Push to weaken Mayor Brandon Johnson's power to issue debt narrowly fails
The City Council's Finance Committee voted 16-to-17 to reject an ordinance that would have raised the vote threshold from a simple majority to a two-thirds majority. The measure would have sharply weakened the control of Johnson and future mayors over debt issuances, making it harder to raise money for infrastructure spending.
Before the vote, sponsor Ald. Marty Quinn, 13th, said the higher bar would force Johnson to work more closely with aldermen to pass bond plans and help Chicago avoid future credit downgrades.
'We cannot let this administration take on more debt and strap future Chicagoans with the bill,' Quinn said. 'It's time to be a more co-equal branch, partner and voice in City Hall. If not, what are we doing here?'
But while Johnson critics praised the move as fiscally responsible, mayoral allies blasted it as a reckless effort to block the City Council majority's will.
'Essentially what this rule would do is empower a small group of people to hold everybody else hostage,' Budget Committee chair Ald. Jason Ervin, 28th, said. 'This is not designed to help us. It is designed to empower a very small group of people who seem to be hellbent on driving us over a cliff.'
Quinn introduced the measure in February as aldermen passed Johnson's $830 million bond plan in a close 26-to-23 vote. At the time, the Southwest Side alderman and other mayoral opponents blasted the plan's repayment structure as back-loaded and irresponsible. Fitch Ratings shifted the city's financial outlook to 'negative' in May.
Ald. Matt O'Shea, 19th, argued before the vote Monday the measure could help rebuild confidence in a government that he said many Chicagoans do not trust.
'The people of Chicago don't trust government,' O'Shea said. 'What I've witnessed here these last two years, with our government – I'm talking about this building, this room – they're not wrong.'
The Johnson administration has often lied to him in budget discussions, he added.
'There is not enough real, honest communication,' he said. 'If we communicate with each other, and enough information is provided to us, then we can make difficult decisions.'
Earlier in the meeting, the committee advanced a $400,000 settlement to pay a woman injured after falling on a broken sidewalk. Aldermen also advanced $35.2 million in settlements related to wrong-location police raids, police misconduct and a botched police chase.
Ald. Daniel La Spata, 1st, alluded to that broken sidewalk to push back against the debt ordinance. It is 'disingenuous' to say the city's infrastructure must be improved while making it more difficult for improvements to be made.
'I appreciate the desire for transparency… but there's a political reality that I recognize,' he said, referring to the committed bloc of aldermen who oppose most Johnson moves.
Ald. Nicole Lee, 11th, said she could not remember when aldermen last hit 34 votes on a meaningful piece of legislation.
'I'm just really not sure we're going to be able to get to two-thirds,' Lee said before voting against the measure.
While Johnson weathered the effort to take power away from him, the tight vote embodied many of the struggles he has had in winning over aldermen and controlling legislation, and not just because of what the ordinance sought to do. Johnson's appointed mayor pro tempore, Ald. Sam Nugent, 39th, used her position's powers to cast a vote against Johnson's position, even though she is not a committee member.
Before Ald. Timmy Knudsen, 43rd voted for the ordinance, he suggested he would have preferred a compromise. Knudsen had months ago proposed new guardrails on bond authorization to limit interest totals and back-loaded repayment schedules.
But Johnson's administration would not agree to the policy he argued would have been a more moderate compromise, he said.
'Through months of good faith and transparent negotiation, I felt really confident that we were going to get somewhere,' he said. 'Two-thirds at least will get us the kind of negotiation leverage we need.'
Aldermen did not consider whether or not they would replace the state's expiring 1% grocery tax with a 1% tax of their own. The lack of consideration on the thorny question sets up more discussion in September, when the City Council would need to quickly pass the tax if it plans to make the state's Oct. 1 deadline to do so.
