As City Hall budget hearings got underway Tuesday, Gov. JB Pritzker slammed Mayor Brandon Johnson’s proposal to revive the corporate head tax on big companies that operate in Chicago.
“I am absolutely, four-square opposed to a head tax for the city of Chicago,” the Democratic governor said to applause during a lunchtime appearance before members of the Economic Club of Chicago. “It penalizes the very thing that we want, which is, we want more employment in the city of Chicago. And it makes it very hard to attract companies from outside of Chicago to come into Chicago, and harder for companies that are in Chicago to stay.”
To help cover a $1.15 billion budget shortfall, Johnson’s proposed 2026 budget banks on $100 million from reviving the head tax that was phased out by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel more than a decade ago.
It would charge companies with more than 100 employees — about 3% of businesses in Chicago — $21 per month, per employee. Johnson said his proposal “asks large corporations and the ultra-wealthy to chip in more so that working families are not burdened with higher property taxes or grocery taxes or garbage fees.”
But Pritzker sides with opponents in the business community who say the head tax would be a job killer.
“We need more jobs. And FYI, this is in the context of trying to balance a budget. There are three knobs you can turn,” Pritzker said, listing those as cutting costs, raising taxes and growing the economy.
“That’s the one I prefer, growing the economy, because your revenues increase if you grow the economy. … I think we ought to be focused on that most of all,” Pritzker said.
“You’ve got to start with efficiencies. You’ve got to go into city government, and I haven’t seen any of that in this budget so far,” Pritzker added.
In a wide-ranging, hourlong Q&A with Chicago Tribune editorial page editor Chris Jones, Pritzker again lambasted the Trump administration’s escalating immigration enforcement in Chicago.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary “Kristi Noem breaks the law every day in the job that she does,” Pritzker said, criticizing Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations that have detained people of color, some of whom are citizens.
“She oversees that, Kristi Noem. And then she cosplays an agent when she puts on the hat and puts on the uniform. She’s never trained to do any of that, but she gets in the vehicle with them like she’s going to somehow go and arrest somebody herself,” Pritzker said.
“She was governor of South Dakota. I think that’s a respectable background for a lot of things, but not for Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, so I honestly don’t take any of her criticism seriously at all. She is simply a lackey of Donald Trump’s,” Pritzker said.
Pritzker also teased another campaign to bring the Democratic National Convention back to Chicago in 2028.
“I was very proud of what we did last year. I have turned around and talked to the Democratic National Convention folks, just to say, ‘Don’t know if everybody is on board yet, but I wanted to make sure that we had our hat in the ring for the idea that they might come back in 2028.’ … But again, it takes a lot of organization. There’s a whole lot between here and there.”