Chicago should stop waiting for Superman
Telling Brandon Johnson to act more responsibly is a losing battle. It’s past time for City Council to be the adult in the room.
The Washington Post published an ominous and accurate editorial last Sunday: “Chicago careens toward insolvency.”
The piece echoes a clear message from ratings agencies: Without immediate action, Chicago will become the only “junk” rated big city in the nation by the end of this budget cycle.
It’s an emergency. But Chicago’s elected officials and most of its civic institutions are not acting like it.
The typical response to this emergency has been simple: yell at Mayor Brandon Johnson to act more responsibly. Or worse, complain behind closed doors and quietly hope he changes course.
It’s not working. The mayor has ignored calls for more responsible budgeting for three years. He’s rapidly accelerated the city’s financial decline through reckless borrowing and a refusal to slow spending. Barring divine intervention, Johnson will not change.
Superman will not emerge from the fifth floor of City Hall to stop this runaway train.
(And hoping voters elect Superman as the new mayor in February 2027 isn’t enough. Far too much damage is possible between now and then.)
So what can be done?
How City Council can stop the bleeding
Chicago City Council has shown willingness to publicly embarrass Mayor Johnson. This is a new dynamic for a city in which the mayor wields king-like authority.
But there’s a difference between insurgency and statecraft. Council needs to engage in the latter.
City Council has the power to make several immediate improvements that would be credit-positive and bring lasting benefits to city government. The Civic Federation points to a few simple, short-term fixes:
Pass an ordinance to guarantee that City Council has equal access to all financial information and expertise available to the mayor’s office.
Elect a council president to serve as the lead budget negotiator with the mayor’s office and nominate committee chairs.
Expand and professionalize the City Council Office of Financial Analysis.
Expand substantive committee staff and limit their work to legislative matters rather than constituent services.
Pass an ordinance requiring the proposed budget to be released earlier in the year, including a formal process for proposing budget amendments from the council that require response from the mayor’s office.
Johnson will not support any of this, which is exactly why the council must take matters into its own hands.
And council members shouldn’t stop there.
Building better institutions
When Chicago was hit with two credit downgrades in February, local officials hardly made a peep.
Now watch how New York City’s independently elected comptroller, Mark Levine, reacted to a change in his city’s credit outlook last week (this is an action short of a downgrade that signals a future downgrade is more likely.)
Notice the difference?
The New York City Comptroller has the power to audit every agency, review every contract for fiscal compliance, and manage the five city pension funds as a fiduciary.
Meanwhile, Chicago’s elected treasurer is designed to be a bookkeeper with a press team.
Current Chicago Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin lost her bid for Congress last Tuesday, leading insiders to suspect she’s vulnerable to a challenge in 2027. Council should transform that office into a real watchdog, with changes taking effect following next year’s election.
In fact, that was one of four structural changes recommended by the Washington Post in their recent editorial on Chicago.
All four will be familiar to readers of The Last Ward:
Create independent oversight of the budget.
Allow Chicago to access debt relief in Chapter 9 bankruptcy court.
Implement $1 billion in structural efficiencies identified by EY but ignored by the mayor’s office.
Change municipal election timing to double turnout in local elections.
Chicago doesn’t need a superhero.
It needs a better system, producing better results, that lasts beyond any one mayor.
In the news
The Wall Street Journal editorial board provided an Illinois primary election recap with their piece, “A Glimmer of Hope in Illinois.”1
An excerpt:
Voters in more than 30 counties or townships—out of 102 counties in [Illinois]—weighed in on a nonbinding ballot question asking if the state should opt into the new federal tax-credit scholarship program. Some 64% of voters said yes, and the referendum passed in all jurisdictions that have final results, says the Illinois Policy Institute (IPI) …
State lawmakers last month introduced a bill to ban the state from opting in, but Democratic state Sen. Adriane Johnson has introduced a bill to opt in. Democratic comptroller Susana Mendoza called the decision to do so an “easy one.”
Why let Illinois money go to students in other states? The answer is that too many state Democrats bend to the teachers union. The CTU gave $72,500 to the campaign of Democrat state Sen. Graciela Guzman about the time she introduced the ban on opting into the tax-credit program, says IPI.
But Tuesday’s results also showed how the union is out of step with the public. The CTU endorsed 13 candidates with primary opponents and donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the campaigns. Five of those state candidates, plus a U.S. House contender and a Cook County commissioner, lost.
Here in Chicago, I joined WGN’s John Williams and Fox to go deeper on the Washington Post editorial.
For background, see “How Democrats can unlock $100M+ for Chicago education without tax hikes.”