Listening to Brandon Johnson Tuesday after a City Council majority voted to require three-fifths of the body to approve future bond authorizations, it sounded like the mayor intended to veto the measure.
He should sign it instead.
If the mayor allowed this prudent and commonplace policy to enter into law, it would signal to bond investors and credit analysts, who are taking an increasingly dim view of the city of Chicago as a safe investment, that policymakers here across the ideological spectrum understand the language of dollars and cents — even if they agree on little else.
Alas, in his comments following the council’s 32-15 vote to subject new bond authorization to the approval of at least 30 of Chicago’s 50 aldermen, Johnson made it clear he views worries about Chicago’s growing debt pile entirely through his usual ideological lens. Per Johnson’s worldview, heaping more debt burdens on future taxpayers is a way to redress inequities rather than a necessary tool to maintain the city’s infrastructure.
“We use bonds to invest on the West and South sides of Chicago in particular,” he said.
Well, sure. But as a general matter bonds are meant to finance long-lived infrastructure work — on the South, West or any other sides of Chicago. And a city swimming in pension and bond debt, to the point where those two buckets consume almost 40% of its annual budget, must show far more discretion than has this administration when it comes to tapping the markets.
Johnson went on to tout the 2024 council authorization of his $1.25 billion in bonding authority for neighborhood economic development projects. That was a special bonding initiative, tied to the future expiration of dozens of Chicago’s tax increment financing districts, which will add property tax revenues to the city’s coffers as they run their course. Essentially, the idea was to get more bang from that future TIF-expiration buck sooner rather than later without subjecting taxpayers to future hikes to cover the interest.
We expressed cautious openness to the idea at the time, and 32 aldermen voted yes — more than the three-fifths threshold to which Johnson now objects. That’s precisely the sort of majority that should be required for a vote so consequential.
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The issue of this mayor’s recklessness with debt arose less than a year later when the administration jammed authorization for another $830 million in bonds through the council with the barest of majorities just days after Standard & Poor’s downgraded the city’s credit, the city’s first downgrade in a decade. Under Johnson’s watch, the city’s annual cost of servicing general-obligation bonds — the sorts of securities covered by both the $1.25 billion and $830 million votes — has spiked, as we outlined last month.
If the mayor does as he implied and vetoes the three-fifths requirement, the council should override. Aldermen Daniel La Spata, 1st, Chris Taliaferro, 29th, and Andre Vasquez, 40th, didn’t vote Tuesday on the measure. If two of those three join the 32 who voted yes, there will be enough to push this through over Johnson’s objection.
They should do so for the sake of the city’s financial future.
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