Greg Hinz has a lengthy to-do list for Mayor-Elect John in Crain’s Chicago Business:
Johnson has said he wants to shift more money to social needs, dealing with the root causes of poverty and crime. He’s also said he wants to immediately promote 200 police officers to detective. But neighborhood police districts are still short more than 1,000 officers from pre-COVID days, and Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara recently threatened that hundreds more officers would resign if Johnson won. Getting them to stay, and perhaps filling some vacancies, will be job one.
Job two will be coming up with the money the mayor-elect wants for new programs and to fill existing budget holes.
Johnson outlined $800 million in tax-hike proposals he said would avoid another increase in the city’s property tax. But some moves, like an increase in the tax on home sales, require approval from Springfield. And others, like a tax on jet fuel at the city’s airports, appear to violate federal law. They’ll have to be replaced if Johnson is to deliver on his spending promises.
Equally crucial for the 57th mayor of Chicago is dealing with a business community whose major organizations endorsed Vallas and many of whose leaders opened their wallets to the former CPS chief and ex-city budget director, a longtime fixture of city politics. Johnson may not find that easy, given his frequent attacks on “rich corporations” and the the corporate fear from the departures of Boeing, Citadel and other top companies. But then, both sides ultimately need each other.
Johnson also will have to decide whether he really will stay out of City Council reorganization, as new aldermen perhaps ratify or maybe change a plan adopted last week by the outgoing council, and whether to proceed with an all-out bid to win the 2024 Democratic National Convention.
Also up for a decision are such tough issues as whether to approve a new franchise deal for Commonwealth Edison, something Lightfoot proposed but has been unable to get through, and how to get more money to expand investment in South and West Side neighborhoods.
Chicago’s sales tax rate is 10.25%; Illinois has the second highest property taxes in the country; the city cannot impose an income tax or city earnings tax without the permission of Springfield; as noted above it can’t impose a jet fuel tax without permission from the federal government. I suspect reality will fall hard on the mayor-elect.
So, the people of Chicago have elected a more circumspect version of Lightfoot, but they are still getting marxist nonsense and even a worse policy of criminal coddling.
This is a major step for Chicago towards Baltimore, Detroit, Newark, Washington. The collapse of Chicago’s economy and population is now set in concrete.
Not exactly. Voter turnout in the mayoral run-off has been estimated at 33%. That’s pathetically low. What the election means it that Brandon Johnson was more effective in getting his voters out than Paul Vallas was but that Chicago voters were not particularly enthusiastic about either of them.
Furthermore, Mr. Johnson’s victory was a narrow one. What I think the election demonstrates more than anything else is that progressives are more highly motivated than moderates in Chicago.