With 2024 in the books and 2025 already here, gulp, our city and state find themselves in precarious places.
The city of Chicago ended the year with the extraordinarily messy passage of a $17.1 billion budget, featuring repeated City Council rejections of proposed mayoral property-tax hikes. The council battles coincided with the outrageous attempt by Mayor Brandon Johnson and his lame-duck school board to jam through an unaffordable contract with the Chicago Teachers Union, and the remarkable success of Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez to obtain a Christmas Eve court ruling staving off the Johnson/CTU power play, at least for now.
The state of Illinois returns to work this month facing a projected deficit of more than $3 billion for the coming fiscal year. Gov. JB Pritzker and state lawmakers will grapple with arguably the toughest budget conditions since Pritzker first took office in 2019.
We think Johnson and Pritzker ought to look at what’s behind and before them, take stock of the November election that featured Donald Trump’s surprisingly easy victory, and conclude that they need to change their approaches to governing in order to begin to put Chicago and Illinois back on the right track. In that spirit, we’re suggesting New Year’s resolutions for our governor and mayor, as well as some other parties who will play important roles in the coming year.
Resolved, for Brandon Johnson:
Mr. Mayor, your way isn’t working. Your approval numbers in poll after poll are among the lowest ever registered in Chicago. At best, your city is stuck in neutral economically, which is flatlining the revenues needed to keep basic services running, much less finance your progressive ambitions. We suggest you resolve to do more listening than speaking. In particular, you should open your doors to business leaders — particularly those who are critics of your approach to date, and there’s no shortage of such folks — and consider their suggestions for how to revive the private sector’s confidence in the city’s future. Surely, you must have realized by now (we hope?) that your programmatic dreams will remain just that — dreams — without a far more robust local economy.
Resolved, for JB Pritzker:
Governor, the tide is turning. Progressive governance is on the defensive, and for good reason. The results are scanty, and the costs are high. Simply stated, the cost of government in Illinois is exorbitant. You passed a partisan budget last year featuring more than $900 million in tax and fee increases that included an ill-considered requirement that credit-card issuers and networks build new systems in which retailers would pay interchange fees on the price of goods sold and not the sales taxes collected. A federal court already has put that policy on hold.
In the new year, you ought to do what you haven’t yet done in six years of governing and bring Republican lawmakers into the policy-making tent. Yes, you enjoy supermajorities in the state House and Senate, but only extreme gerrymandering kept Democrats from losing seats in this past cycle. Trump won 43.5% of the vote in Illinois compared with 40.6% in 2020.
Unpleasant choices lie ahead in plugging a budget hole in the billions, and Republicans have been thinking far longer than Democrats in this state about how to cut spending. Pritzker, Senate President Don Harmon and House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch would be wise to solicit the ideas and ultimately the support of Senate Minority Leader John Curran and House Minority Leader Tony McCombie.
Governor, Chicago is going to need you at your best in 2025. We can’t emphasize that enough.
Resolved, for the Chicago Teachers Union:
Back off; read the room.
When Chicagoans shockingly elected just three CTU-backed candidates for school board in nine contested races in November, they sent a message. They don’t like the unholy and ethically compromised alliance between CTU and the mayor, who was elected with millions in CTU funding and was a lobbyist for the union before winning the prize. They don’t support CTU demands that potentially would bankrupt Chicago Public Schools.
Accept the generous wage increases already on the table from CPS CEO Martinez, stop the flailing attempts at a socialist transformation of Chicago, and focus on what’s supposed to be your actual job — teaching Chicago’s kids to learn the skills they will need in life.
If CTU President Stacy Davis Gates is unwilling to adjust to political reality, and she shows no signs of bending, then CTU rank and file should choose a more reasonable leader in the union’s spring elections. A more moderate approach could open some ears now closed to CTU’s ideas for improving schools.
Resolved, for the City Council:
Follow through on your pledges during the stressful budget negotiations to hold the Johnson administration accountable to the city’s taxpayers. That means getting started early in 2025 on auditing and scrutinizing each city department for redundancies and bloated management. That means keeping the public abreast on what you learn.
And that means having the stomach when the 2025 budget season gets started in earnest for cutting the bloat from a city government that grew fat on federal pandemic aid. Most jaded Chicagoans, we’re confident, think you were mostly talk during the budget struggles. Prove to them that’s not true.
Resolved, for the many opponents of Mayor Johnson and his fellow progressives:
While the mayor’s approval ratings are in the midteens for good reason, he will be in office at least another two years. By all means, focus on coalescing around a candidate who can defeat Johnson in 2027. But Chicago needs to begin its revival far sooner than that, for all our sakes. When the Johnson administration proposes constructive policies, give them your input on effective implementation — and your assistance, if asked.
Seek out areas of agreement. And if this mayor has learned nothing from what he’s experienced so far, at least you can say you tried.
We resolve, as always, to give a fair hearing to all who wish to be heard, air our views honestly and clearly, be open to good ideas from unexpected places and to provide ample space in our Opinion pages for those who disagree with us.
Here’s to a far better year than the last for the city and state we love.
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