The Chicago City Council, during a special meeting Thursday, voted down Mayor Brandon Johnson’s $300 million property tax increase. The vote was 50-0, a rare unanimous vote. They should be lauded for standing up to the self-proclaimed Collaborator in Chief. This also shows the mayor does not have a powerful enough mandate to get his way with the council, even with his many allies.
Now the Great Collaborator has to come up with cuts and other revenue to close the hole in his budget. There are ways to cut spending without affecting essential services. The mayor stubbornly and irresponsibly refuses to take those measures. Like his predecessors, he keeps blaming past administrations for his budget woes.
Johnson is the mayor. Last year’s budget was his. The only person he has to blame is himself. He refuses to take responsibility for anything that goes wrong in this city. It is always someone else’s fault, societal failures, or some other nonsense.
Then there is this:
They don’t like that Johnson and the CTU, his former employer, are attached at the hip and that Johnson is doing everything in his power to grease the union’s contract demands. They don’t like that their property taxes keep rising to finance a bloated school system in which one of every three schools is half-empty or worse. They don’t like that a union purportedly representing teachers has morphed into a municipal political machine.(Chicago Tribune)
The Tribune is too polite to use the phrase egregious conflict of interest in Brandon Johnson’s “attached at the hip” relationship with the Chicago Teachers Union. The CTU will demand a ruinous property tax increase to finance their contract demands. Johnson will give them whatever they want. They financed his campaign and own him, lock, stock, and barrel. Citizens should fight this increase too with help from the alders.
“Mayor Brandon Johnson on Thursday pushed back on criticism that his Chicago police budget plan endangers the department’s compliance with the federal consent decree, despite dire warnings from Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and the court-ordered independent monitor… On the same day Raoul wrote his letter, Maggie Hickey, the independent monitor for assessing the city’s compliance with the consent decree, warned slashing those positions would be a “devastating blow” to CPD reform.” (Chicago Tribune)
The Attorney General’s office is the plaintiff in the suit that brought about the consent decree. The mayor’s budget plan proposes hundreds of cuts to constitutional policing, community policing and more. The mayor insists he is not going to lay off police officers. It appears Johnson’s chaotic administration is floundering badly over the budget. It must be passed by December 31st.
The miserable Chicago Bears are now considering the vacant site of the former Michael Reese Hospital for their new stadium. The South Side site is in the Bronzeville neighborhood. It would give a terrific economic boost to the area. It is easy to get to whether driving or using public transportation. It would also save the lakefront from be despoiled by that ugly monstrosity.
There is still no appetite in Springfield for state funding for the stadium. The Bears organization will have to find other means to finance a new stadium or hope the Governor and Legislature changes their minds. Mayor Johnson is on board for a new stadium. He does not have the pull in the state capitol to get it done.