David Mihalyfy
David Mihalyfy ran for election to the Chicago City Council to represent Ward 11 in Illinois. He lost in the general election on February 26, 2019.
Mihalyfy completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2019. Click here to read the survey answers.
Mihalyfy responded to Ballotpedia's unique candidate survey for 2019 Chicago candidates. The survey questions were developed with input from more than 100 Chicagoans in the months preceding the 2019 election. Here is one selected response:
"I am refusing all corporate contributions, so that I can be an impartial advocate for our community. Once in office, I would fight for a range of reform measures from public campaign financing to strengthened Inspector General offices to forbidding other employment for aldermen."
Click here to read more of Mihalyfy's responses.
Elections
2019
See also: City elections in Chicago, Illinois (2019)
General election
General election for Chicago City Council Ward 11
Incumbent Patrick Daley Thompson defeated David Mihalyfy in the general election for Chicago City Council Ward 11 on February 26, 2019.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | Patrick Daley Thompson (Nonpartisan) | 73.4 | 7,537 | |
 | David Mihalyfy (Nonpartisan)  | 26.6 | 2,726 | |
| Total votes: 10,263 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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Campaign themes
2019
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Chicago 2019 Candidate Survey
David Mihalyfy completed Ballotpedia's Chicago candidates survey for 2019. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Mihalyfy's responses.
What do you believe are the greatest needs of kids in school today? How would you prioritize these needs and address them?
Locally, the 11th Ward has long needed a newly-built neighborhood high school to serve Chinatown and nearby areas, and we’ve lost four years of advocacy for that under Alderman Daley Thompson. In terms of a healthy public school system accessible to all, we must ensure adequate CPS funding while facilitating smart uplift, especially with neighborhood high schools. Due to administrative profiteering off of public funds and their statistically questionable benefits to students, we must halt CPS charter school expansion and pursue interim measures to improve transparency, accountability, and educational quality. For example, we should pass sunlight laws so that we can access records of charters and their parent organizations just like we can access CPS records through FOIA. We should also support and encourage teacher and paraprofessional unionization like in the UNO/Acero network, to end the revolving door of staff. After we help restore regular CPS funding streams by cracking down on diversion into the frequently abused TIF development slush funds, we should have a larger conversation about reducing the number of charters and migrating students back into CPS, especially since we should not be funding discrimination like the all too common poor support of students with disabilities. In tandem with this, we should hold community-based conversations and build on existing CPS uplift ideas and initiatives, many of which are very insightful but have been neglected (e.g. the Dyett hunger strikers’ advocacy for green jobs training, which preceded passage of the Illinois Future Energy Jobs Act and the recent renewal of national interest in the economically very sensible Green New Deal).
How would you make the city’s policies more responsive to community input instead of donors or special interests?
I am refusing all corporate contributions, so that I can be an impartial advocate for our community. Once in office, I would fight for a range of reform measures from public campaign financing to strengthened Inspector General offices to forbidding other employment for aldermen.
What ideas do you have to reduce the availability of illegal or unregistered guns in Chicago?
Unfortunately, there is no single easy solution for violent crime, but we can create positive change in a number of ways. Since most guns come from out-of-state, we can learn from places like New Jersey and more greatly popularize statistics on the origins of guns used in crimes, to “name and shame” the states who don’t do sufficient oversight and allow guns to flood our streets. Since much of the larger crisis stems from gun manufacturers’ undue influence over our federal representatives, both to pass unhealthy laws and to block sensible reform, increased attention to the problem of money in politics can raise consciousness and set the stage for longer-term change here too. Within community safety and well-being considered more broadly, we should recognize that quality jobs and investment in youth and social services are the best ways to shift people into better paths and away from crime and violence. The desire for greater social investment like the reopening of city mental health clinics is very strong in the 11th Ward and includes everyone from youth to officers to vets, and we could play a unique role in catalyzing coalitions across our city.
What’s your opinion on tax increment financing (a program that funds development using any additional property tax revenue that results from an increase in appraised property values)? What, if any, changes would you make to the use of TIF?
On the whole, our development funds lack oversight and have become slush funds to give huge handouts to the well-connected. In conjunction with lobbying our federal government to ban “race to the bottom” corporate subsidies, we must stop massive diversion of funding away from schools and parks and dial back usage so that funds go to narrowly-defined development in struggling areas, that truly “but for” those funds would not have occurred. It should be noted that my ‘free installation’ home solar proposal modeled after other cities’ and organizations’ policies constitutes an ethical and responsible use of developments funds. Where it makes financial sense, it helps people “get over the hump” of steep installation costs, with the added benefit that above and beyond healthier air and improved public health the city is contractually guaranteed to be paid back from people’s electricity savings over time, since even this far north home solar pays for itself over the lifespan of the warranty.
How would you assess the city's finances, and if your proposals would require new spending, how would you pay for them?
Since our current budgets are unfairly balanced on the back of working people and people are getting stretched thin, we must prioritize fairer taxation through taxing big banks and luxury goods first (e.g. financial speculation under the “LaSalle Street tax,” or property taxes that are narrowly defined and target the wealthy). We should consider options like casinos, video gambling, and legalized and taxed recreational marijuana, so long as we double check research and get non-partisan estimates that they’re not actually “penny wise pound foolish” measures that cost us more in the long run. A city sales tax or a broad property tax is the least desirable way to go, since it’s another measure that hurts everyday people, like Mayor Emanuel’s 2015 monthly garbage collection tax and outsize property tax increase, both of which were supported by Alderman Daley Thompson. For new revenue, ripple effects from improved labor laws should also not be underestimated; stabilizing exploitative on-call and part-time jobs will lead to increased worker spending and thus more revenue from mechanisms like the sales tax, as well as more attractive jobs and thus general savings through a gradual decrease in crime and delinquency. In addition to raising new revenue, we must also ensure that our current spending is in order. Beyond reforming the TIF development slush funds and hiring independent analysts to do forensic audits of past spending, we must carefully examine all current and future outsourcing contracts, and fight to maximally recover funds from any bad actors (e.g. Aramark with its CPS cleaning contracts).
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
See also
2019 Elections
External links
Footnotes
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