Chicago City Council kills Mayor Brandon Johnson's proposed $300 million property tax increase

Mayor Brandon Johnson got the message on the first day of budget hearings that his $300 million property tax increase wouldn’t fly.

But just in case it wasn’t abundantly clear, the City Council delivered that message again Thursday in the loudest of political terms.

The increase that would have broken one of Johnson’s fundamental campaign promises was shot down, with no debate, 50-0.

The unanimous vote was largely symbolic. Negotiations to reduce or eliminate the property tax increase and replace it with a mix of new revenue and reprogrammed federal pandemic relief funds began last weekend.

But mayoral allies and critics alike nevertheless seized the opportunity to score political points with angry constituents struggling to hold on to their homes and businesses after reassessment increases and two straight years of up-to-the-limit property tax hikes to bankroll Chicago Public Schools.

Thursday’s vote also was perhaps the strongest sign yet that Johnson’s anemic public approval ratings have emboldened the Council to stop taking its marching orders from the mayor’s office.

“This is a defeat of epic proportions,” Southwest Side Ald. Marty Quinn (13th) told the Sun-Times in the run-up to Thursday’s vote.

“The mayor can spin it and portray himself as Mayor Collaborator all he wants," Quinn added. "But in reality, within a week’s time, his budget will have been voted down. That is hugely significant for a City Council that is growing more independent. It can’t be understated.”

Thirty-one alderpersons had signed onto the call for the special meeting to prevent Johnson from running out the clock and forcing the council into a corner just to get the budget approved by the legal deadline of Dec. 31.

They thought that Johnson pushed back his budget address by two weeks in an attempt to drag the final vote into the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. That could have forced alderpersons to choose between a $300 million property tax increase and a budget shutdown.

Johnson and his top mayoral aides flatly deny that scenario.

Instead, at a news conference after Thursday’s special meeting, Johnson took the latest in a series of Council defeats in stride.

“This is a healthy process. This is something that my administration can handle. I’m not intimidated by voices from individuals who are city leaders in their own respect,” the mayor said.

Johnson said he has no doubt the Council will ultimately pass a balanced budget that avoids “one-time scoops,” invests in people and does not cut city services by laying off city employees or imposing mandatory furlough days. But he once again refused to identify alternative revenue he could support, except to say that revenue must be “progressive.” Nor would he say whether a property tax increase of any size can or should be avoided.

The negotiations are "a good thing for Chicago. It’s a new process. People will learn to adjust to it as we continue to move forward," Johnson said. “This is what Chicago wants."

His aides insist they made no attempt to block Thursday’s vote and do not view it as an embarrassment. In fact, Johnson told reporters on Tuesday, he was never serious about the $300 million property tax increase. He made it a centerpiece of his $17.3 billion budget simply to shock the Council into proposing serious revenue-raising alternatives, he said.

“As a public school teacher, sometimes we do things to get people’s attention, and so now that we have everyone’s attention, I’ve said from the very beginning this is a proposal. I’m a collaborative mayor, for the first time in the history of Chicago, you’re actually seeing that type of collaborative approach,” Johnson told reporters this week.

The mayor said then he is open to a “plethora of ideas,” so long as they don’t compromise his core values of “investing in people” while avoiding layoffs and furlough days.

Another must-have is keeping the $272 million advance payment on city pensions. That amount is in addition to the annual contribution mandated by state law. Johnson calls the extra payment critical to repairing the “structural damage” done by predecessors who allowed the pension crisis to fester.

Vote is ‘a welcome excercise,’ top Johnson aide says

Hours before the unanimous vote, Chief External Affairs Officer Kennedy Bartley flatly denied the Council's impending rejection of the $300 million property tax increase would embarrass the mayor.

Bartley said there was “no directive or attempt to stop this meeting from happening.” In fact, the Johnson administration “encouraged even allies to take whatever vote they feel like they need to take to kind of show their constituencies that they’re doing the hard work … collaborating on a budget that works for all Chicago.”

“It’s a welcome exercise. … I would hardly call it an embarrassment,” she said.

During the 1980’s power struggle known as “Council Wars,” alderpersons led by Council members Edward Vrdolyak (10th) and Edward Burke (14th) thwarted Mayor Harold Washington’s every move. That included introducing their own budget to counter Washington’s spending plan.

That was the only other time in recent memory that the City Council attempted to wrest control of the budget away from the mayor.

But Bartley said the Council’s growing independence has been brewing since 2015, when then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel chose political retirement instead of seeking a third term after the court-ordered release of the Laquan McDonald shooting video.

“Mayor Emanuel not running for reelection was representative of a change in tide. ... There was a shift in culture toward more independence,” Bartley said. “A lot of us who are in government now have spent so much of our time … calling for greater independence and calling for greater transparency and transformation. So, we certainly can’t flinch when we’re seeing it.”

‘We had the votes, and he did not’

Ald. Anthony Beale (9th), who spearheaded the call for Thursday’s special meeting, cautioned his constituents not to be fooled by Johnson’s early retreat.

“He’s given up on the property tax increase because he knows we had the votes and he did not,” Beale told the Sun-Times.

Although the vote was no surprise, Beale said it’s “still historic for us to be finally exerting the power we’ve had all along.”

Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) said the $300 million property tax increase “never should have been proposed in the first place.” He noted the Johnson administration “immediately retreated and promised a much smaller increase within days” of the mayor’s budget address.

“If they’re able to retreat that quickly to a much lower number, how much better can we do if we continue to negotiate and force the question on cutting expenses and not talking about new revenue?” Reilly said Thursday. “This mayor seems to think that every city job is an entitlement and that these are sacred cows that can’t be touched.”

Proposed budget amendment would restore ShotSpotter

As negotiations continue to cobble together an alternative package of tax increases, fund transfers and budget cuts, 32 alderpersons are introducing a budget amendment that would increase city spending by $15.8 million.

Of that money, $6.9 million would be used to restore the ShotSpotter contract that Johnson has canceled and earmark the remaining $8.9 million for the gunshot detection system chosen after a so-called "request for information" issued by the Johnson administration.

"ShotSpotter has to be on the table. I've been saying that for almost a month," Quinn said.