Mayor Brandon Johnson: the First 100 Days
- Details
- Category: Latest News
It’s probably way too early to say much about the new Mayor and where he’s taking the city. After all, he’s only been in office for a few months since his May 15 inauguration. But hey, you have to start somewhere.
It is no secret that many members of RPBG hoped for a different outcome and were leery, if not downright fearful, of what a Mayor Johnson would do if he got elected. Well, the first indicators are mixed. Johnson has made overtures to the business community and is reportedly working with a number of companies to increase job opportunities for young people in the city, particularly in lower-income areas where such opportunities are especially hard to find.
None other than Sterling Bay’s Andy Gloor has publicly praised the new Mayor for his interest in, and support of, the Lincoln Yards development that Sterling Bay is still trying to get off the ground. Gloor is quoted as having said, “he understands the importance of these large developments for Chicago.”
It’s probably way too early to say much about the new Mayor and where he’s taking the city. The first indicators are mixed.
But other recent events point to a different conclusion. Perhaps the most notable was the release of the “First We Get the Money” budget plan just days after he took office. This plan was released by the Action Center on Race and the Economy (ACRE) and the People’s Unity Platform. Both groups have strong progressive / socialist leanings, and both were avid supporters of the new Mayor when he was running for office.
When the report was released, there was speculation about whether the timing and content was a trial balloon that the Mayor knew about and wanted to float, or if it was truly something he was blindsided by, as he claimed.
Either way, we know that the $12 billion “First We Get the Money” budget calls for huge tax increases. Among these are an additional 3.5% income tax on households earning greater than $100,000 per year; a 0.4% wealth tax on the city’s top 10% of earners; and a $33 per employee head tax on any business with 50 or more employees. The budget also calls for reductions to the Chicago police budget and the elimination of all current department vacancies. It is also notable that one of the authors of this budget is Saqib Bhatti who was a member of the new Mayor’s transition team.
Given the close ties between the Mayor and the budget authors, it seems a bit hard to believe that Johnson was truly surprised by the report and what was in it. He has publicly denied he had any involvement and says this plan is not his own.
But Johnson did run on a plan to increase taxes by $800 million to fund a wide range of programs to lessen the inequality that exists in the city. While $800 million is not $12 billion, it’s still a lot of money for a city that already has some of the highest taxes in the country with public services that, many people agree, are not a good value for the taxes we pay.
The $12 billion “First We Get the Money” budget calls for huge tax increases. It seems a bit hard to believe that Johnson was truly surprised by the report and what was in it.
More recently, there was the revelation that the new Mayor appointed a working group of advisors to help him come up with creative solutions to the city’s massive pension fund problems. Normally, appointing a working group for such an important problem would be seen as a positive step to take. However, as reported by Greg Hinz in Crain’s Chicago Business (June 26, 2023), of the 17 members appointed to this working group, exactly none of them came from the city’s business community which will likely bear the brunt of whatever it costs to fix this problem. The 17 members were all union officials (seven of them, according to Hinz), politicians and administrators.
Most recently, we hear that the Bring Chicago Home proposal to increase the transfer tax is coming up for debate in the City Council. You can read more about this proposal in this Newsletter. By all indications, the Mayor fully supports this proposal. Indeed, he ran on it as part of his plan for increasing taxes to accomplish his social and economic goals. This proposal is strongly opposed by the business community as yet another tax targeted against one specific group accruing to the benefit of another.
In another Crain’s letter to the editor (June 19, 2023), Christopher Deutsch, an “angel investor,” writes about his love for the city and his belief in its potential as demonstrated by his track record of investing in local businesses and start-ups. But he also says that the pandemic made a lot of people realize they did not have to live where they work, prompting an important second question – why do we live here at all?
Of the 17 members appointed to this working group, exactly none of them came from the city’s business community.
His answer is that Chicago is still “an amazing city” but warns that, “unless we become more competitive, our city is going to lose the very entrepreneurs we desperately need here. If we lose them… will our city be competitive five, 10, 20 years from now?”
This is the message the business community has been delivering for a long time. With the election of Brandon Johnson as Mayor, the fear is that this message has never mattered less and is increasingly something our elected officials don’t even want to hear.
Will Mayor Johnson work with the business community to create more opportunity for all Chicagoans, or will he look at the business community as his golden goose to be plundered for the many programs he would like to implement? As Citadel and Boeing have shown, businesses have choices about where they can locate and whether to stay in Chicago or leave. If Johnson choses not to include the business community in his circle of advisors, he may find that he has even bigger problems to solve that he started out with. With most of his four-year term still ahead of him, we will know soon enough what the new Mayor really believes and how his actions will impact the city’s future.
