Key alderman warning Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson a vote on budget 'premature'

Alice Yin, Chicago Tribune on Nov 14, 2025

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CHICAGO — Mayor Brandon Johnson’s Finance Committee chair delivered a public warning this week against his plans to forge ahead with the first vote on his 2026 budget, targeting his controversial head tax as a nonstarter with her.

Ald. Pat Dowell, 3rd, told reporters after weeks of budget hearings for Johnson’s $16.6 billion spending plan concluded Thursday that she advised the Johnson administration not to proceed with a vote in her committee Monday. But she stopped short of saying she would try to block a vote should the mayor proceed regardless.

“I think going on Monday is premature. I have said that to the administration,” Dowell told reporters. “My role as the Finance chair is to give advice, and on Monday I’m going to have a meeting, and those things will either be on the agenda or they won’t. And I will call balls and strikes, and we’ll see where this goes.”

The fifth term alderman also came out swinging against Johnson’s $21-per-employee monthly tax on corporations.

“I am not a supporter of the head tax at any level,” Dowell said when asked if the mayor’s latest proposal bumping the minimum company size up from 100 to 200 workers satisfies her.

It was a remarkable break from one of the two aldermen Johnson has handpicked to lead his budget through the City Council, and one that could set the freshman mayor up for an embarrassing defeat were he to lose Monday’s Finance Committee vote. His revenue ordinance, which contains the head tax that is now projected to raise $82 million, must be advanced through that panel.

A common adage in Chicago politics and beyond is to never call a vote you may lose, but Johnson’s team — under three different heads of intergovernmental affairs, the team tasked with whipping votes in council — has struggled mightily with counting their yeses and nos. The mayor has cast three tie-breakers so far, and been defeated on the floor in losses that were extremely rare under his predecessors.

However, Johnson’s rhetoric and movement lately suggest he could take his controversial budget to the brink next week, hoping aldermen will in the end support the head tax rather than defeating it and instead having to find another way to raise money, on the backs of working class Chicagoans.

During a budget town hall Wednesday night in Dowell’s ward without her present, the mayor framed how he views the path ahead for aldermen.

“The City Council has two options, y’all. They can tax the rich, or they can decimate services and tax working class people,” Johnson told a room of progressive supporters from the Chicago Teachers Union and other organizations. “You have members of the City Council that are calling for increasing taxes on working people. … What kind of sick and demented society do we live in, where you have politicians who are more afraid of billionaires and these large corporations?”

His bullish stance despite the doubt among his legislative counterparts that he has the votes led some aldermen to surmise that he plans to get them on record voting against his head tax so he can paint them as anti-working class — and pin on them any unpopular alternative solutions to close the $1.19 billion gap next year.

“I really don’t like that it looks like we’re being forced to vote on this,” Ald. Nicole Lee, 11th, said during budget hearings on Thursday. “I’m nowhere near ready to do that.”

Lee added that she was not able to schedule a sitdown offered by the mayor because of how rushed the timeline felt to her. Meanwhile, Johnson has been traversing the city for a series of town halls — many of them in the wards of expected budget swing votes — but often without the local aldermen present.

During those events, he often takes his mission to make the case for his third budget, unveiled a month ago as a bulwark against President Donald Trump, directly to the people of Chicago and implores them to lobby aldermen to vote yes and Springfield to give the city more revenue.

It appears that his bold speech Wednesday evening in Dowell’s home turf didn’t budge her, however. The Finance chair on Thursday calmly ended her remarks with reporters saying that while she supports Johnson’s record $1 billion tax-increment financing surplus and hiking up the personal property lease tax to 15%, “I think they could do more” with cutting costs.

Johnson’s budget chair, Ald. Jason Ervin, was similarly nonplussed when asked the potentially dramatic showdown next week, but he called upon his colleagues to work more with the mayor’s team instead of complaining. He did not say where he stands on the head tax beyond “I’m not saying yes to anything. I’m not saying no to anything.”

“I do believe that we will get to some sort of solution. Will it be on Monday? Maybe yes, maybe not,” Ervin told reporters Thursday. “Again, I continue to ask for alternatives as it relates to spending, as it relates to revenue. Crickets. … Council has the budget. Council has the budget. The mayor has presented what he’s presented.”

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