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Chicago Tribune
43 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
Police Department brass accused Mayor Brandon Johnson's budget office of ‘systemically' delaying paychecks
Chicago Police Department brass accused Mayor Brandon Johnson's administration of deliberately slowing down paychecks for dozens of employees this summer in a fiery email that warned the city was jeopardizing its compliance with the federal consent decree. Police Department Deputy Director Ryan Fitzsimons emailed multiple officials in Johnson's budget office June 2 to alert them of the department's overdue A-forms, paperwork required to process paychecks for new hires and promotions. After following up the next day to confirm that police recruits were not getting their first paychecks, he sent an additional message June 10 saying Johnson's budget office was purposely sitting on the forms. 'Given that we discussed at length via email and on our meeting on May 8th the need for timely approval of A-Forms, it would appear that OBM is pursuing a pattern of practice to delay the approval of A-Forms with the functional result of not paying employees on time and delaying compliance with the Consent Decree,' Fitzsimons wrote. 'What is OBM's plan to systemically approve or deny A-forms?' The unusually contentious email noted, 'CPD is committed to paying our employees on time. It is one of our most basic requirements as an employer and is also required by law. OBM's delay to sign A-Forms is exposing the City to increased legal risk along with diminished morale and increased attrition of our recruits.' A joint statement last week from the mayor's office, the Office of Budget Management and Chicago police acknowledged that about 60 police academy recruits saw late paychecks, along with six Chicago Fire Department employees. The response cast the snafu as an 'administrative' error that has since been rectified. 'We acknowledge that administrative delays affected recently hired and promoted employees, and we have taken corrective steps to ensure the payments were made,' the statement said. 'The City is continuing to evaluate ways to improve internal systems — such as A-form processing and hiring workflows — with a goal of reducing administrative delays and supporting public safety staffing needs.' While the city said the lag was less than a week, Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7 President John Catanzara noted the 54 recruits who started in May only got their first paycheck last month after he spoke with WMAQ-Ch. 5 to sound the alarm. And former city Inspector General Joe Ferguson, who has authored reports on the city's complicated hiring process, argued 'you shouldn't have that situation at all.' 'It appears to be just another manifestation of the general practice in which OBM is actually closely holding their hand on the checker in order to find nickels, dimes, dollars for costs,' Ferguson, now president of the Civic Federation, said. 'It's beyond my imagination to even come up with something (that) looks like … from the perspective of liability and responsibility, a practice that takes this budgetary control mentality to a new extreme.' Johnson is not the first mayor accused of employing budgetary tricks with A-forms in times of austerity. The budget office has traditionally leaned on slow-walking filling vacancies as one of its few tools to free up money, and the city ended 2024 with a $161 million deficit and expects a more than $1 billion gap next year. But delaying A-forms for entire academy classes or police supervisors who have already begun their new roles is an atypical move, Catanzara said. 'We are talking about a guy who bragged about being on payment plans with utilities and not paying his own water bill for years, so I guess it shouldn't be anything new,' Catanzara said, a reference to Johnson paying off thousands in outstanding water and sewer bills during his 2023 campaign. 'There was always some little one-offs here and there, but they were literally one person had an issue, and it was dealt with. This is mass incompetence.' Fitzsimons' email exchange also revealed that the Police Department is now under a hiring freeze until September 'to assist OBM in managing expenses,' which Catanzara said was also the union's understanding. The city and Police Department did not address questions about the pause in new recruits. The Police Department has historically exceeded its annual spending plan thanks to runaway overtime and misconduct settlement costs. 'No, it's not acceptable,' the mayor told reporters when asked about public safety expenditures blowing past budgeted costs by $207 million last year. He blamed police overtime spending on large events and said 'some innovative element' has to happen to drive those numbers down. In his June 2 email, Fitzsimons also asked Johnson budget officials Jonathan Ernst and Joseph Sacks for the status of A-forms for three other groups: youth employment, civilian employees and promotions. It is unclear how Johnson's team responded. For the last category, which concerns officers being promoted to sergeants and lieutenants, Fitzsimons warned, 'These A-Forms are directly tied back to paragraphs 249 – 264. Promotions have already occurred and members have begun to grieve.' The paragraphs he was referring to concern the federal consent decree that the Police Department has been under since 2019. The court order was meant to reform Chicago police after the murder of Laquan