Mayor Brandon Johnson’s 15-month leadership dilemma at Chicago Public Schools was finally put to rest a week ago, with the approval of its next CEO.
That’s hardly the end of the issues facing the freshman mayor when it comes to appointing top bosses at the city’s most important sister agencies, however. His bureaucratic beef with another government board, the Chicago Housing Authority, soared to new levels when he publicly angled to usurp the board’s new CEO the same week.
And with the Chicago Transit Authority lacking a permanent leader for more than a year now, Johnson’s hesitation to appoint the agency’s popular interim president has bewildered some transit advocates and members of City Council.
The turmoil across the three agencies comes less than a year out from a potential Johnson reelection bid and could fester into a campaign-trail albatross for the freshmen mayor, whom opponents hope to paint as an inexperienced executive. But he continues to argue that dissent is not dysfunction.
“I know you all remember those days when you had rubber stamp City Councils, and you didn’t have this type of consternation,” Johnson told reporters last month. “You know where the noise was, though? It was in the streets of Chicago.”
He was not-so-subtly poking at former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who oversaw the largest closure of public schools in U.S. history and triggered the beginnings of a formidable progressive movement that eventually helped elect Johnson.
And as it so happens, Johnson’s biggest adversary on the CHA Board of Commissioners, Matthew Brewer, was appointed by Emanuel more than a decade ago but has since become interim leader of the nation’s third-largest public housing agency.
In an internal memo on Thursday, Brewer toned down an earlier attack accusing Johnson of favoring political “cronies” over the residents of CHA and told his staff to ignore the “external noise.”
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Brewer added in an interview on Friday that Keith Pettigrew’s appointment to CHA CEO is a done deal, “and I don’t see anything getting in the way of that.”
“This is not about attacks or rivalries. It’s truly an attempt to fill a void that we’ve had for the last 18 months with a very qualified leader,” Brewer told the Tribune. “There’s a ripple effect when there’s not a good CEO in place. And when you take that from one agency, and it’s true for other agencies as well, then the problem compounds.”
Board appointments were relatively drama-free under recent mayors but have turned into yet another political battlefront for Johnson as he also fights with aldermen, state lawmakers and the business community to try to enact his agenda. A carousel of blunders has characterized many of his dealings with the school, transit and housing authority boards.
While Johnson tries to assert more control, however, some corners of the city’s progressive movement expressed disappointment that the mayor is seemingly espousing the same top-down governing style he campaigned against.
“This sounds very familiar to what we’re hearing at other side of the aisle when it comes to the federal government, right? Like, the authoritarianism of ‘I,’ rather than ‘we,’” said freshman Ald. Ruth Cruz, 30th. “As progressives, we are different. … The old politics wasn’t working anymore.”
The chaotic situation at the CHA stems from Johnson’s attempt to appoint ex-Ald. Walter Burnett, a close ally, to the CEO spot that was vacant since November 2024. That bid began last summer and would eventually trigger today’s open rebellion from the housing authority board, which last month approved Pettigrew as its permanent executive.
The result is an acrimonious feud between the mayor and Brewer, not unlike Johnson’s past dispute with former schools chief Pedro Martinez. The City Council has also been plunged into gridlock over committee leadership seats in its wake, given that Burnett held the coveted zoning chair position that remains empty.
But Ald. Jeanette Taylor, 20th, said her colleagues are looking for cheap shots at Johnson on his personnel issues when City Hall newcomers naturally face a learning curve due to “gatekeeping when it came to government.”
“A) They tried to keep Black people out for ages, and B) The Black people that get there are not willing to shake this (expletive) up,” Taylor said about Johnson’s moderate opponents within the Black Caucus. “I’d rather be sleeping under one of the (expletive) expressways than continue to sit in a system that mistreats the very people it claims it loves.”
Johnson’s statement reacting to the CHA vote last week pointed the finger at Brewer, whom he demoted from board chair and wishes to remove from his high-level executive post as operating chair of the housing authority.
“His stewardship of this process disenfranchised both fellow Commissioners and the communities the CHA serves,” Johnson wrote last week. “Any actions taken or agreements entered into under Mr. Brewer’s claimed authority are invalid and without legal effect.”
Brewer countered that the CHA search committee, with the mayor’s approval, underwent a “very robust belt-and-suspenders process” with an outside search firm that Johnson blew up.
“At the very last minute, when it was time to select our person and put him in place, the mayor’s office came back and said, ‘Let’s disregard that process,’ and instead he wanted to place Walter Burnett,” Brewer told the Tribune.
He said Johnson senior advisor Jason Lee contacted commissioners at various points of the process. Lee in January did message with mayor’s office assistants about “CHA board member cell numbers,” per an email log from a public records request.
