His voice breaking with emotion, Mayor Brandon Johnson tried again Tuesday to salvage a corporate head tax proposal shot down by the City Council’s Finance Committee and roundly condemned by business leaders.
Johnson began his weekly City Hall news conference with defiance, but ended it emotionally as he talked about his father, now fighting Alzheimer’s, who taught him the work ethic and drive to protect everyday people, something that has guided the mayor through this second straight budget stalemate.
“There are lines of Chicagoans, right now, of people who do not have food. … And if you’ve never gone hungry, you wouldn’t know why I have that urgency — if you’ve never opened up your refrigerator and there’s nothing in it. Poverty sucks,” the mayor said.
Johnson accused a small group of City Council moderates and conservatives of “playing games with working people” by crafting an alternative spending plan that does not include a corporate head tax.
“Corporations are making a killing right now, and we have alders who are more interested in defending these big corporations than families like mine that went without food and electricity and could not afford rent and mortgage. The vast majority of people in this city are struggling every single day just to make the ends meet, and we have alders who are playing games with those families,” Johnson said.
“Give me something I can work with. But challenging the ultra-rich in this country to put more skin in the game — that should not be considered a radical idea. A budget that passes that’s balanced and it’s not off the backs of working people — that’s what Chicago deserves. And that’s what I’m going to deliver.”
Johnson accused two PACS created by business leaders, one of them led by hedge fund millionaire Michael Sacks, of running ads that “lie” to Chicagoans about the head tax, a $21 a month per-employee tax that the mayor had hoped to rely on to generate $100 million earmarked exclusively for community safety programs.
Common Ground Collective is running commercials that poke holes in Johnson’s claim of using the head tax to make “the largest investment ever on community violence intervention,” 30,000 summer jobs, expanded recreational programs for youth and programs that confront the perennial problems of gender-based violence and first responder wellness.
Instead, the business group claims the corporate head tax would include “no new money” invested in any of those programs.
Johnson returned to his roots as a middle-school teacher by giving the ad an “F-minus for truthfulness.”
“It’s beneath these so-called business leaders to lie to the public about the community safety surcharge. My challenge to them is just to explain their reasoning and debate the pros and cons of this proposal. You do not need to lie and try to trick the public, ” the mayor said. “There’s no need to treat the people of Chicago like they’re stupid just because they may not have as much money as you do.”
The business groups stood by the veracity of their ad and challenged Johnson to name one program bankrolled by the proposed head tax that would be either be new or expanded.
Johnson did not give a similar failing grade to the Chicago Teachers Union ads that falsely claim architects of an alternate budget favor a property tax increase and want to cut school funding and deny firefighters four years of retroactive pay raises. Johnson owes his election to the millions of dollars and scores of campaign foot soldiers provided by the Chicago Teachers Union, where he served as a paid organizer prior to becoming mayor.
The Chicago Sun-Times reported this week that the plan conservative and moderate alderpersons are working on is likely to hold the line on property taxes, but possibly double the $9.50-a-month garbage fee and replace the head tax by charging residents and businesses $1.25 for every package they have delivered.
Johnson said Tuesday he has yet to see a formal proposal. But he argued that the ideas he has read about are “still $700 million short of completing a balanced budget” and that both of the major tax substitutes “place a greater burden on working people.”
“They’re gonna have to find 34 alders who can compel working people that they’re gonna balance their budget off of their backs,” the mayor said, when asked whether he would veto a budget that raises garbage fees by any amount. It take 34 Council votes to override a mayoral veto.
Also Tuesday, a day after appeasing Christkindlmarket organizers by raising capacity limits at the market by 1,000 people, Johnson suggested that a “different location” may be needed to accommodate crowds too large for the Daley Center Plaza. He claimed that a venue change to an “entirely different location,” which he did not identify, “should have been assessed some time ago.”