A City Council majority determined to block Mayor Brandon Johnson’s proposed corporate head tax got the ball rolling Wednesday on their alternative spending plan and their bid to avert an unprecedented shutdown of city government, handing the mayor an initial defeat in the city’s ongoing budget battle.
At the tail end of Wednesday’s City Council meeting, a renegade group of conservative and moderate alderpersons that includes Johnson’s handpicked Finance Committee Chair Pat Dowell (3rd) introduced $409 million worth of amendments to the mayor’s proposed budget.
When it came time to set the date and time for the next meeting, Ald. Anthony Beale (9th) introduced a substitute resolution laying out a rapid-fire schedule for the next five City Council meetings, culminating in a final vote days before Christmas.
Budget Committee Chair Jason Ervin (28th) moved to table Beale’s motion, but the Council voted 29 to 18 against the mayor. The City Council will now meet Monday through Thursday of next week and, opposition members hope, take a final vote on their version of the budget Dec. 23.
It amounts to a high-stakes game of political chicken to see who blinks first.
Johnson has all but dared opposition alderpersons to call for a vote on their plan to nearly double garbage collection fees, and raise taxes and fees for off-premise liquor sales and rides on Uber and Lyft, and steer clear of short-term financial fixes that threaten Chicago’s beleaguered bond rating.
By moving forward, opposition alderpersons are calling the mayor’s bluff.
They proved Wednesday that they have well over the 26 votes needed to pass their alternative package. They’re rolling the dice that fence-sitting alderpersons concerned about their own re-election chances will join their ranks, providing the 34 votes needed to override a Johnson veto.
Southwest Side Ald. Marty Quinn (13th), one of the mayor’s most outspoken Council critics, likened the strategy to what happened during last year’s budget stalemate.
That’s when Johnson proposed a $300 million property tax increase only to have the City Council unanimously reject the increase and refuse to raise property taxes by any amount.
“It’s a similar play. It gives you a little bit more runway, and [allows you to] avoid getting backed up against the wall in a take-it-or-leave it scenario,” said Quinn, who learned his craft while serving as a chief lieutenant to now convicted and imprisoned former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan.
Blocking the head tax already rejected by the Dowell-led Finance Committee is not the singular focus of the group of opposition Council members, who have drawn advice from the Civic Federation, the Commercial Club and other business groups, as well as a host of former city budget, finance and intergovernmental affairs officials.
The $409 million package of amendments would also shave $100 million from the $1 billion tax increment financing (TIF) surplus that Johnson wants to use to rescue the Chicago Public Schools, cancel the mayor’s plan to borrow $166 million over five years to cover retroactive pay raises for firefighters and paramedics, and fully fund the $260 million advance pension payment that Johnson proposed to cut by more than half.
Instead, their package of amendments includes $90.5 million in efficiencies outlined in a road map provided by EY, formerly known as Ernst & Young.
Those efficiencies include a 15% reduction in the 772 vacant city jobs not tied to public safety; a 20% cut in the city’s ranks of middle management; and millions of dollars in savings by reducing health care benefits and increasing contributions from city employees whose union contracts protect those benefits.
The alternate budget also counts on $150 million from improved debt collection, in part by selling outstanding city debt to collection agencies; $6.5 million by making technical changes to the city’s parking meter deal; and $26 million by licensing the use of augmented reality that superimposes digital content onto city property like Millennium Park and the Riverwalk.
The proposed corporate head tax would be replaced by an $18 a month garbage collection fee that has been frozen at $9.50 a month since its 2015 inception; a 3% tax on off-premise liquor sales; and a return to the mayor’s original and more ambitious plan to apply the city’s 10.25% amusement tax to rides on Uber and Lyft in a broader area that includes downtown and much of the Near North and Near South sides.
The Johnson administration has shot down virtually all of those alternative ideas as unworkable, politically untenable or legally dubious. The mayor has also threatened to veto a budget that includes any increase in the garbage collection fee.
Quinn said Wednesday he believes the mayor may be blowing smoke.
“Will he veto it? I don’t know. That’s a question. The mayor has said a lot of things and has been unable to back them up. How many times has he rearranged his head tax. This is the third iteration,” said Quinn.
“There’s a lot of talk. But could he back up his words? Going into 2026, which is for all intents and purposes an election year, he will have to contend with government shutting down on his watch.”
Chicago has not been this close to a government shutdown since the 1980s-era power struggle known as “Council Wars” that saw 29 mostly-white alderpersons led by Edward Vrdolyak and Edward Burke. Vrdolyak and Burke frequently managed to outfox Washington during that time because they knew Council rules better than the mayor did.
Parliamentary maneuvering could be critical yet again, particularly if Ervin boycotts a Budget Committee meeting called to vote on the proposed amendments. But if he does, opposition Council members plan to replace Ervin with Vice-Chair Nicole Lee (11th).