America’s Worst Mayor Keeps Losing
Chicago’s Brandon Johnson gives up on a $300 million property tax hike, another note of evidence that he is in over his head
Mayor Brandon Johnson is taking his city on a progressive kamikaze course, and Chicago’s Democratic political establishment may be tiring of the spectacle.
On Thursday the City Council met in special session to block the mayor’s plan to use a $300 million property tax increase to balance the city’s budget. The vote was unanimous, 50-0, so is Mr. Johnson getting the message yet?
With the public rebuke looming, Mr. Johnson equivocated Tuesday, claiming his proposal was merely to “get people’s attention.” “As a public school teacher,” Mr. Johnson said, “sometimes we do things to get people’s attention. And so now that we have the attention of everyone, I’ve said from the very beginning, this is a proposal. . . . I’m a collaborative mayor.”
Chicago’s 50 adult aldermen may be less amused at being compared to children. The mayor backed off the property tax because he knew he was going to lose, and he’s losing often these days.
In March voters rejected a Johnson-supported referendum to increase the city’s real-estate transfer tax on properties valued at more than $1 million. Mr. Johnson’s plan to use a high-interest loan to fund excessive contract demands from his benefactors at the Chicago Teachers Union led to the mass resignation of the Chicago school board.
The property tax hike was a sign of desperation from a mayor who promised not to raise the levy. At the time Mr. Johnson called property taxes the “lazy form of governance” and insisted that “we have to make sure we are not raising revenue off the backs of working people.” But hey, it’s easier now than confronting his union allies.
While pushing for the property tax, the mayor’s office threatened voters with false choices. Without the tax, the office suggested, the alternative would be “workforce reductions,” including slashing 2,500 police and 600 fire department jobs and subjecting residents to an army of rats. Voters would have to accept less frequent garbage collection, reductions in tree trimming and fewer “rat abatement services.”
Eek, but please. In 2023 the Chicago budget was about $17 billion, up from some $11 billion in 2019. From 2019 to 2024, the Chicago Public Schools added almost 7,000 employees while CPS enrollment declined by more than 30,000 students. The Covid boom in federal money was meant as temporary relief but has become entrenched in higher spending benchmarks.
Chicago is also confronting the rolling scandal of its underfunded pensions for government workers and big payments are always coming due. Chicago’s pension debt is now $37.2 billion, almost $2 billion more than in 2023 and the share of the city’s budget going to pension payments has more than tripled to 23.2% of net appropriations from 6.8% in 2014, according to the Illinois Policy Institute.
Chicago doesn’t need higher taxes to drive away more taxpayers. It needs a mayor who isn’t a wholly-owned public-union subsidiary.
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