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Michael Negron
Michael Negron ran for election to the Chicago City Council to represent Ward 47 in Illinois. Negron lost in the general runoff election on April 2, 2019.
Negron completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2019. Click here to read the survey answers.
Negron 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 will advocate for Chicago to become a 100% clean energy city and work with the next Mayor to revamp our recycling program to improve upon our abysmal 8% landfill diversion rate."
Click here to read more of Negron's responses.
Elections
2019
See also: City elections in Chicago, Illinois (2019)
General runoff election
General runoff election for Chicago City Council Ward 47
Matt Martin defeated Michael Negron in the general runoff election for Chicago City Council Ward 47 on April 2, 2019.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Matt Martin (Nonpartisan)  | 62.5 | 11,813 |
 | Michael Negron (Nonpartisan) | 37.5 | 7,089 | |
| Total votes: 18,902 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
General election
General election for Chicago City Council Ward 47
The following candidates ran in the general election for Chicago City Council Ward 47 on February 26, 2019.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Matt Martin (Nonpartisan) | 39.3 | 7,586 |
| ✔ | | Michael Negron (Nonpartisan) | 21.4 | 4,126 |
 | Eileen Dordek (Nonpartisan) | 17.5 | 3,373 | |
 | Jeff Jenkins (Nonpartisan) | 8.3 | 1,602 | |
| Heather Way Kitzes (Nonpartisan) | 4.8 | 931 | ||
| Angie Maloney (Nonpartisan) | 4.6 | 888 | ||
| Thomas Schwartzers (Nonpartisan) | 1.9 | 372 | ||
| Gus Katsafaros (Nonpartisan) | 1.8 | 344 | ||
| Kimball Ladien (Nonpartisan) | 0.4 | 75 | ||
| Total votes: 19,297 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Campaign themes
2019
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Chicago 2019 Candidate Survey
Michael Negron completed Ballotpedia's Chicago candidates survey for 2019. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Negron's responses.
Low-income families do not have the same choices, options, or alternatives when it comes to public school. How can this be addressed?
Our schools need more investment to reduce class sizes and ensure that every child has access to science, arts, music, and school libraries staffed by librarians. As alderman, I will: oWork with the next mayor, City Council, and Chicago members of the Illinois General Assembly to push the state of Illinois to fully fund the new education funding formula every year. Under SB 1947, the state is called upon to invest an additional $350 million in school funding every year over the next decade, with CPS receiving nearly 20%. oCall upon CPS to develop a new equity formula for new funding that comes in through the state to ensure that these dollars go to the schools that need them the most."
Do you believe that there is corruption in Chicago politics, such as pay-to-play practices when the city awards bids? If so, how would you address it?
The recent Alderman Ed Burke scandal epitomizes everything that people hate about Chicago government. If Ald. Ed Burke and Ald. Willie Cochran are convicted, then we will have seen 35 aldermen convicted of corruption-related crimes committed while on their official duties since 1972. That’s a conviction every 14 months! We need to view this as an opportunity to make big reforms. We can’t simply rely on electing new people and hope for the best. We need to change the rules. That’s why I support prohibiting aldermen from having side jobs so they focus on their jobs full time. We need to limit aldermanic privilege when it comes to zoning and permits to remove the temptation to shake people down. I support expanding the authority of the inspector general over the City Council, and establishing the public financing of elections. We should also strengthen independent budget office, and take a real look at term limits.
How will you help to rebuild trust in the police department and to encourage the community to work with police?
The next mayor and City Council must restore trust in our police department and invest to address the root causes of violence. This begins with continuing the work of police accountability reform, including good faith adherence to the consent decree by all parties as well as reforming Chicago Police Department governance to expand the role of civilians in oversight. I will also support an aggressive strategy to support growth in our south and west side neighborhoods by calling on the next mayor to strategically invest the more than $180 million in neighborhood opportunity fund dollars – generated by downtown development – to maximize impact on our neighborhoods. And I will push for the next mayor and our philanthropic community to scale up jobs plus services programs like READI Chicago and Chicago CRED to serve more residents.
How do you propose to resolve the city’s underfunded pension plan for city employees?
To address our anticipated rise in nearly $1 billion in required payments to city pension funds over the next four years, we will need to pursue a combination of reform and more progressive revenue. This requires us to consider new sources of revenue including a state-level progressive income tax, legalizing recreational marijuana, and expanding legalized gaming options, among others. I also believe that the city should consider in an open and transparent way a potential pension obligation bond to improve the funding ratios for the city’s pension funds and reduce future required pension payments. In an August 2018 editorial, Ralph Martire and Daniel Hertz of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability laid out a framework in which such a bond could be a responsible approach to partially addressing our pension challenges if it is focused on paying down future obligations and I would like to see a public discussion of this option. To help control the costs of government, I will support taking a serious look at opportunities to consolidate services and functions with Cook County; there are a number of agencies with similar or duplicative functions such as the city/cook county departments of administrative hearings and board of elections. Lastly, the city should work with organized labor to identify additional options for reducing the cost of government and pensions going forward.
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?
TIF has an important role when it comes to investing in infrastructure, schools, parks, workforce training, and small business improvements. This role is amplified when you take into account the State of Illinois’s failure to pass an infrastructure plan for nearly ten years. At the same time, more transparency and accountability are needed in the city’s TIF program and the program must not become a slush fund for large corporations. As alderman, I will advocate for the next mayor to make more information about the TIF program available to the public, going beyond the existing TIF portal by making it more user-friendly and offering information about potential uses under consideration but not yet formally proposed. Moreover, large projects like the Lincoln Yards TIF must allow for sufficient time for robust public discussion. I will also only use the diminishing TIF funds in my ward on infrastructure, schools, and small business projects and advocate for a similar approach citywide. And I support robust, annual surplus declarations to return TIF dollars to the taxing bodies.
How would you make Chicago a cleaner city with less waste and pollution?
I will advocate for Chicago to become a 100% clean energy city and work with the next Mayor to revamp our recycling program to improve upon our abysmal 8% landfill diversion rate.
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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