brown is a local news columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times who writes about everything from political corruption to family life. Roger Ebert once called …Read More

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Brown: “High-speed” rail demo ride doesn’t wow, but still sparks hope

For the second time in eight months, a demonstration ride on a “high-speed” AMTRAK passenger train originating out of Chicago has left me underwhelmed but hopeful.Friday’s trip on a special VIP train run from Joliet to Normal was labeled “historic” by Gov. Pat Quinn and …

Record companies feed off violence

There probably ought to be a rule against a guy like me writing about somebody like teen rapper Chief Keef, the gulf between our worlds so vast that there’s no way I can relate to his life experiences let alone his music. Yet Keith Cozart, …

Chicago Low Income Housing Trust Fund honors activist Doug Dobmeyer

Doug Dobmeyer has decided it’s time to cut back on his workload. Surely you recognize the name. For four decades, Dobmeyer has been one of Chicago’s most prolific and oft-quoted community activists, advocating on behalf of everything from low-income housing to welfare rights and against …

  • Mark Brown: Mayor’s caginess on Brizard irritating

    Let’s put this right on the table: when you’re stuck paying an employee more than an extra year’s pay for him to just go away barely 18 months after he was hired, then somebody made a mistake. If that employee runs your organization, then it …Read More

  • Emanuel’s 2013 budget is calm before pension crisis storm

    Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s 2013 city budget is the calm before the storm that could make everyone forget the worst blizzards in memory. So feel free to savor the calm just a moment before stepping forth into the cold winds of reality. For the second straight …Read More

  • Using Walsh to bash reps unfair

    If Republican political strategists were to go on television right now with campaign commercials tying local incumbent Democratic congressmen to U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. and his travails, we could be pretty certain there would be a backlash in the news media. You can see …Read More

    • Mark Brown: Rahm vs. Quinn: Who’s in charge?

    For most of its 24-year history, the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority — landlord to the Chicago White Sox — has intentionally maintained the lowest of profiles. The agency’s aversion to publicity was in furtherance of its informal mission, that being first and foremost to keep …

  • A little good news for Obama after bad week

    No sooner had Barack Obama finished flubbing his first debate with Mitt Romney than I saw Republicans gleefully speculating that a bleak September jobs report would complete a one-week reversal of fortune in the presidential race and put their man ahead. Looks like they’ll have …Read More

  • Cellini sentence another step forward for honest government

    There were two almost mythical figures in Illinois politics when I started working for this newspaper 30 years ago: Eddie Vrdolyak in Chicago and Bill Cellini in Springfield. They were different in many ways — “Fast Eddie,” the charismatic Chicago alderman who attained star status …Read More

  • $395,000 a week on a Duchossois yacht

    As Chicago’s foremost connoisseur of the sport of kings, Arlington Park racetrack impresario Dick Duchossois has long lived a royal lifestyle befitting a man of his considerable means. Now you, too, can enjoy the most visible trapping of his wealth by chartering a private cruise …Read More

    • Brown: Does DePaul really need a new publicly subsidized arena? No

    If you took a sheet of paper and started drawing up a list titled, “What Chicago Really Needs,” I’ll bet you could fill both sides and never even consider writing down: Another publicly subsidized sports stadium/arena. Yet, we are now told that just such a facility is under consideration by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the McPier Authority.

    Aldermen act shocked by pension mess

    From the reaction of Chicago aldermen Monday, you would have thought most of them had only just learned for the first time about the city’s looming pension crisis. Worse yet, you would have thought the City Council had no role whatsoever in putting city employees, …

  • Power of persistence: Pair to pull off vet parade

    Cristopher De Phillips and Laurie Ipsen were watching television last February in the kitchen of their apartment at Ogden and Grand when they got it into their heads that Chicago should hold a parade to honor veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. De Phillips, …Read More

  • $5 gets you a meal with President Obama?

    Most of the polls seem to say the election is trending in Barack Obama’s favor and I don’t have any reason to believe otherwise, except maybe one: the urgency with which the president keeps inviting me to dinner. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m flattered …Read More

  • Day 2 of protest at construction site leads to one arrest and plenty of tension

    For the second straight day, an 87-year-old retired Chicago businessman disrupted a South Side construction site Tuesday with his demand that more blacks be put to work. If he has the stamina to keep it up, somebody is going to start taking him seriously. This …Read More

    • Decades after helping elect Chicago’s first African-American mayor, Edward Gardner pushing for diversity on job sites

    What do you if an 87-year-old African-American man in a dingy nylon windbreaker and pink ball cap hobbles onto your construction site with the aid of his cane, parks himself in the middle of traffic and declares he wants all the work stopped until more …

    Does ACT predict teacher quality?

    Brown: What are CPS teachers ACT scores? Who cares …

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