Asked to elaborate on Lee’s efforts to advance Burnett, Brewer responded, “I know that we held a vote, and seven commissioners voted yes. One abstained, and then two voted no.”
Johnson’s press office didn’t respond to questions Friday about Lee’s influence, or lack of, in the CEO search.
A tumultuous saga over the next CPS superintendent ended with the approval of Macquline King on March 30. To get there, Johnson faced frequent fire from critics over the 2024 mass resignation of his handpicked school board, his subsequent school board president stepping down over antisemitic social media posts and King last year defying him on a controversial borrowing plan that first provoked Johnson’s leadership crisis with Martinez.
The Chicago Teachers Union, however, notes that CPS was hardly stable under Johnson’s predecessors and has seen ten CEOs in the last 16 years.
“Our school district is transitioning from the damage done by Rahm Emanuel who had five different CEO’s during his tenure,” union vice president Jackson Potter said in a statement after King’s approval. “CPS led by Mayor Johnson and a hybrid Board is finally embracing a commitment to provide quality public education for all its students no matter their zip code.”
While Johnson’s predecessors largely benefited from the same appointment authority, critics say the mayor’s team isn’t doing himself any favors by messing up the vetting and preparation of candidates, not shoring up consensus among allies and waiting too long to advance appointments critical to shepherding his agenda.
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For example, Johnson may have had an opening to gain control of the CHA board that is mayorally appointed, but he did not name replacements for two expired board members until earlier this year, only for opponents to stall the measure until after Pettigrew’s vote. Multiple transit board appointments have also faced hurdles.
A hearing on Johnson’s latest Metra board nominee ended with no vote last month after Johnson ally Ald. Jason Ervin, 28th, accused Ald. Andre Vasquez, 40th, of making racially charged comments about past appointees.
“So my first question is, are you a pastor?” Vasquez said to Elevated Chicago co-chair Christian Diaz, an apparent tongue-in-cheek reference to faith leaders Johnson tried to install without transit experience.
Ervin interjected, “I caution you on the type of tone and words that you use as it relates to pastors in the African American community,” to which Vasquez said he didn’t mention which race.
“Say stuff on Zoom, won’t say it to their face,” Ervin muttered before the meeting recessed.
Some committee members told the Tribune afterward their reservations were due more to the fact Diaz said he did not regularly ride Metra. But whatever the gripe, such tensions over once-routine seat assignments have become more frequent in the Johnson era.
“We can’t trust that these people have been fully vetted, and we can’t trust the administration when they say, ‘Hey, this person will do X,'” Ald. Bill Conway, 34th, said. “Early on I think everybody wanted the mayor to succeed. There was not trust issues, and we didn’t have any evidence of ‘Government 101’ failures. . … Now, that has been eroded.”
Johnson is chugging toward the end of mayoral control of CTA with no clear indication who will lead one of the largest public transit systems in the nation. Acting president Nora Leerhsen has helmed the agency for more than a year and made clear her intentions for the permanent job.
The mayor has a two-month window to make his pick before a megabill passed by state lawmakers last year goes into effect. That law redoes the entire region’s transit board structure to require buy-in from a new governing body, the Northern Illinois Transit Authority, for any selection of the CTA leader.
Last month Johnson nominated Lily Diego-Johnson for his most recent CTA board vacancy, one that’s languished since late 2025. If approved by City Council, she could possibly help him secure enough votes to approve a new leader.
Asked last month if one could interpret her appointment as a sign that he wants to name a president before June, the mayor responded, “One could.”
Both Diaz and Diego-Johnson’s appointments are set to be heard by the City Council’s transportation committee this week.
Kyle Lucas of the advocacy group Better Streets Chicago, who described some of Johnson’s transit appointments as “good” and others as “serious missteps,” said his group supports Leerhsen for the permanent job. Ald. Daniel La Spata, 1st, concurred but indicated he doesn’t need Johnson to be the one to make the push.
“I want to trust the process of the bill that passed in Springfield, and let the incoming board make that decision,” La Spata said.
The restraint comes after Johnson last year failed to advance his former chief operating officer, John Roberson, as CTA president. Transit advocates criticized Roberson for his lack of transit experience, and board members — including one of Johnson’s own appointees — made clear they wanted a broader search.
Both critics and supporters of the mayor have hinted they believe the rambunctious tenor around major appointments is here to stay, though one ally on the school board swatted away concerns about its messy CEO search.
“I know we took a long time, took a long way around to get to this vote, but I think the trip was worth it,” Johnson-appointed member Ed Bannon said. “The path might have seemed a little rough at times, but as the saying goes, ‘This is what democracy looks like.’”
The Tribune’s Kate Armanini contributed reporting.