Mayor Brandon Johnson turned up the heat on the Illinois General Assembly Tuesday to deliver the progressive revenue he claims Chicago needs to protect working people from funding cuts imposed by President Donald Trump that he called potentially life-threatening.
Johnson said he demonstrated his own willingness to “go first” by proposing a $16.6 billion budget that includes nearly $600 million in tax and fee increases that “challenge the ultra-rich and corporations to pay their fair share.”
The question now, Johnson said, is whether state lawmakers wrapping up their fall veto session this week in Springfield are also “ready to use progressive revenue to protect working people.”
“They had 33 proposals last year for progressive revenue. They got three across the finish line… There’s a little bit more work to do,” Johnson said.
Noting that federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits are days away from being cut off, Johnson added, “It’s a matter of life and death for many of these families. Without health care, people will die. Without access to food, more children will go to bed hungry. I know what it’s like to open a refrigerator and there’s no food in it. It’s embarrassing. It’s humiliating. It’s degrading. That’s not the type of life that I want for my children. It’s certainly not the life that I want for other people’s children.”
City Council budget hearings were called off for two days this week to give some of Johnson’s allies time to travel to Springfield to lobby for three long-shot ideas the mayor has championed without success since his election.
They include: a statewide digital advertising tax that the city claims could generate as much as $240 million in annual revenue for Chicago if 30% of it were earmarked for cities; a .92% increase in the 4.95% corporate income tax rate with a potential to raise $830 million statewide, and as much as $100 million a year for Chicago; and an increase in the so-called “personal property replacement tax” paid by corporations. That measure would, among other things, close the loophole benefiting partnerships and trusts and cap the net loss deduction at $100,000 instead of the current $500,000.
Johnson has gotten nowhere in Springfield during the first half of his four-year term, in part because of his tensions with Gov. JB Pritzker. It’s unlikely any of his proposals for progressive revenue will pass during the final days of the veto session, let alone next session during an election year.
Nevertheless, the mayor pushed back when asked whether the Springfield lobbying trip he arranged, but did not lead, amounts to too little, too late.
Johnson said he and his staff have had “multiple conversations with the governor’s office,” and are in constant touch with Democratic legislative leaders. He has also made several personal lobbying trips to Springfield, with the first coming before his inauguration.
”This idea of `too late, not soon enough,’ I’m having a tough time … understanding this notion that… there’s some sort of end or start date,” Johnson said. “There’s no end or start date when it comes to advocating on behalf of the people of Chicago.”
A mass transit bailout for Chicago remains a possibility. But that may not happen by Thursday’s legislative deadline. The immediate pressure is off after CTA, Metra and Pace shrunk their combined shortfall from $770 million to $202 million, and the CTA postponed threatened service cuts until the last half of 2026.
With no state revenue rescue in sight to help erase the city’s revised $1.19 billion shortfall, Johnson will have no choice but to try to find the 26 votes he needs to pass a budget and salvage as much of his $600 million tax package as he can.
It won’t be easy with Pritzker serving as lead blocker for business leaders determined to stop Johnson’s $21 a month per-employee head tax that they call a “job killer.”
On Tuesday, Johnson said it’s time for business leaders to “do some soul-searching” and agree to shoulder more of the tax burden to help the city repair some of the “reputational harm” done by Trump’s portrayal of Chicago as a crime-plagued “hell hole” even after the city had its least violent summer in decades.
The mayor refused to identify his plan B if the head tax and other major pieces of his $600 million tax package do not garner support. Nor would he say whether he would leave it to alderpersons to find a revenue or cost-cutting replacement — and suffer the political consequences for the alternatives they choose.