Just as striking as Mayor Brandon Johnson’s thunderous case Thursday that his 2026 budget proposal is the best answer to President Donald Trump’s continued attacks on Chicago was the wary reaction from the aldermen who need to vote to pass it.
As the freshman mayor highlighted the key points of his $16.6 billion package for next year, only his staunchest progressive allies consistently stood up throughout his 40-minute address in City Council chambers to cheer on those measures — including his pitch to reinstate Chicago’s corporate head tax.
“This budget is, I believe, it’s dead on arrival,” 2nd Ward Ald. Brian Hopkins, a mayoral opponent, told reporters after Johnson’s speech. “There’s not 26 votes right now to support a head tax at this level.”
His downtown neighbor, Ald. Brendan Reilly, 42nd, described the mayor’s proposal as “smoke and mirrors,” but was less clear on what the opposition would offer instead. “We’re gonna have to work that out as a body. I’m not here to propose my own city budget today.”
So begins the next several weeks of negotiations among the political factions that occupy City Hall, a process that will play out in dueling media statements, backroom jockeying and a smattering of sometimes-sleepy, sometimes-contentious budget hearings until Johnson can get to 26 out of 50 votes.
And despite the healthy appetite among council members for taking a red pen to central planks of the mayor’s proposal, less common ground existed on which ones should stay and which should go.
Still, Ald. Andre Vasquez, 40th, commended Johnson for beginning talks on a “much calmer approach” this time around compared with a year ago, when City Hall came a couple of weeks shy of encountering a government shutdown.
“This body is a lot more independent than it has been, so to get to 26 I don’t think it’s any easier,” Vasquez, a frequent mayoral critic from the left, said. “There’s always a road ahead. How many bumps are there in it? That’s up to anybody’s guess.”
A cautious City Council
The mayor’s handpicked budget chair, 28th Ward Ald. Jason Ervin, acknowledged there was room to water down the mayor’s $21-per-employee head tax on businesses with more than 100 employees, while saying some kind of corporate tax may be the best option compared with other revenue evils that would punish working-class families.
“It is something that, I think, can be done,” Ervin told reporters. “Now, might there be some adjustments to it? There very well may be, but I think it’s a good starting point.”
Johnson’s finance chair, Ald. Pat Dowell, 3rd, also said she was “not sure” the current iteration of the head tax would survive, but “I do believe in his point about corporations being paying more. I don’t know what that sweet spot is.”
The mayor’s decision to again skip the inflation-tied increase to the property tax levy, an automatic ladder first enacted by his predecessor Lori Lightfoot, was another concern for Dowell.
“I’m disappointed that that’s not included in the budget. I think it gives our residents some assurance about how we’re approaching property taxes and our budget going forward,” Dowell, 3rd, said. “I think there are many of us in here who probably would support (it), and I imagine that that will be discussed as we move forward.”
Ervin, however, said “personally, I don’t think the votes are there for a property tax increase.”
The next municipal election is in February 2027, and no Chicago mayor has muscled through a property tax hike less than two years out from city officials facing voters.
But Reilly, one of the architects of the 2011 head tax repeal under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, cautioned his colleagues Johnson’s current recommendation does not reflect enough structural fixes. “We’re going to be in a worse place next year, during an election year,” he said.
Last year’s remarkably chaotic budget process began on the wrong foot when Johnson broke his campaign promise by pitching a $300 million property tax increase, which one of his closest allies, Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, instantly condemned in front of TV cameras.
By the end, two leaders of the Progressive Caucus — the council bloc most politically aligned with the mayor — joined moderates in voting no: North Side Aldermen Vasquez and Matt Martin.
This year, the entire Progressive Caucus stood as a unified force for a news conference just outside chambers to cautiously nod to the head tax and other ideas Johnson pitched in his speech.
“We’re actually really heartened,” Ald. Maria Hadden, 49th, a caucus co-chair, told reporters. “This is the first time we’ve had a mayor present a budget proposal that actually includes progressive revenue options.”
Another controversial budgeting tactic, sweeping more than $1 billion out of the city’s tax increment financing accounts, known as TIFs, concerned some aldermen. Chicago Public Schools would get a little over half, or more than $520 million, which plugs a budget hole on the district side, while the city would receive $232 million.
“I’m 100% worried it’s going to affect projects that we have plans for,” Ald. Nicole Lee, 11th, said. “This is not really a structural fix. It’s more of a one-time Band-Aid. I’m not sure that we should necessarily be lauding record TIF surpluses. … CPS is going to have a big hole to climb when it comes to finding their own funding, and TIF is not an endless pot of money.”
Labor, business and others opine
The Chicago Teachers Union, Johnson’s biggest funder during his 2023 campaign, had full-throated support for his budget proposal.
“As a history teacher, it occurs to me that this level of leadership also costs money,” CTU president Stacy Davis Gates said at a City Hall rally with the mayor and his allies ahead of his budget address. “This is the most historic moment that I have experienced in this hall of power.”
Chicago Board of Education member Jitu Brown then led the chant: “Whose city? Our city. Whose schools? Our schools.”
The Service Employees International Union affiliates, Johnson’s second-biggest labor ally in his election, were silent. A spokesperson for SEIU Local 73, the chapter that’s been embroiled in a dispute with the CTU, declined to comment on Johnson’s budget Thursday.
The Chicago Federation of Labor, an umbrella organization for unions across the city, said it was glad the proposal did not include new layoffs, but that “shorting the advanced pension payment” designed to benefit retired city workers and “filling long-term operational shortfalls with one-time maneuvers does not address the structural problems that put us in this $1.2 billion hole to begin with.”
Meanwhile, Johnson’s speech had barely concluded by the time business opposition flooded in. The Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce likened the head tax to a “tariff on jobs” and said had Johnson been “serious about fixing Chicago’s fiscal challenges, we need to focus on long-term strategies to grow and create jobs,” adding that Johnson’s proposed increased tax on cloud-based computer services hurts “businesses of all sizes and sectors.”
Though thankful Johnson did not increase property or hotel taxes, the state’s hotel and lodging association also called the head tax a job killer, while the Illinois Retail Merchants Association said it would “lead to more empty storefronts in neighborhoods across Chicago,” from restaurants to grocery stores and pharmacies.
Leadership of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago — a business group — and the budget watchdog Civic Federation both expressed disappointment that Johnson did not crib many ideas from the budget working group he convened, or more seriously consider efficiencies.
That working group recommended 45 different efficiency options, and a separate outside report from Ernst & Young proposed more, said Mary Wagoner, a member of the working group and the Civic Committee. “Not much of that made it into the budget,” Wagoner said.
Recommendations to offload and consolidate city-owned property and managing the city’s fleet did make it in, but Johnson did not propose anything structural “that would put the city on the right path towards fiscal stability,” Wagoner said.
Civic Committee President Derek Douglas said business groups had also raised $100 million to scale up city, county and state violence prevention programs. The city had committed $40 million in annual spending as part of that effort.
The mayor “doesn’t seem to recognize the investment we’ve already made,” Douglas said, while “investments the city is supposed to be making, he seems to be trying to offload those” on the business community.