Link to full article at The Chicago Tribune
Mayor Brandon Johnson’s City Council struggles showed up again Thursday, this time in the form of a ticking clock, empty chairs and his inability to pass a council reorganization plan.
The mayor had hoped to shuffle the members who hold the reins of the body’s powerful committees. But hours after aldermen were set to meet and vote on the matter, they were still buzzing around City Hall’s backrooms — a sign that the deal Johnson wanted was falling apart.
His proposal ultimately never came up for a vote at the council Rules Committee Thursday as aldermen met for the first time since July to hammer through a backload of policy.
Johnson could not satisfy the thorniest question in Chicago politics, posed this time by the council’s Black Caucus and Latino Caucus: “Where’s mine?”
The mayor had planned to give five aldermen various promotions to fill holes left by the retirement of his close ally, former Ald. Walter Burnett Jr. But the fragile lineup his administration had tried to sell aldermen on Wednesday fell apart, leaving dozens of spectators in the City Council chambers waiting for hours as negotiations continued, to no avail, up on the fifth floor.
Asked if he knew why Johnson’s team delayed the reorganization plan, Ald. Scott Waguespack, 32nd, offered a short analysis: “They don’t know what’s going on.”
Walking toward the City Council chambers with his Black Caucus colleagues, Ald. Jason Ervin, 28th, struck a more hopeful tone. “The wine is boiling,” he said.
When aldermen finally began meeting, they quickly and unceremoniously approved the appointment of Walter “Red” Burnett to lead the 27th Ward. The 29-year-old took the City Council seat held for almost three decades by his now-retired father.
A broader reshuffling got shelved. Several aldermen on Wednesday said Johnson wanted to make progressive Ald. Daniel La Spata, 1st, chair of the powerful Zoning Committee.
Ald. Andre Vásquez, 40th, would then have taken La Spata’s Pedestrian and Traffic Safety Committee chairmanship, while Ald. Jessie Fuentes, 26th, would have snagged Vásquez’s spot leading the Immigrant and Refugee Rights Committee, multiple sources said Wednesday.
Veteran Ald. Emma Mitts, 37th, would have become Johnson’s vice mayor, and Ald. David Moore, 17th, would have taken Mitts’ position as chair of the Contracting Oversight and Equity Committee.
None of that got voted on Thursday, and council members said Johnson couldn’t line up the votes as Black and Latino aldermen told him they felt like they got short shrift in the plan.
Vásquez later pinned the plan’s collapse on miscommunication. “It became clear that not everyone had the same understanding of what was being proposed,” he said.
He argued the reorganization fizzling out didn’t show weakness from Johnson, but rather independence on behalf of aldermen. He hopes to meet soon with Black Caucus leaders to find middle ground, he said. Vásquez added a vote could come before the council’s next regularly scheduled meeting, when Johnson is expected to present his proposal to close a $1.2 billion budget gap.
“I think it makes sense for us to talk this out, rather than having it become public, and then it spirals into something that feels more divisive than it needs to be,” Vásquez said.
Aldermen also approved the city’s largest police misconduct settlement ever Thursday, a $90 million deal to settle dozens of cases tied to one corrupt officer.
The first-of-its-kind “global settlement” organized by Johnson’s top lawyer cruised by in a voice vote, a noteworthy easy stroll in a body with several aldermen typically eager to shoot down such deals. “You guys did an awesome job,” said 38th Ward Ald. Nick Sposato, one such alderman. “This is the deal of the century.”
The police settlement that aldermen unanimously approved resolves the 176 remaining cases tied to Sgt. Ronald Watts. Watts and his underling, Officer Kallat Mohammed, were convicted and imprisoned in 2013 for shaking down a drug courier who turned out to be a federal informant, triggering an avalanche of lawsuits from people they arrested and helped put behind bars.
It would have cost the city $400 million or more to settle the lawsuits on a case-by-case basis, according to Johnson’s corporation counsel, Mary Richardson-Lowry. The city’s spending on police settlements has skyrocketed this year, swelling to over $220 million. The Watts deal will be paid next year.
Aldermen also cleared the way for the construction of a Chicago Fire stadium and the long-vacant South Loop lot known as “The 78” and approved an ordinance legalizing the construction of new coach houses, basement units and “granny flats” in many parts of the city.
The move allows homeowners to build the so-called “additional dwelling units,” banned in the city since 1957, in areas zoned for many multi-unit buildings. But it requires aldermen to opt in to allow the units in areas zoned for detached, single-family housing.
The opt-in requirement is the result of a compromise between some aldermen who wanted the units legalized to add density throughout all the city’s neighborhoods and others who argued the new units would dramatically change their single-family neighborhoods.
Advocates plan to pressure aldermen to allow the units, said Steven Vance, an organizer with grassroots group Abundant Housing Illinois. Vance said he was relieved the apartments are finally legal, but disappointed that they will not be allowed “by right” citywide.
“We could have had more accessible coach houses, and now we are going to get less,” said Vance, who also criticized the compromise ordinance’s requirement that the units be constructed by workers from certified apprenticeship programs, a move he said adds cost.
Final approval of a slate of long-awaited housing protections for residents near the Obama Presidential Center cleared the City Council without opposition Thursday.
The ordinance, sponsored by Ald. Desmon Yancy, 5th, established a new pilot area south and west of the center, setting aside city-owned land for development of new affordable rentals and housing, certain rental preferences for people displaced in the past decade since the center was first announced, more advanced notice for lease nonrenewal and a tenant “right of first refusal” when apartment owners would like to sell.
Advocates successfully won similar protections for the Woodlawn neighborhood just west of Jackson Park in 2020, and have been fighting for an extension to South Shore.
Median rents in the area, they say, have increased by 43% in the last decade while home values have more than doubled. Their hope was to secure a deal before the City Council became swamped with the 2026 budget and before the center officially opens its doors next spring.
Some real estate and business interests criticized the late substitution of new language and urged aldermen to delay its passage.
Among the real estate industry’s concerns: that the right of first refusal provision giving tenants the first chance to buy a property if the owner wants to sell would add unnecessary extra time and steps, making properties less desirable, tougher to finance and more likely to fall into disrepair in the interim.
Some business representatives worried the language would hurt efforts to attract higher-income residents and high quality businesses.
And an ordinance to legalize video gambling terminals in Chicago bars and restaurants was held in committee, a signal of continued division among aldermen and with the mayor’s office.
The ordinance sponsored by Ald. Anthony Beale, 9th, took a surprise move forward in a committee vote earlier this week without Johnson’s support. The Thursday delay could tee aldermen up to cast a years-in-the-making vote on the terminals next month.
Top Johnson financial officials cast cold water on the potential profitability of the gambling machines in a July presentation to aldermen, though legalization has won support from Ald. William Hall, 6th, who the mayor tasked with leading the council search for new revenue.