Mayor Brandon Johnson’s plan to seize control over the Chicago Housing Authority board led by mayoral challenger Matthew Brewer was thwarted Tuesday after yet another City Council revolt.
Johnson introduced three appointments to the CHA board, including Brewer’s replacement, to a Housing Committee chaired by one of his closest allies in an attempt to speed the confirmation process and immediately seat those new members.
But members of the rebel bloc that rejected Johnson’s corporate head tax before approving an alternative city budget refused to go along with the mayor’s maneuver.
They argued that Robert’s Rules of Order, which governs City Council proceedings, requires that direct introductions to committees be reserved for emergencies, and three appointments to a board overseeing a CHA that Johnson allowed to languish without permanent leadership for nearly two years does not qualify as an emergency.
It was the second time in less than a week that Johnson’s attempt to circumvent the rules has been thwarted.
Brewer accused the mayor of engineering the takeover in an attempt to retaliate against him, “undermine leadership and ultimately try to replace” newly appointed CHA CEO Keith Pettigrew, who was awarded a four-year contract in March over the mayor’s objections.
“There have been other expired seats on this board for the last couple years. Seats that have been expired for the last couple years, and those weren’t an emergency. My seat just expired last week, and now it’s an emergency. There’s certainly an element of, ‘Get Matt Brewer off the board,’“ Brewer told the Chicago Sun-Times.
“It could be because I led the board … to bring in a CEO who [Johnson] opposed. It could be because I’m running for mayor. It could be a combination of both,” he said.
Brewer vowed to do whatever it takes to prevent the mayor from undermining or removing Pettigrew.
“Keith is a spectacular CEO. Now that he’s here, the organization sees it. Residents see it. People who didn’t want to like him love him. He’s the best thing to happen to CHA in a long time. And it would be a disaster for the organization, for the residents, for our city if we were to let politics get in the way of that and undermine what he’s here to do,” Brewer said.
Housing Committee Chair and 25th Ward Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez countered, “It’s more concerning that we have someone running for mayor that is using the agency as a political platform.”
Sigcho-Lopez condemned as “obstruction” the tie vote Tuesday that prevented his committee from confirming the mayor’s three CHA board nominees: John Bartlett, former executive director of the Metropolitan Tenants Organization; Hipolito (Paul) Roldan, former CEO of the Hispanic Housing Development Corp.; and Ramona Westbrook, president of Brook Architecture.
“What is unusual and shameful is to continuously block appointments that have now compromised City Council’s responsibility to oversee CHA,” Sigcho-Lopez said. “The appointments last year were sent to Rules. Now they are blocking [three mayoral appointments.] This is so shameful, it’s ridiculous.”
The mayor’s office had no immediate comment.
Last week, the Rules Committee shot down Johnson’s bid to pressure the Illinois General Assembly to pass a tax on millionaires by putting an advisory referendum on the Chicago ballot because the mayor did not follow the rules that require routine matters to be introduced to the full City Council and referred to the appropriate committee.
Retiring 13th Ward Ald. Marty Quinn led the charge to checkmate Johnson in both instances.
“This is a blatant disregard to our rules and the mayor lost again,” Quinn told the Sun-Times. “There’s a pattern of the mayor attempting to abuse the rules, and there’s a pattern of the Council staying up and saying, ‘No. We are co-equal.’ This is good, solid democracy.”
Quinn added, “I do agree with Mr. Brewer that this does feel very much like CPS 2.0 with the board.”
He was referring to the mass resignation of the Chicago Board of Education, which refused to go along with Johnson’s plan for a short-term, high-interest borrowing to reimburse the city for a $175 million pension payment for nonteaching school employees.
For more than 16 months, the mayor allowed the CHA to continue without permanent leadership. He then tried and failed to install retired City Council dean and Zoning Committee Chair Walter Burnett Jr. (27th) as the CHA’s CEO, only to have the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development refuse to grant Burnett the waivers needed to resolve his conflicts of interest.