McDonald, but progress has lagged, including within the section on recruitment and promotions cited by Fitzsimons. Improving the supervisor-to-officer ratio has been a goal of Johnson's and is part of ensuring compliance with the consent decree. Fitzsimons reminded Johnson's budget officials in his email that the department had to brief the judge overseeing the mandate that month on A-form approvals. The city and CPD joint response did not answer questions on how many police supervisors saw their raises lag as a result of problems with the A-forms. The youth employment A-forms were needed to fill two Police Department jobs, while the civilian A-forms focused on staff that would help implement the consent decree, per Fitzsimons' email. He said Johnson's 2024 budget, which civilianized about 400 sworn positions, netted $8 million in savings and the department wants to hire more consent decree staff as a result. During the past budget cycle, Johnson landed in hot water with police reform advocates and the Illinois attorney general for proposing a spending plan that nixed 162 consent decree vacancies. He later restored them. Figures provided by the budget office show that of the total 439 Police Department positions tied to the consent decree, 222 remain vacant. Some of the largest gaps are in the training officer and victim specialist roles, which are 57% and 50% vacant, respectively. 'CPD remains focused on filling both sworn and non-sworn vacancies while maintaining compliance with the consent decree,' the joint city-Police Department statement said. 'We are continuing to assess resource allocations and hiring procedures across departments to ensure operational continuity and to address the evolving demands of public safety and reform implementation.' Meanwhile, Chicago Fire Fighters Union Local 2 President Pat Cleary said three ambulance commanders, 15 engineers, 44 lieutenants and 29 captains temporarily suffered incorrect paychecks too. The budget office confirmed six Fire Department employees were paid late but did not address whether supervisors did not receive updated paychecks after being promoted. Ferguson said the promise of Johnson's first budget, which was lauded by policing and fiscal experts for converting sworn positions to civilian ones to cut spending, fell flat because of bureaucratic snags such as this recent A-form problem. He doesn't blame the freshman mayor for inheriting a sluggish hiring process that often takes several months, but Johnson's budget office isn't doing itself any favors, he said. 'There's this game going on in which OBM is managing (A-forms) purely for purposes of other budgetary needs that are not known to anybody, and for which there is no transparency,' Ferguson said. 'One hand is holding back the other hand in what is an octopus-like structure, and this does not serve any of us well.'
Politico
2 hours ago
- Politico
House GOP eyes exit over Epstein meltdown
IN TODAY'S EDITION:— House could leave early amid Epstein fight — Republicans head to the White House — Schumer, Jeffries to meet on shutdown strategy Summer break might come early for the House, as Speaker Mike Johnson faces a Jeffrey Epstein problem that just won't quit. Republican leaders are considering sending the House home as early as Wednesday, after a bipartisan clash over the so-called Epstein files broke the Rules Committee Monday night, Meredith Lee Hill reports. Rules recessed after Democrats threatened to force a vote on Epstein — a move that is now derailing floor action planned for this week. Johnson and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said Monday night the plan is still to stay until Thursday. The House can still work through suspension votes on relatively uncontroversial, bipartisan measures that can get two-thirds support from members. 'We're not sending anybody home,' Johnson said. It's making for an awkward megabill celebration tonight at the White House, where Trump is planning to host Republican lawmakers. GOP leaders have an understanding with the White House that the House will not vote on releasing further Epstein documents before the August recess. 'The Trump administration's petitioned the courts to release some of the sealed documents,' Scalise said in an interview. 'Hopefully, the court acts swiftly. It'd be important if they got that out.' Rep. Thomas Massie, who has a discharge petition that would require the release of Epstein-related documents, is undeterred and warning that support for his effort will only be bigger when Congress returns in September. He says at least a dozen Republicans support his proposal – and he appears to have the backing of Theo Von as well. GOOD TUESDAY MORNING. Only two days left of the Longworth Dunkin'. Email your Inside Congress crew at mmccarthy@ crazor@ and bguggenheim@ Follow our live coverage at WHAT WE'RE WATCHINGWith help from Jordan Williams The House will vote on the Wabeno Economic Development Act and Great Lakes Mass Marking Program Act of 2025 at 4:30 p.m. The Senate will vote to confirm Terry Cole to be administrator of the DEA and Joshua Divine and Cristian Stevens to be U.S. district judges at 11 a.m. The Senate will hold its first procedural vote on Emil Bove's nomination for the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals and vote to end debate on the fiscal 2026 Military Construction-VA Appropriations bill at 2:15 p.m. — House Republican and Democratic leaders will hold their weekly conference meetings at 9 a.m. and their weekly news conferences at 10 a.m. and 10:45 a.m., respectively. — House Appropriations will mark up the fiscal 2026 Interior-Environment Appropriations bill at 10:30 a.m. — Senate Republican and Democratic leaders will hold their weekly caucus lunches at 12:30 p.m. and their weekly briefings at 2 p.m. Pro subscribers receive this newsletter with a full congressional schedule and can browse our comprehensive calendar of markups, hearings and other notable events around Washington. 