Mayor Johnson will push for budget vote next week, even with Finance chair opposed to head tax ‘at any level’

Mayor Brandon Johnson signaled Friday he is forging ahead with his plan to put his 2026 proposed budget to bed by Thanksgiving, even after the Chicago City Council’s most powerful member declared her opposition to a corporate head tax at “any level.”

Finance Chair Pat Dowell, alderperson of the 3rd Ward and a member of Johnson’s handpicked leadership team, joined Gov. JB Pritzker, business leaders and their City Council allies in opposing Johnson’s newly revised plan to impose the $21 a month per-employee tax only on Chicago companies with 200 or more employees.

“I don’t support the head tax at any level,” Dowell told the Chicago Sun-Times. “It’s a tax on jobs.”

Dowell said she has no idea whether Johnson has the votes to push the head tax through her committee over her objections.

“I want to have a conversation with some colleagues about this budget, and those conversations will continue, hopefully through the weekend,” she said. “I want to look at this budget comprehensively. I just don’t want to foreclose on any options at the moment.”

Johnson said he is open to ideas for other ways to raise revenue. He challenged Dowell and other critics to “show up with an idea that we can debate.”

“If there are some ways in which we can make adjustments based upon progressive revenue. … If there are some progressive revenue ideas that have not been brought before us, there’s still time,” the mayor said. “We either challenge these large corporations to put more skin in the game to continue to drive violence down … or someone needs to propose increasing taxes on working people. Those are the only options we have.”

The mayor said he has no intention of slowing down a budget process that began in April. He’s still pushing for a final vote before Thanksgiving.

“I’m for more deliberation if we’re actually debating over something. But to slow it down just for the sake of slowing it down just doesn’t make sense. No alder has put forth an alternative vision to my proposal. And so the question is: What are we slowing down to do?” Johnson said. “This is not a rush, you all. We literally have been in conversations for months.”

The Dowell roadblock is not surprising. She signaled that opposition when she joined half of the Council in signing a letter to the mayor expressing deep concerns about Johnson’s proposal to revive the head tax at a level more than five times higher than when it was eliminated in 2014.

Dowell has also clashed with Johnson on several occasions, including on the mayor’s proposed Green Social Housing ordinance.

But Dowell’s outright rejection of Johnson’s revised offer to impose the head tax only on businesses with 200 or more employees, double his original threshold, forces the mayor back to the bargaining table to make even more concessions in addition to the changes he has already made.

In an apparent acknowledgment he doesn’t have the votes, Johnson did not introduce the revised revenue ordinance at Friday’s Council meeting. Sources said he plans to spend the weekend negotiating with Council holdouts in hopes of crafting a compromise that can get him to the 26 votes needed for Council passage.

If it works, the Johnson administration hopes to introduce the newly revised tax package directly to the Dowell-chaired Finance Committee Monday and forge a path that could still salvage the mayor’s plan to clear the budget decks before Thanksgiving.

If it doesn’t work, Chicago could be in for a repeat of last year’s budget stalemate that ended in a 27-23 vote the week before Christmas — and only after the Council unanimously rejected the mayor’s proposed $300 million property tax increase and refused to raise property taxes by any amount.

With Dowell steadfastly opposed, Johnson also runs the risk of seeing his revenue package rejected by the Finance Committee, where 18 of 34 votes are needed for passage.

A Finance Committee defeat could allow the mayor to portray head tax opponents as champions of wealthy corporations and opponents of his self-declared plan to “challenge the ultra-rich to pay their fair share.”

Johnson said Friday his goal is not about “having people pitted against one another.”

But he added, “There’s a clear choice here. We’re either going to challenge the ultra-rich … to put more skin in the game and pay their fair share in taxes, or you’re going to balance this budget off the backs of working people.”