Mayor Lori Lightfoot broke ground Wednesday for the new Bronzeville Winery, a Black-owned business, that is set to open this summer.

It wouldn’t have happened without a Neighborhood Opportunity Fund Grant. And that program is part of the mayor’s Invest South/West initiative that promises $750 million in economic development investment in 10 targeted neighborhoods by 2022.

Lightfoot said she gets criticized for over-investing in the neighborhoods.

“Here’s what I think about that, and here’s what I do know,” Lightfoot said. “If not me, then who? If not on my watch, then when?”

Read more at the chicagotribune.com.

David Greising is the president and chief executive of the Better Government Association, joining the BGA in 2018. For nearly a century, the BGA has fought for honest and effective government through investigative journalism and policy advocacy.

Greising’s career started at the City News Bureau of Chicago, with stops at the Chicago Sun-Times, Business Week magazine, the Chicago Tribune and Reuters. He was a co-founder of the Chicago News Cooperative and worked briefly as a consultant to World Business Chicago. Today, Greising writes on government issues in regular columns for the Tribune and Crain’s Chicago Business.

Under Greising’s leadership, the BGA has played a key role in uncovering public corruption amidst the wide-ranging federal probe, starting with an in-depth report about Ald. Ed Burke’s conflicts of interest before the federal charges against Burke. The BGA also has exposed waste and fraud at O’Hare and the proliferation of corruption and poverty into Dolton, Lyons and other Chicago suburbs. The BGA’s policy team has led calls for ethics reform in Chicago’s City Council and in state government.