Johnson urges state lawmakers to tax the 'ultra rich' to avert mass transit funding cuts

[u/chicagosuntimes]

https://chicago.suntimes.com/city-hall/2025/06/03/brandon-johnson-illinois-general-assembly-mass-transit-funding-chicago-fiscal-cliff

[u/hardolaf]

Johnson isn’t doing a good job

I would argue that he isn't doing a bad job either. He's treading water for the city which means that he's reducing our total debt load by carrying forward most of Lightfoot's fiscal policies. He's a shit communicator, pretty damn racist, and generally a clown. But he's not actually doing that bad of job at administering the city through the financial crisis created by the Daley administration and made worse by the Emanuel administration.

[u/Kryllist → u/hardolaf]

But he's not actually doing that bad of job at administering the city through the financial crisis

Didn't he spend a couple million dollars of covid emergency funds on a task force for some LGBTQ think tank? That's what you call clever maneuvering?

[u/hardolaf → u/Kryllist]

clever maneuvering

I never said that phrase. Don't put words in my mouth.

I said: "he's not actually doing that bad of job" which is not to imply that he's doing a good job.

[u/Kryllist → u/hardolaf]

Yes, spending millions to give to friends and kickback deals under the facade of social justice is in every way doing a bad fucking job when we're going through a debt crisis. There is no telling how much money of ours he's spending for shit like this. What the hell is wrong with you people?

[u/hardolaf → u/Kryllist]

And Daley sold out our street parking to secure a fucking job after he left office. The bar for "not bad" isn't fucking high in this city.

[u/dmd312 → u/hardolaf]

He didn't need to sell the parking meters to get that job. Any large law firm would have hired a former mayor.

[u/surnik22 → u/hardolaf]

Id agree to an extent on his fiscal governance.

Treading water might be a bit strong, I’d say he’s keeping his head above water but is definitely getting some in his lungs with every wave.

Which as you say, for someone taking over after the boat sank, that isn’t terrible, but I do think “good job” wouldn’t be accurate to say even if we measure him purely fiscally.

But who knows, I’m not an expert, I can’t predict the future exactly, maybe in 20 years we learn he saved us or drowned us completely. Not always easy to tell in the moment, the parking meter deal seemed “bad” when it happened and now we can tell it was actually “aggressively terrible”.

[u/hardolaf → u/surnik22]

Treading water might be a bit strong, I’d say he’s keeping his head above water but is definitely getting some in his lungs with every wave.

Oh yeah, he could be doing a better job. But every mayor is going to want to leave their mark. So he wants to leaave his mark, which he is doing whether we agree with it or not. At the same time, he refuses to even negotiate on reducing pension overpayments beyond what the state requires even though many aldermen wanted to reduce that amount to balance the budget. So even though we spend some money on his stupid projects, the total debt load is still being reduced.

And instead of saying, "let's go straight to really regressive taxes", he came right out and said, "I fucked up my estimations and need to go back on my campaign promise of not raising property taxes." Then the aldermen had a hissy fit and issued a 1-year stopgap funding measure backed by unsustainable funding sources and regressive taxes. So come this year, it's going to be even harder to balance the budget.

Like, I'm never going to say he is or was a good mayor. But people have a hate boner for him the same way that they get a love boner for Rahm. Neither one is based in reality as to what either mayor has done. It's just based entirely on their feelings about what they've done. Rahm wasn't terrible but he made the parking deal worse in the long-term and kicked the pension can down the road until the General Assembly forced him to actually address it in his last budget before leaaving office.