Alderman speaking what others are whispering
Beale's comments reflect rancor of legions of Chicagoans
Ninth Ward Alderperson Anthony (Tony) Beale has never been the go-along-to-get-along type of city legislator. A city council member since 1999, making him one of the longest-serving members of that body; Beale clashed with previous mayors Rahm Emanuel and Lori Lightfoot. The rift with Lightfoot emerged shortly after she took office in 2019 and continued throughout her term. Beale was resolute in opposing that mayor’s move to eliminate what is known as aldermanic prerogative.
The current battle is his promise to push a potential ballot issue on eliminating Chicago’s “Sanctuary City” status, initially known as the “Welcoming City Ordinance.”
The ordinance came into being nearly 40 years ago when the late Mayor Harold Washington issued an executive order that forbade city employees from enforcing federal immigration laws; nor could city officials (primarily police officers) ask about citizenship status.
That was 1985 and Chicago wasn’t experiencing the influx of thousands of migrants per week as is the case currently. They are being bussed here from Texas and the city is spending millions of dollars to accommodate them.
Beale recently bristled over Mayor Brandon Johnson’s financial steps in addressing housing and feeding asylum-seekers coming here. The alderman is so opposed to Chicago’s designation as a sanctuary city that he said he will offer a resolution to council asking them to put the question on the upcoming March ballot whether the sanctuary city should remain. That means everyday Chicagoans, not politicians will determine the existence of the sanctuary city.
Johnson reaffirmed as recently as September 27 that he wants Chicago to remain a sanctuary city. His rationale is rooted in rhetoric and completely ignored the most basic element of being such a community in 2023-finances.
The budget Johnson is working with is weighed down with a $538 million deficit. The entire budget when Mayor Washington issued his executive order was slightly more than $2 billion.
By remaining firm in his campaign pledge not to raise property taxes, the mayor has positioned himself in an intractable spot. Without an influx of new dollars, Chicago is just one fiscal disaster from which it could take years to recover, or worse fall into bankruptcy. The multi-billion pension obligations the city has can’t continued to be pushed to the background by this administration. It simply will grow like an untreated infection.
The mayor doesn’t seem to see that if Beale’s ordinance is successful, the mayor suddenly has financial “wiggle room.” Beale needs 26 members (the council majority) to vote yes then Chicagoans will have their say on the issue at the voting booth. If voters sweep away the sanctuary city status, Johnson’s bloated budget deficit will be eased, and dollars can be redirected to the people and programs Beale charged the mayor with disregarding
He accused the mayor with ignoring the needs of “people who have lived here all their lives” in favor of spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a base camp of weatherized tents, sheltering and feeding migrants in police stations and shuttered schools, and providing migrant-focused programs. He termed the spending as reaching into what the mayor seems to think is a bottomless pit (of money)
Beale’s ward includes parts of Chatham, Roseland, Pullman, Washington Heights, West Pullman and Riverdale. He is saying aloud about asylum-seekers what many have only been speaking of in hushed tones. Beale added during a Chicago Sun-Times interview “You have people who have been living here their entire lives being denied basic services and goods. Yet we can find this kind of money to basically take it out back, put it in a barrel and burn it up. ... The amount of money we’re spending is absurd,” Beale said.
“If you were to give my ward $40 million or $50 million a year, I could transform my ward. … It would be a different community in a matter of a couple of years. If we can find money for this, why can’t we find money for people who are here paying into the system?”
He is expressing the same sentiment some South Side residents and alderpersons have shared during city-sponsored town hall meetings. During those meetings, city hall administrators were lambasted for not giving nearby residents ample warning when migrants were being moved into their neighborhoods-particularly Woodlawn and South Shore.
The Ninth Ward has experienced a rush of development since Beale has been in office. Specifically, restaurants and businesses like Amazon, Whole Foods, SC Johnson, Method, Gotham Greens and Lexington Betty Smokehouse have located there. The ward has also seen the opening of the Pullman Community Center and Pullman National Park.