Mayor Brandon Johnson and his allies quashed a drive Wednesday to stall a key plank of his progressive agenda, pushing forward with an ordinance to boost base wages for tipped workers.
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The mini-rebellion by a group of moderate and more conservative members of Chicago’s City Council was the most pointed pushback yet for the mayor who assumed office in May.
The moves didn’t derail the measure that would end a special tipped minimum wage in Chicago. That change is now set to be approved Friday. And his allies closed out the meeting by taking a procedural step to advance another key piece of Johnson’s policy agenda that would raise dedicated funds to address homelessness.
Still, as aldermen debated the “One Fair Wage” ordinance that would phase out Chicago’s subminimum wage for service employees over the next five years, some parliamentary high jinks hark back to when Johnson’s predecessor, Lori Lightfoot, presided over several protest maneuvers from the council.
The pushback Lightfoot endured was a stark contrast to years of mostly complacent behavior by the council during much of Rahm Emanuel’s two terms as mayor as well as the two-decade reign of Richard M. Daley. Wednesday’s protests from aldermen signaled some opposition is brewing against Johnson, but he and allies successfully fought them off, signaling the mayor still has the votes needed to get many of his goals passed.
The scenario played out after a snafu earlier this week in which the city clerk’s office failed to post the minimum wage measure on the council’s agenda with enough advance notice, as legally mandated. The mistake was “due to an administrative and human error,” clerk spokeswoman Diana Martinez said.
Because of that delay, Ald. Michael Rodriguez, 22nd, who heads the council’s Workforce Development Committee that was shepherding the ordinance, sought to use a council procedure to move the vote until Friday for a special council meeting. But Ald. Brendan Reilly, 42nd, who has raised concerns about the tipped wage ordinance, said Rodriguez couldn’t even seek to make the parliamentary maneuver because the item itself wasn’t posted the required two days ahead of Wednesday’s meeting.
“Where is the 48 hours? This isn’t transparency, Mr. President,” Reilly said to the mayor. Johnson responded that this is why they were delaying the vote until Friday. Reilly still motioned to override the maneuver but his appeal failed in a 15-30 vote and another procedural effort to delay the vote beyond Friday from Ald. Raymond Lopez, 15th, also failed in a 18-30 vote.
“Mr. President, I think it’s a huge inconvenience to bring the entire council back Friday, when we are coming back Wednesday already,” Johnson opponent Ald. Anthony Beale, 9th, said before supporting Lopez’s motion, referring to next week’s scheduled mayoral budget address. “I just believe that this is a total waste of our taxpayers’ time and money to convene for one item on Friday.”
Beale, a notorious thorn to mayors dating back years, also retaliated by sending all of the mayor’s new measures to the council’s Rules Committee, a tactic used to stall legislation. The Far South Side alderman said he’s upset with the Johnson administration because he’s opposed to the large number of migrants being bused from Texas and elsewhere being sent to a police station in his ward.
The mayor’s floor leader, Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, 35th, shot down colleagues seeking the delay by noting the workforce committee voted “overwhelmingly to advance the one fair wage ordinance to make sure that some of the lowest-paid workers in the state of Chicago see a raise.”
“These are mostly Black women. These are mostly brown women who struggle to make ends meet,” Ramirez-Rosa said. “And in this case, we have opted as a council to defer and publish this item and to take it to Friday because workers have waited too long. It’s time to pass one fair wage.”
In the end, none of the objectors’ efforts to stall the vote worked. If passed, the ordinance would make Chicago the largest American city to independently abolish the tipped wage for service workers.
The effort has faced opposition from business interests that say it would kill profits, while some servers are worried that while they’ll make more of a base salary they’ll make less in tips. But the latest measure was pitched as a compromise between the main restaurant lobby and the Johnson administration. The ordinance requires the pay for tipped employees to eventually match the hourly minimum required for all other workers in the city over the next five years.
Chicago’s minimum wage for tipped workers is currently 60% of the city’s $15.80 per hour minimum wage, or $9.48 per hour. If tipped workers do not receive enough in gratuities to reach the $15.80 minimum, large employers must make up the full difference while smaller employers have to ensure the tipped workers earn at least $15 per hour.
The city’s minimum wage is set to increase annually by the rate of consumer price index hikes or by 2.5%, whichever is lower. Illinois’ state minimum wage is now $13 per hour.
The five-year phaseout of Chicago’s subminimum wage — longer than the two years detailed in the original proposal — means that starting next July, tipped workers will be due raises that will shrink that 40% gap by 8% each year until parity is reached by July 1, 2028.
Following the vote on the minimum wage, aldermen held a required hearing on the measure to raise dedicated funds for homelessness services.
Dubbed “Bring Chicago Home,” the proposal would change the way taxes are charged when properties are sold, with additional revenues put in a special fund city departments could only tap for homelessness services. Rather than charging a flat 0.75% rate per $500, Johnson’s proposed tiered rate would hit the most expensive property sales hardest: decreasing the tax rate on sale values below $1 million and increasing it on those above that threshold.
Advocates on Wednesday argued the city had a moral imperative to support the initiative, arguing it would create a steady and dedicated revenue stream for permanent housing and wraparound services amid an existing housing crunch and the worsening asylum-seeker crisis. Business interests, though, said there was not yet a detailed accounting of how the extra revenues would be spent and suggested it would put a damper on an already-hobbled commercial real estate market.
“Simply put, Bring Chicago Home is a blank check,” said Brad Tietz, vice president of government relations at the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, saying there was “no transparent plan” to address homelessness. That garnered boos and one shout of “that’s a lie!” from the crowd.
According to an information packet provided to aldermen at the meeting, the revenue would fund housing and other wraparound services, including potentially expanding on pandemic-era emergency rental programs, acquiring buildings for new, non-congregate shelters, and rehabbing existing facilities.
The debate occurred a day after Johnson announced he’d created a new city position — chief homelessness officer — as a point person on the issue “responsible for addressing the complexities of homelessness and housing insecurity in Chicago, fostering greater policy and operational coordination across city departments and sister agencies, and providing strong leadership to effect improvements in this realm.”
The city’s own point-in-time count, conducted in January of 2023, found 6,139 residents were experiencing homelessness in shelters, encampments and unsheltered areas. A Chicago Coalition for the Homeless analysis put the count at over 68,000 in 2021, a number that includes more than 44,000 people living doubled up and is larger than the population of a standard Chicago ward.
The Neighborhood Building Owners Alliance has also argued the tax hike would raise rents.
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A brief analysis released Wednesday by staff from the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, however, estimated the impact on rents would be “less than 0.1% for all but the most expensive units,” or less than $1 per month on an apartment renting for $1,000 per month.
Wednesday’s hearing was required before members of City Council vote on whether to place the question on March primary ballots. If voters approved it, the new rate would not take effect until Jan. 1, 2025 and money from it could not be spent until the 2026 budget.
The council also voted to establish a working group to explore plans to reopen the city’s shuttered mental health centers and establish a non-police 911 response to crises. In addition, the council OK’d requiring Chicago Transit Authority officials to show up to quarterly hearings before aldermen.