Mayor Brandon Johnson on Friday used his fourth veto to try to bury an ordinance that would make it more difficult to issue city debt by raising the threshold for City Council approval to 30 votes, setting the stage for an attempt at an override.
“Neighborhoods with the greatest infrastructure needs should not face additional barriers to securing essential public investment,” Johnson wrote in his veto letter to the city clerk.
“Delaying infrastructure projects can increase construction costs, worsen deterioration and ultimately cost taxpayers more. While this ordinance increases a voting threshold, it does not put into place any additional measures around debt affordability, reporting requirement or financial oversight.”
The mayor also said that the three-fifths vote requirement is higher than the 26 votes needed to approve the city’s $16.6 billion budget “or any other critical matter that comes before this body.”
The veto has been expected ever since the 32 to 15 vote on Sept. 29 that Johnson has insinuated had racial motives — by branding the reform championed by retiring Ald. Marty Quinn (13th) a “three-fifths compromise.” The same term is used to describe language in the Constitution that originally counted Black slaves as three-fifths of a person. Several Black Council members, including Finance Committee Chair Pat Dowell, voted for Quinn’s measure.
Quinn said at that meeting that he expected a veto, and that the 34 votes he would need for an override of a veto was “a reach.” He has already failed once when Johnson vetoed an ordinance that would have banned the sale of hemp.
But Quinn said Friday he would try for an override anyway, and focus his efforts on three Council members who ducked out before the roll call on Sept. 29: Alds. Daniel La Spata (1st); Chris Taliaferro (29th) and Andre Vasquez (40th).
In a text to the Sun-Times, Vasquez said his office is “in negotiation to establish more transparency and accountability as it relates to bonds and borrowing without needing to lift the threshold to 30” votes.
“We have been in discussions this week and will do so over the weekend to see if agreement can be found,” Vasquez said. “The results of those conversations will inform whether I vote to sustain the veto or not.”
Taliaferro told the Sun-Times he was considering the issue, adding, ”After I get an opportunity to speak to the mayor and speak to my colleagues, I’ll make a decision on whether or not to support a veto.”
LaSpata said, “I don’t have a public comment at the moment but I will speak to it in Council.”
Quinn learned how to count votes while working alongside his political mentor, now convicted former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan. He knows how difficult it will be to sway mayoral allies who took a pass the first time around. But Quinn said he would try because “the policy is solid,” the city’s crushing “debt level is real and what we pay in debt payments is real.”
“The mayor is pushing back against Council independence. I’m not surprised,” Quinn said. “A lot of his actions defy logic. But I will be full steam ahead. If alders want to side with him on this issue, that may be ill-advised because the taxpayers of the city of Chicago don’t trust him with the checkbook.”
According to the Civic Federation, the city’s outstanding net debt rose by 32.8%, from $22 billion to $29.2 billion, between 2014 and 2023 — an amount driven by increased O’Hare Airport debt that was retired by airline revenue.
Civic Federation President Joe Ferguson said the override vote would be “inextricably intertwined with budget objections of individual alders, and I expect that would be part of the play here in the determination as to whether or not there would be an override.”
But with 40% of Chicago’s operating budget gobbled up by pension and debt payments, Ferguson was unequivocal in his support for raising the bar before issuing even more debt.
“Our debt is one of the huge legacy issues that is a millstone around the city’s current fiscal situation,” Ferguson said Friday. “Recent debt issuance practices suggest a serious drift back to the worst of our practices. Kicking the can down the road. Delaying payments in schedules that places the primary burden on our children and grandchildren. A continuation of that are the very signals that may be the tipping point with respect to the rating agencies.”
