After a groundswell of calls from his City Council colleagues to step down over a “bullying” incident at a special council meeting last week, Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa resigned Monday as Mayor Brandon Johnson’s floor leader and head of the powerful zoning committee.
Johnson announced the change days after a tense council meeting in which the Black Caucus accused Ramirez-Rosa of “physical and verbal harassment.”
Three aldermen also said Ramirez-Rosa threatened to use his position as zoning committee chair to scuttle projects in their wards if they went against him in the council meeting, saddling the mayor with a key council ally now alleged to have engaged in the kind of old-school City Hall strong-arm tactics Johnson’s grassroots supporters often rail against.
Ramirez-Rosa said he apologized to those three colleagues, but denied on Monday that he threatened them with his power as zoning chair.
As floor leader, Ramirez-Rosa, 35th, has been the mayor’s eyes and ears, helping pass legislation and halt it at Johnson’s behest. Ramirez-Rosa discouraged allies from attending Thursday’s special council meeting in the hopes that not enough members would be present to proceed.
The meeting was called to consider a ballot referendum question on the city’s sanctuary status. Ramirez-Rosa was accused of “manhandling” Ald. Emma Mitts, 37th, in an attempt to keep her from entering council chambers.
She eventually got in, but the meeting ended without aldermen voting on the proposed referendum. Ramirez-Rosa declined to comment on the incident last week and Mitts could not be reached.
In a censure letter prepared over the weekend, Ald. Scott Waguespack said Ramirez-Rosa “physically blocked” Mitts from entering chambers “by forcibly using his elbow and shoulder.”
Ramirez-Rosa did not detail his interaction with Mitts in his Monday statement beyond saying he was “disrespectful,” and did not immediately answer questions from a reporter about whether he physically blocked her.
In a statement Monday, Johnson said he and Ramirez-Rosa agreed the alderman should step down from his leadership positions.
“Over the weekend, I spoke with Alderwoman Emma Mitts and Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa,” Johnson’s statement said in part. “Yesterday, Alderman Ramirez-Rosa and I agreed he should step down from his positions as Chicago City Council Floor Leader and Chair of the Committee on Zoning, Landmarks, and Building Standards.”
In his own statement, Ramirez-Rosa said he took “full responsibility for what I’ve done.”
“Tensions were high at a chaotic meeting, and I let that get the best of me, leading me to act in a way unbecoming of a leader,” Ramirez-Rosa said. “I sincerely apologize to my colleague, Alderwoman Emma Mitts, for the disrespectful interaction outside of Council Chambers. I also apologize to other colleagues who I have heard also felt disrespected and harmed by my actions — Alderpeople (Nicole) Lee, (Felix) Cardona, and (Chris) Taliaferro.”
However, Ramirez-Rosa also said Lee, Cardona and Taliaferro’s claims that he threatened their wards’ projects in his zoning committee are “inaccurate.”
“I was overzealous in trying to prevent the meeting from reaching quorum, and said things I should not have said, but that’s taken on a life of its own now,” Ramirez-Rosa said. “I said out of frustration to some of my colleagues that I couldn’t work with them if they were not going to work with me, but that’s as far as it went.”
The controversy marked a potential major setback in Johnson’s tenure presiding over an increasingly contentious City Council, where the mayor has at times struggled to wrangle a vocal bloc of aldermen resistant to his progressive agenda and handling of the asylum-seeker crisis.
The leadership vacuum also comes at a critical time for Johnson, as he hopes to pass his first budget and key planks of his platform, like the “Bring Chicago Home” referendum question that would ask voters whether to hike real estate taxes on expensive sales to pay for homeless services.
The mayor will need to tap a replacement floor leader who understands the council’s parliamentary quirks and can negotiate compromises among the council’s differing racial and ideological factions. His choice must also serve to unify and earn back the body’s trust after last week’s episode.
And the head of the Zoning, Landmarks and Building Standards Committee, often a gatekeeper on what kinds of projects are built in the city and where, is a key envoy between the mayor and the city’s business and real estate development communities.
The position has ensnared others in trouble before, such as when ex-chair and Ald. Daniel Solis admitted to taking bribes from real estate developers in exchange for help on zoning issues.
Blocks away from City Hall on Monday, Solis’ political friend-turned-enemy, former Ald. Edward Burke, began trial for allegedly abusing his position as the chair of the equally powerful Finance Committee.
How Chicago should respond to its 20,400-plus migrant population, many of whom are from Latin America, has become Johnson’s biggest unexpected conundrum. Some aldermen have protested efforts to locate shelters in their wards and decried spending on new arrivals when Black communities have been resource-starved for decades.
The mayor has maintained the city can continue to stand up for its values as an immigrant-friendly refuge while also doing right by longtime Chicagoans in disinvested neighborhoods, but the ever-growing cost of caring for the asylum-seekers has splintered the council.
Waguespack’s censure letter said Ramirez-Rosa violated other council rules Thursday, alleging he stood “out of sight” of the city clerk during roll call votes to avoid being counted for quorum and that he pressured Aldermen Lee, 11th, Cardona, 31st, and Taliaferro, 29th, to either leave council chambers or not enter by threatening to block “any future zoning legislation” in those aldermen’s wards from passing out of the zoning committee.
