Johnson's honeymoon with city council is splashing against the rocks
His autocratic style will make for interesting upcoming budget hearings
Few can rightfully argue that over the last four-plus months the Chicago City Council has been little more than bystanders when it comes to Mayor Brandon Johnson instituting policies and proposing changes in city government. Some may have made nothing of those facts, while others likely wonder when will it end. The answer to the latter question is now.
The shift has been gradual. Over the last few weeks however; the voices of Johnson’s council critics are tantamount to a governmental sonic boom, and are coming from different parts of the city.
Johnson appointed 29th Ward Alderperson Chris Taliaferro to head the council’s police and fire committee. As a Johnson loyalist, the second term legislator had been mum on the migrant issue until a week ago, when he said during a council immigration committee meeting “Yes, we have to have compassion, but we have to make smart moves as well. … You’re not fixing the situation, and in fact I believe you’re making it even worse.”
The West Side alderperson’s remarks were tempered compared to his 20th Ward colleague, Jeanette Taylor, who represents the ward where migrants were sheltered into the former Wadsworth Elementary School in Woodlawn. She has not relented in her criticisms of the placement of migrants since that incident last December. Last week during the same immigrant committee meeting, she said “What y’all doing is you’re going to start a race war. That’s what you’re doing. “This is going to be a race war because y’all choosing who you’re taking care of.”
Taylor was selected by Johnson as the chair of the council’s education committee.
Taylor expanded on her criticism citing her contention that the city is directing monies toward migrants that should be used in neighborhoods like hers.
The Ninth Ward’s Anthony Beale accused the Johnson Administration of a lack of fiscal responsibility, maintaining it is spending city dollars on migrant-related activities as though there is “a bottomless pit” of dollars.
Even with Gov. JB Pritzker’s pledge to direct state monies to communities to ease some of the fiscal pain caused by the flood of asylum-seekers, Team Johnson still has not presented a plausible plan for establishing these people in Chicago. His base camp plan has only won the endorsement of people on his payroll. A key reason for that is the company Johnson’s people signed the $29-million contract with to build the tents to house the migrants has a severely blemished reputation for its work in other parts of the U.S. and the world.
Johnson is behaving like someone who won, but really didn’t expect to
The mayor is making the moves of someone in charge of the nation’s third largest city - several public facing events day-after, promising a brighter future for Chicagoans; and defending his latest actions, although feebly in most instances.
His armor to deflect criticism of his moves is beginning to wear thin as he recently adopted the schoolyard saying “If You Don’t Live in Chicago, Shut the F___ Up About Chicago.” That’s a level of xenophobia we haven’t witnessed from any of his predecessors. They all fully understood the importance of the ongoing influx of suburbanites into the city. Many of them leaders of major businesses and organizations located here.
Again, however, it is the issue of asylum-seekers, which surfaced months before Johnson won the mayoral election, that makes him appear wholly unprepared and unable to get a handle on it. Granted that the race between him and Lori Lightfoot was contentious; it doesn’t excuse the fact that the migrant issue should have been on his radar long ago. As the buses continued to roll in from the southern borders, candidate Johnson and then Mayor-elect Johnson should have been developing a strategy for addressing the so-called humanitarian crisis.
His transition team also failed to offer any plans or directives; and the City has racked up nearly a half-billion dollars in spending associated with all-things-migrants. Yet, the Johnson administration is attempting to lay the blame for its ongoing botched responses at the feet of the Federal and State governments. The glaring reality is the mayor ignored this financial albatross in favor of litany of programs for which he has yet to find funding.
The administration’s overall handling of the thousands of migrants is not only indicative of leadership that really didn’t expect to be in office; and now are scrambling to figure out what to do.
Is the mayor seeing the limits of union backing?
It is a secret to no one that Brandon Johnson would not be mayor of Chicago were it not for the finances and ground troops of some of the city’s unions - especially the Chicago Teachers Union. Johnson continues to payback that support by placing CTU and Service Workers International Union (SEIU) in key appointed positions and City jobs.
The challenges the Johnson Administration face, especially when it comes to fiscal matters and the migrant issues are daunting. However, one can easily surmise if the mayor had put in place people with experience in governmental issues, especially budgets and spending; the outlook wouldn’t look so untenable-especially the looming $538 million deficit; and the billions owed to pension funds.
Rather than handing City key positions and appointments to union members as payback, Johnson’s much better option would have been to explain to those labor backers how much he appreciated their support, and repaying them for all they did would be a slow and deliberate process, but that they would be rewarded.
The mayor has backed himself into a position that when one or someone of these union appointees don’t work out; he can face the wrath of their leaders by dismissing them; or hog-tie the city with poor performers. That improves City operations or our image in no way.