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Buddy Carter and Georgia Insurance Commissioner John King in the race. NORMAN FOR GOVERNOR? — Rep. Ralph Norman plans to announce Sunday whether he will run for governor of South Carolina, he told Jordain. Norman, 72, has represented South Carolina's 5th District since 2017. Should he decide to launch a gubernatorial bid, he'd join longtime state Attorney General Alan Wilson and state Sen. Josh Kimbrell in the Republican primary. TEXAS REPUBLICANS AVOID REDISTRICTING TALKS, FOR NOW — House Republicans in the Texas delegation say they're trying to stay out of a new push to redraw the state's congressional map, an initiative that the Texas legislature will take on in a special session convening today. 'I haven't made one phone call or email on the new maps,' Rep. Pete Sessions told Calen Monday. 'I think members will stay out of it. At least until we see the plan.' Texas Reps. Michael Cloud and Tony Gonzalez also said they weren't trying to influence the plan. Rep. 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Kallisti Mandanis is now press secretary for Rep. Ron Estes. She most recently was staff assistant/press assistant for Estes. Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have made some staff moves, POLITICO's NatSec Daily reports. Amy English has been promoted to deputy staff director. She was previously Sen. Jeanne Shaheen's foreign policy adviser and worked at the British Embassy. Megan Bartley took over as chief counsel earlier this year. HAPPY BIRTHDAY Reps. John Larson, Robert Aderholt (6-0) and Seth Magaziner … former Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison … Andrew Feinberg … The Boston Globe's Sam Brodey … Erin Maguire … Caleb Smith … Port Side Strategies' Will Fischer … Annie Lowrey … CNN's Terence Burlij … National Association of Counties' Seamus Dowdall … John Shelton of Advancing American Freedom … Whitney VanMeter … former Reps. George Santos, Mike Ferguson and Curt Weldon … Soren Dayton … Arshi Siddiqui of Bellwether Government Affairs … Nathan Naylor … Joy Lee … Ben Leubsdorf TRIVIA MONDAY'S ANSWER: Andrew Stahovec correctly answered that Rep. Heath Shuler was a first-round draft pick of Washington's football team back when they were the Redskins. TODAY'S QUESTION, from Andrew: Who is the only U.S. president who was born on the Fourth of July? The first person to correctly guess gets a mention in the next edition of Inside Congress. Send your answers to insidecongress@
Business Insider
3 hours ago
- Business Insider
Longevity enthusiast Bryan Johnson says he doesn't want to run his antiaging company anymore
Johnson was speaking to Wired's Katie Drummond in an interview published Monday, and he was asked about the conflicts that came with running his business and religion at the same time. The 47-year-old biotech entrepreneur is best known for his aggressive quest for eternal youth. In 2021, Johnson embarked on his anti-aging program, Project Blueprint, which he says costs him $2 million a year. At one point, Johnson infused himself with blood from his son to slow down his aging. He stopped the transfusions after six months, saying there were "no benefits detected." Johnson's company sells a variety of wellness products. These include a $55 "longevity mix" drink and a $42 mushroom coffee alternative they call "Super Shrooms." In March, Johnson announced on X that he was starting his own religion, "Don't Die." The name is derived from the slogan Johnson used to brand his Netflix documentary, products, and events. "Years ago, I did a thought experiment imagining myself in the presence of people from the 25th century. It seemed obvious that they'd say Don't Die is how humanity saved itself and merged with AI," Johnson wrote in an X post. Johnson, however, says he's beginning to see how running a longevity-focused business may not mesh with preaching a religion on the same subject. "Honestly, I am so close to either shutting it down or selling it," he told Drummond, adding that he's "been talking to people about this." "I don't need the money, and it's a pain-in-the-ass company," he said. Johnson said he started the business because his friends were asking him for the health supplements he was taking. "It just evolved in a way where I was trying to do people a solid. The problem is now people see the business and give me less credibility on the philosophy side," Johnson said. "I will not make that trade-off. It is not worth it to me. So yeah, I don't want it," he added. Earlier this year, The New York Times reported that Blueprint was facing problems with its finances. The story was published in March and was based on interviews with current and former employees as well as court records and internal documents. The Times reported that Blueprint was missing its break-even point by at least $1 million a month. Johnson told Wired Blueprint isn't in "some kind of emergency financial situation." "We are break-even, and I've said that publicly many times. We've had profitable months, we've had loss months," he added.
