When Brandon Johnson visited the Illinois State Capitol as mayor-elect, he emphatically rejected the notion that Chicago and Springfield had competing agendas.
“They’ve told us that this is a zero-sum game. And if something is good for Chicago, well, that means we’re taking something away from Peoria,” Johnson said in a joint address to the House and Senate. “It is a false choice.”
A little over a year later, the mayor has learned Illinois lawmakers still regard those choices as true.
He saw the state legislature reject his biggest agenda items during the session that concluded this week: more than $1 billion in state funding for Chicago Public Schools, and a nearly $5 billion proposal for a new Chicago Bears stadium.
Meanwhile, a bill drawn up to protect CPS’ selective-enrollment schools marched close to passage, against the wishes of Johnson and his close ally, the Chicago Teachers Union, until an eleventh-hour deal with Senate President Don Harmon halted it — for now.
Though the new state budget that passed early Wednesday morning contained some additional investments for Chicago, the overall cool reception in Springfield signaled that Johnson has work to do in building stronger rapport with lawmakers there. And those inroads need to be made fast, before other high-stakes issues arrive, such as a looming $730 million fiscal cliff for the Chicago Transit Authority.
“He didn’t get most of what he wanted,” Delmarie Cobb, a Chicago political consultant, said. “And I think a lot of what his defeats have been have not necessarily been a referendum on him as much as it’s been a referendum on his approach. … Part of what you have to do is the groundwork. You have to work the crowd.”
The mayor said Chicago did receive substantive investments in the 2025 budget that begins in July, but characterized the current amount of funding the state is set to kick in for CPS as “just not enough.”
“We’re gonna continue to organize and make sure that we have what the people of Chicago deserve,” Johnson said at a Thursday news conference. “There are a lot of things that we were able to walk away with. We’re gonna continue to fight for more.”
Asked Wednesday about Johnson’s unfulfilled asks for Springfield such as more CPS funding, Gov. J.B. Pritzker downplayed any “differences” on the issue.
“The truth is that we all think that education should be better funded,” the governor said. “But not just for the city of Chicago. The city of Chicago is 20% of the population of the state. So, we have a lot of other people and a lot of other kids across the state going to school. We need to fund their schools better too.”
Johnson pointed to “more resources” for domestic violence victims and violence prevention programs, plus $182 million toward migrant resources, as wins for Chicago in the budget. Pritzker’s administration did not provide specifics Thursday on how much Chicago would receive from the domestic violence and anti-violence funding pools.
The $182 million was secured by the governor as part of an agreement earlier this year with Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, a deal that at first did not include Johnson, due to his reluctance to pitch in another $70 million from city budget coffers until months later.
In addition, the budget injects more than $500 million in new funding for local governments, but it is not yet clear exactly how much of that Chicago will get.
The much-hyped reset between City Hall and Springfield when Johnson first took office was perhaps borne of low expectations following his predecessor Lori Lightfoot’s term that featured a fractious relationship between her and the governor. But one year in, the mayor’s Springfield agenda has made little movement while opposition has cropped up, including from within the Chicago delegation.
One Chicago Democrat who has resisted the mayor is North Side state Rep. Margaret Croke, lead sponsor of the bill that originally set a moratorium on closing selective enrollment schools but later expanded to include all CPS schools. That bill’s winding saga — which at one point featured a Senate committee advancing the legislation on the same day Johnson was making his rounds inside the Illinois State Capitol building — should be a warning sign for the mayor, Croke said.
“Him as well as his team should probably rethink how they want to approach the General Assembly … if he wants to achieve his campaign promises,” Croke said. “They’re acting as if they were given a mandate.”
The lawmaker then critiqued what she described as a mindset from Johnson and his progressive coalition: “We’re going to say anything we can in order for you to feel like you have to side with us.”
“The problem is that’s a short-term strategy and in the long-term can burn a lot of bridges,” she said. “So I think that occurred, and it didn’t just occur with that particular bill. They had done that previously.”
Croke’s measure originally focused on just selective-enrollment schools, but the amended legislation added a districtwide moratorium on school closures until 2027, when the school board transitions to fully elected. The CTU labeled the legislation “racist,” but it breezed through the House in a 92-8 vote. Still, following Johnson’s promise not to shut down any selective enrollment schools, Harmon acquiesced to pulling the bill’s Senate vote last week, days before the session was to adjourn.
Ald. Andre Vasquez, 40th, a progressive who has at times critiqued the Johnson administration, praised the mayor for clinching the deal with Harmon. “It could have gotten very contentious and continued at that tenor, but it seems like at the end of session, cooler heads prevailed,” he said.
“There are always gonna be difficult conversations, but it feels to me like the beginning of a relationship,” Vasquez said. “It’s pretty clear that Springfield needs Chicago, and Chicago needs Springfield.”
Cobb said the mayor should take advantage of this pause in statehouse activity until the fall veto session to curry favor with lawmakers before thorny questions such as how to plug the CTA’s projected $730 million shortfall by 2026 come to a head.
“If he actually wants to win these victories, he’s got to do the legwork,” Cobb said. “You have to see who’s in your corner before you push your agenda. And if you find that you don’t have the votes, then you back off, and maybe you come back to it later.”
Johnson has many opportunities in the near term to succeed or fail in Springfield.
In addition to the transit funding woes, a bill to consolidate the CTA with Metra and Pace could be taken up in the fall, as part of the growing defiance in Springfield over conditions inside Chicago’s mass transit system helmed by embattled head Dorval Carter. Johnson’s $800 million package of new revenue proposals from his mayoral campaign also still remains at the starting line, and many of his bold ideas for new taxes would need approval from the state.
Other outstanding matters that may arise later in Johnson’s term are evergreen pension reform efforts as well as fresh legislation to legalize video gambling, perhaps at the expense of the revenue expected from the opening of the city’s first casino.
But with Chicago legislators a minority in the statehouse, the mayor will need to take off his city-centric lens to pull off victories there. Johnson, speaking Thursday on his recent Springfield wins and losses, appeared to nod to that when recasting his CPS funding pitch as part of a larger demand across Illinois school districts.
“Keep in mind that the funding formula is falling short for the entire state,” Johnson said. “And so this is not just a Chicago dynamic. There are other cities — East St. Louis, Kankakee, Waukegan — there are a number of cities that are underfunded. The strategy is what it’s always been: We keep demanding.”