Such threats were “not mere legislative ‘horse trading’, but rather are a clear abuse of power reminiscent of the worst aspects of our City’s political history,” the letter said. Members planned to file complaints about the incidents with the city’s Board of Ethics and inspector general, according to the censure letter.
Officials at the Board of Ethics and the Office of Inspector General declined to comment.
Lee told reporters that while she was sitting at her desk Thursday in council chambers, Ramirez-Rosa threatened to use his power as zoning chair to stall legislation in her ward.
“What did happen to me was that I was on the receiving end of a threat of holding my zoning items if I didn’t do what he wanted, which was to leave the room,” Lee said Monday. “It was scary as a newer alderman to hear something like that and to think that it was going to risk hurting my constituents at the end of the day. I did think about, should I do this? And at the end of the day, I knew what the right thing to do was, which was I was here to do my job.”
Lee said she reported the conversation to the IG’s office and that Ramirez-Rosa “did the right thing” by resigning his leadership positions.
In a release Monday, Cardona said Ramirez-Rosa interrupted a committee meeting Thursday “and whispered in my ear that there would be no development in my ward. I received that as a threat not only to me but to the 31st (Ward) residents I represent as well,” describing the conduct as “nothing short of bullying and an abuse of power.”
Taliaferro also said Ramirez-Rosa implied to him that zoning committee items in his ward would be blocked should he stay to be counted in quorum for last Thursday’s meeting.
“He in essence told me not to ask him for anything going forward in his committee … that essentially if I had matters before his committee, they would either not be acted upon or would be acted upon unfavorably,” Taliaferro said Monday. “It gave me deep concern about what the lengths that he would go through — or go to, rather — to get what he needed.”
Mitts wasn’t in chambers for Monday’s City Council Finance Committee meeting. She has not responded to Tribune requests for comment.
Ramirez-Rosa’s resignation as zoning chair is effective Dec. 1.
Thursday’s chaotic meeting was called in an attempt by Ald. Raymond Lopez, 15th, and Ald. Anthony Beale, 9th, to add a question to March primary ballots asking voters “Should the city of Chicago continue to keep its designation as a Sanctuary City?”
The question would have been nonbinding, so even if it made it on ballots, it would not change the city’s current sanctuary policy to not cooperate with federal law enforcement on deportation of immigrants in the country without legal permission. The policy also ensures immigrants can use city services. It would not change the city’s current response to the influx of asylum-seekers, either.
But the results of such a referendum could serve to further underscore the divisive nature of the city’s response to the recent influx of asylum-seekers to Chicago. Johnson’s allies on the council sought Thursday to prevent a vote on whether to add the question to the ballot.
Recent debates over funding and other resources to respond to the crisis have highlighted racial and economic divides in the city, with some arguing the multimillion-dollar outlays for migrant needs have otherwise been absent to respond to homelessness and historic neighborhood disinvestment.
Two aldermen — Gregory Mitchell, 7th, and Julia Ramirez, 12th — have allegedly been physically attacked or put in harm’s way by constituents upset over the city’s asylum response.
Johnson was not present at Thursday’s meeting. He was in Washington, D.C., lobbying for additional federal funding to respond to the crisis with other big-city mayors. Heated disagreements over quorum eventually brought the meeting to a halt.
The full City Council is next scheduled to meet on Tuesday.
This is not Ramirez-Rosa’s first time being asked to step aside amid controversy: In 2017, he was booted as the running mate to gubernatorial candidate Daniel Biss over his support of a movement that seeks to boycott companies that do business with Israel.
First elected to the council in 2015, Ramirez-Rosa gained a reputation as a progressive rabble-rouser during Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s final term. He is now the dean of the City Council’s Democratic Socialist Caucus, whose members were all given chairmanships under Johnson’s latest council reorganization.
“I cannot take away the mistakes I made last week. But I hope to be able to rebuild the trust we have in each other as we move forward as a Council that addresses the important issues impacting Chicago,” Ramirez-Rosa said in his Monday statement.
Johnson noted Thursday’s incident came at “a time of heightened tension at City Hall” and suggested the council was dysfunctional as a result.
“In recent months, the forces of division have preyed on our city, pitting us against each other in the most destructive ways,” Johnson said in his statement. “I am confident we will find a way to move forward and regain the trust and respect necessary to have a functioning legislative body.”
Taliaferro, like Mitts, is one of the mayor’s hand-picked committee chairs. He commended Johnson for acting “quickly” to deal with the Ramirez-Rosa situation, but said he remains worried about the rancorous tone of the past several months of City Council meetings.
“Carrying forward out of the last administration, I thought this was an opportunity for our council to come together,” Taliaferro said, referencing Johnson’s often-combative predecessor, Lori Lightfoot. “But unfortunately, we have still been at odds with one another, and not necessarily displaying the leadership that our residents are deserving of us. And so it does give me concern that until we can hold this together, I don’t know how effective we can be as a government.”