Mayor Brandon Johnson’s $17.3 billion budget — with its $300 million property tax increase and a record tax increment financing surplus — is “dead on arrival” and will be dramatically revised by an emboldened City Council, his most outspoken critic declared Thursday.
“This is our moment. This is the City Council’s moment to step up and take our government back and run the city like it’s supposed to be run — with a strong Council, weak mayor,” said Ald. Anthony Beale (9th), the Council’s second-most-senior member.
“The people don’t trust this administration. They don’t trust his decision making. They don’t trust his governing. … Aldermen have to rise to he occasion. We’re not elected to go down there to go along just to get along.”
Beale made that doomsday prediction amid word the Johnson administration is playing political hardball in an apparent attempt to force recalcitrant alderpersons to come around — just as his predecessor, Lori Lightfoot, had done.
As mayor, Lightfoot famously warned Black Caucus members who dared to vote against her 2021 budget, “Don’t ask me for s–t for the next three years” when it came to choosing projects for her $3.7 billion capital plan.
The Johnson administration isn’t being quite that crass, but the more subtle message is raising eyebrows nevertheless.
In recent days, Council members or their staffers have been told they no longer can intervene on behalf of constituents whose 311 requests for basic city services have languished — requests like repairing a broken sidewalk or street light or getting a tree trimmed or a garbage cart replaced.
Instead, those rather routine requests must be emailed to Streets and Sanitation Commission Cole Stallard and Transportation Commissioner Tom Carney or their deputies. The requests then must be forwarded to the mayor’s office and approved by Johnson’s Chief Operating Officer John Roberson or Lori Lypson, deputy mayor of infrastructure services.
Ald. Gilbert Villegas (36th), Johnson’s hand-picked chair of the Committee on Economic and Capital Development, said the Johnson administration clearly is trying to keep tabs on what should be routine service requests and “potentially slow down services to get folks in line and pressure us into supporting this outrageous property tax increase.”
“This is crazy. It’s taxation without representation. It appears to be, ‘If you don’t get in line with us, we’re gonna hurt you and your constituents by not delivering services,'” Villegas said.
“In one breath, you’re talking about cutting the red tape. And here, you’re adding duct tape. It’s not gonna work. … My constituents pay taxes. They deserve to get services they paid for. If the administration is gonna slow it down, then we’re gonna have a problem.”
Erin Connelly, Johnson’s communications director, said the goal of the newly-implemented policy is not to bully alderpersons into submission. It’s to speed delivery of essential services and ensure those services are delivered equitably and quickly.
“The intention is the opposite [of bullying]. It’s to help measure and track and make sure those services are being done appropriately and in a timely fashion,” Connelly said. “That has been an issue for quite some time.”
With or without pressure tactics, Johnson faces an almost impossible task in getting the 26 votes he needs for Council approval of what would be Chicago’s largest property tax increase in a decade.
Even some allies, including progressive firebrand Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th), oppose the increase and are suggesting alternatives, such as skipping a $272 million “pension advance” — a payment in addition to the annual contribution required by state law.
Pointing to Johnson’s 14% approval rating in a recent poll, Beale predicted the spending plan ultimately approved by the Council will look nothing like the document that Johnson introduced.
The property tax increase, Beale said, will be dramatically reduced or wiped out entirely. The TIF surplus and pension advance will be smaller. Savings generated by slashing the city’s bloated ranks of middle-managers will pave the way to restore more than 400 police vacancies the mayor wants to cut as part of what Beale called an “incremental, defund-the-police movement.”
A mayor unwilling to challenge his allies in organized labor by demanding unpaid furlough days will be forced to swallow pay cuts, Beale said. And video gaming will finally be legalized in Chicago to generate the jackpot of new revenue a temporary Bally’s casino in River North has not.
Under Lightfoot, Beale spent four years in exile urging his colleagues to grow a political spine, without success.
This time, he’s certain the result will be different. He argued Johnson is destined to be a one-term mayor and that anybody who follows his lead will go down with the mayor.
“Donald Trump polled higher than the mayor is now in 2020” in Chicago, Beale said. “That tells you what people think.”