Mayor Brandon Johnson’s already strained relationship with the City Council sunk to a new low on Monday when the City Council’s Finance Committee rejected his nearly $600 million plan to, as he put it, “challenge the ultra-rich and corporations to pay their fair share.”
The vote was 25-10. The defeat came only after a motion to postpone the vote failed by an 18-18 tie vote.
“Can we just get this over with? This is a joke. They’re calling people out there right now to delay this,” said 19th Ward Ald. Matt O’Shea.
For Johnson, it was a repeat of last year’s 50-0 City Council vote rejecting Johnson’s proposed $300 million property tax increase.
“The City Council will [now] drive the budget conversation —similar to last year,” said Southwest Side 13th Ward Ald. Marty Quinn, who represents the Southwest Side and is one of the mayor’s most outspoken critics.
Ald. Ray Lopez (15th), another one of the mayor’s most ardent critics, said Monday’s developments are “extremely embarrassing” to Johnson, adding, “Once again, he has lost control over the budget process.”
City Council dean Anthony Beale (9th), another opposition leader, added, “The budget they have presented is not something that the city of Chicago wants, and it’s not something that can pass muster in the City Council.”
The die was cast last week, when Finance Chair Pat Dowell (3rd), a member of Johnson’s handpicked leadership team, rejected the mayor’s offer to impose a $21 a month per-employee head tax on companies with 200 or more employees and declared her opposition to the corporate head tax “at any level.”
Dowell’s outright rejection of Johnson’s compromise in favor of a 15 percent increase in the tax on lease rental or use of computer software and cloud infrastructure forced the mayor back to the bargaining table to make even more concessions in addition to the changes he has already made.
On Monday, it was clear that those weekend negotiations had failed — so much so that Johnson returned to his original proposal to impose the corporate head tax on companies with 100 or more employees with an $18 million fund for small businesses that hired in underserved communities.
Early on, Dowell tried to recess the Finance Committee until Dec. 2. Her motion to recess was tabled by a vote of 24-7.
After a break, Budget Director Annette Guzman and Chief Financial Officer Jill Jaworski appeared before the Finance Committee to explain the revenue ordinance along with the mayor’s plan to borrow $1.8 billion.
The borrowing includes $1.3 billion for capital projects, $283 million for settlements and judgments tied to allegations of police wrongdoing and $166 million to defray the cost of retroactive pay raises for Chicago firefighters and paramedics. The controversial plan to borrow to pay for day-to-day operations will cost Chicago taxpayers $50 million in interest costs over the life of those bonds.
Monday’s defeat sends the budget negotiations back to square one.
Johnson can try to save face politically by portraying opponents as champions of the wealthy and opponents of working people. However, he’s also lost control of a budget process that Chicago mayors have long dictated.
Johnson had hoped to put his budget to bed by Thanksgiving to avoid a repeat of last year’s budget stalemate that ended in a 27-23 vote the week before Christmas — and only after the City Council unanimously rejected the mayor’s proposed $300 million property tax increase and refused to raise property taxes by any amount.
Instead, political indigestion could be on the mayor’s Thanksgiving menu.
He didn’t have the votes no matter how he tried to spin it.
And it’s not clear at this point how he plans to get to the finish line.
Other than scrapping the head tax altogether, cutting the $21 a month per-employee tax in half or making the legally shaky decision to exempt restaurants and bars, it’s not clear what changes Johnson can make to get to 26 votes, or 25 votes, if the mayor is willing to cast the tie-breaker.
“Those that have it need to pay more. [But] what I don’t want to do is impact small businesses,” said South Side Ald. David Moore (17th) of the proposed head tax and its impact on “McDonald’s operators and any other small restaurants.”
“I would like to have further conversation to make sure that’s not happening. Hopefully, we can get there,” Moore said.
Under friendly questioning from newly appointed 35th Ward Ald. Anthony Quezada, Guzman said without the head tax, the only way to save community safety programs would be service reductions and cuts to the budgets of the Chicago Police and Fire departments.
An exasperated Budget Chair Jason Ervin (28th), said, “I’m not signing up to further reduce public safety. … Nor am I signing up to kill summer jobs for kids in the city of Chicago. Nor am I signing up to reduce community violence interruption and prevention.”