Mayor Brandon Johnson on Tuesday denied the revolving door at City Hall is a scary sign of instability for Chicago, claiming “I’m the stability” and the “visionary” — and that he will find other people to “carry out my vision.”
The latest high-level departure from Johnson’s City Hall is Budget Director Annette Guzman, whom the mayor once praised as a “bad, Black, shut-your-mouth” administrator.
Guzman is “stepping away” to care for her ailing mother, resigning from the $201,564-a-year job she has held from the start of Johnson’s administration.
Guzman’s abrupt departure is raising serious questions about financial instability because of the timing of it, the wave of high-level departures that preceded it and the enormity of the city’s fiscal problems.
Chicago faces a $90 million mid-year shortfall, a $1 billion budget gap next year and a $36 billion pension crisis that has two of four city employee pension funds hovering dangerously close to insolvency — even after receiving a city loan to avoid selling assets to pay liabilities.
The city is weeks away for a grueling election year budget season and days away from an all-important investors conference.
And Guzman’s resignation comes just days after Acting Chief Financial Officer Steven Mahr and Mahr’s top deputy also resigned.
Mahr replaced Jill Jaworski, who left City Hall in January for a job at Navy Pier shortly after a renegade City Council majority rejected Johnson’s corporate head tax and muscled through an alternative city budget with major elements Johnson continues to oppose .
The revolving door has Ald. Matt O’Shea (19th) wondering “Who’s minding the store?” and where Chicagoans can turn for stability.
On Tuesday, a defiant Johnson answered.
“They have stability. They have stability in me,” Johnson told reporters at his weekly City Hall news conference.
“One person does not run the operation around here. It’s a collection. And even after others have transitioned out, it has not stopped us from building the safest, most affordable big city in America.”
Calling himself the “visionary” Chicago voters elected, Johnson maintained that so long as the “mission and the vision” that he outlined is “executed” by the changing cast that surround him, Chicago will “remain stable under my administration and leadership.”
“Transitions happen all the time in administrations. But, what’s most constant is my presence,” he said.
The mayor bristled when asked whether the turnover in his senior leadership team is a sign of “fractured relationships” with the City Council and others at City Hall.
“Annette Guzman going to take care of her mother is not a fractured relationship,” the mayor said.
Pointing to his own father, who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, Johnson said, “People don’t prepare you for aging parents. They don’t. And to characterize someone making a personal decision and then coming to a conclusion that has no basis — I find that to be reckless and irresponsible.”
The mayor’s defiant remarks did nothing to appease the renegade coalition that rejected Johnson’s corporate head tax and passed an alternative, $16.7 billion budget with major elements that the mayor has never stopped fighting begged to differ with the mayor.
The so-called “Budget Accountability Coalition” said the “continued wave of leadership departures” from Johnson’s City Hall demands more from Chicago’s chief executive.
“The mayor needs to provide the public with a full accounting of when and how this administration will deliver on a budget proposal that continues to address structural revenues, efficiencies and reforms needed to close an expected $1 billion FY2027 budget gap, avoid a credit downgrade and put Chicago back on solid fiscal footing,” the coalition said in a statement.
Johnson struggled to pass his 2025 budget after the City Council unanimously rejected his surprise proposal for a $300 million property tax increase.
Last year, a 29-member majority of moderate and conservative Democrats seized control over a budget process long dictated by Chicago mayor in a budget rebellion not seen since the 1980s power struggle known as Council Wars that saw 29 mostly white alderpersons led by then Alds. Edward Vrdolyak and Edward Burke thwart Mayor Harold Washington’s every move.
On Tuesday, Johnson argued political tension is “necessary when you’re fighting for the right causes.”
“Even if you had permanent budget director, but they were screwing working people — what good does that do? It doesn’t do any good for the people who live here,” he said.
“I will take upset with a safe and affordable city [over] people being quiet and still and people are being harmed. So what is better? To have a little tension and progress or no tension and chaos? I’ll take the tension … any day.”