If Mayor Brandon Johnson’s first 100 days were characterized by vagueness and little action, his second 100 days have been anything but.
The mayor’s actions during this period leave no doubt that his sanctuary city supporters and the Chicago Teachers Union will be given primacy over community and public safety investments and that Johnson and his supporters are determined to force business to bear the financial cost of his so-called progressive agenda.
The mayor’s first budget misses an opportunity to invest in the community and public safety. The spending plan does little to reverse decades of disinvestment in Chicago’s long underserved Black and brown communities as the interests of the mayor’s sanctuary city supporters and his former employer, the CTU, are prioritized. An additional $150 million in city funding has been dedicated to support migrants, while Chicago Public Schools will receive another $271 million windfall related to city tax increment financing.
Contrast that with the fact that the budget opens only two of the closed community mental health centers. It adds four employees to the mayor’s office and claims to be restoring the Department of Environment, with no defined mission or authority.
The budget answers the big question: Will the mayor fill police vacancies? He will not. His budget eliminates more than 800 street officer vacancies. This will keep sworn police strength at 11,700, more than 1,400 positions below the 2019 level. The budget may further diminish police officer strength if the city uses remaining police vacancies for some of the almost 400 civilians it plans to hire and if it fails to take steps to slow officer attrition and aggressively recruit candidates to fill future police vacancies.
The mayor seeks to advance his progressive agenda by punishing the business community with unfunded mandates, regardless of ability to pay. These mandates will worsen Chicago’s status as a hostile place for employers of every size and sector to do business, discouraging economic development, investment and job growth in communities that need it the most.
The City Council’s approval of the mayor’s elimination of the subminimum wage for tipped workers will severely damage the city’s restaurant and hospitality industry, which is struggling to recover from COVID-19, while enactment of the Paid Leave and Paid Sick and Safe Leave Ordinance imposes a severe hardship not only on businesses in Chicago but also any business that sends workers to Chicago.
The paid time off ordinance mandates that any employee who works just two hours inside Chicago’s city limits within a two-week period is entitled by law to receive up to 10 days paid time off annually, including a minimum of five days for any reason. Lost in the discussion is a provision allowing workers to sue employers for alleged violations of the mandate, potentially imposing draconian judgments and demands for settlement.
This could create a cottage industry of lawsuits that would devastate Chicago businesses and make it even more difficult to attract and retain businesses such as restaurants, grocery stores and pharmacies in Chicago’s long-underserved communities.
Meanwhile, the City Council’s approval of a referendum to raise the real estate transfer tax, to fund a yet-to-be-defined program to address homelessness, is overwhelmingly a tax on depressed commercial properties.
As Crain’s Chicago Business has reported in the past year, commercial property generated almost nine times what residential property transactions did. With property values plummeting and a rush to sell before the increase takes effect, the measure won’t generate the forecast revenue. A similar tax measure in Los Angeles slowed property sales.
Chicago already has some of the highest commercial property taxes in the nation. The new unfunded mandates and higher taxes on already highly taxed commercial properties will not only cost jobs and city income but also will combine with the damage done by COVID-19. The breakdown in public safety and other city services will further hurt the commercial sector, which will force a significant reduction in the value of commercial properties during reassessment.
The mayor’s second 100 days exhibit a clear lack of commitment to addressing long-standing social, emotional and economic issues, despite claims by the CTU. It prioritizes a social agenda over supporting city businesses by imposing unfunded business mandates regardless of ability to pay, damaging local business and discouraging new investment.
Paul Vallas is an adviser for the Illinois Policy Institute. He ran for Chicago mayor this year and in 2019 and was previously budget director for the city and CEO of Chicago Public Schools.
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