When the Chicago-Cook County Violence Against Women Task Force issued its report on systemic failures affecting domestic abuse survivors, its conclusions were both damning and familiar.
As the Tribune Editorial Board highlighted, Cook County’s failed system revictimizes survivors in a culture of confusion, a maze in which victims are bounced between fragmented court divisions, police departments, state’s attorneys and clerk’s offices. Many orders of protection go unserved or unenforced, and domestic-related homicides remain high.
Most tellingly, the task force concludes that “no one institution is responsible for outcomes.” Responsibility is so thoroughly diffused that when the system fails, every agency can point a finger elsewhere.
The task force leaders, Chicago Ald. Silvana Tabares, 23rd, and Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller, deserve immense praise for diagnosing how institutional isolation fails the vulnerable. But the crippling diffusion of responsibility they uncovered is not an exception in our state and local government today; it is becoming standard operating procedure.
In my book “The Daley Show,” a biography of Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, I examined this exact organizational dysfunction, which was at the center of three 2003 tragedies: a crowded nightclub panic, a collapsed neighborhood balcony and a downtown fire that took 40 lives. Large institutions frequently fracture into insulated units. Employees focus on bureaucratic turf, losing sight of the broader mission. When no single entity owns the overall process, the result is often catastrophic.
History offers painful examples. In the early 2000s, General Motors engineers, lawyers and managers knew that defective ignition switches were killing drivers, yet no one acted because everyone assumed another department was handling it. An independent report noted that determining the actual decision-maker was “impenetrable” — everyone had a responsibility to fix the problem, but no one took ownership.
In Chicago, deadly silos were at the heart of the E2 nightclub tragedy, when 21 people died in a panicked stairwell crush. The club was operating despite a court closure order for 11 building and fire code violations. City lawyers had been in court three times to enforce compliance. The Fire Department sent inspectors multiple times, but during the day, when the club was empty. Police responded to calls about altercations there, but were never made aware of the code violations and closure orders. Each department —buildings, law, fire and police — operated in isolation.
President Harry Truman famously noted of executive power: “The buck stops here.” Effective management requires clear authority. Yet alarmingly, state and local policymakers have been actively dismantling direct accountability across core public institutions:
• Public schools: At the urging of the Chicago Teachers Union, Gov. JB Pritzker signed legislation creating a sprawling 21-member elected school board to replace mayoral responsibility, despite a 25-year nationally acclaimed urban schools renaissance under Daley and his successor Rahm Emanuel.
• Public transit: Recent legislation removed mayoral control of the CTA. When the buses are dirty and the trains are running late, riders can soon divide their frustration between the mayor, governor and County Board president, none of whom will hold majority control and thus clear responsibility and accountability.
• Public safety: The resignation of police Superintendent Larry Snelling, unfortunately at the height of the summer violence, underscores yet another misguided “reform.” In 2021, direct mayoral appointment of the superintendent was replaced by a convoluted multitiered process involving 66 elected community members and a 14-member commission to filter candidates.
This unfortunate trend represents a fundamental misunderstanding of democratic governance. Accountability to citizens requires unambiguous lines of authority. When responsibility is diffused among everyone, it belongs to no one.
The findings of the Violence Against Women Task Force serve as an urgent warning. When government obscures who is in charge, ordinary citizens pay the price, sometimes with their lives. Splitting authority among overlapping bureaucracies or competing politicians does not empower the public — it shields decision-makers from consequences and entrenches the very silos that have repeatedly proved catastrophic.
Forrest Claypool is author of “The Daley Show: Inside the Transformative Reign of Chicago’s Richard M. Daley.” He served twice as Daley’s chief of staff and was CEO of Chicago Public Schools from 2015 to 2017.
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