The Chicago City Council's vote endorsing the sale of the city's controversial parking meter lease was easily the highest-profile measure to be approved by aldermen at this week's meeting. It clears the way for the city to realize some percentage of money from its 36,000 parking meters for the first time since the ill-advised selloff in 2008, though the amount of money is still a matter of debate.
But the undercard was no less important for the future of the city ... and Mayor Brandon Johnson's description of it appears intended to make a point.
It deals with debt, and ways to make the city more accountable when it decides to take on more of it. This is not a theoretical concern in a city where the biggest chunk of revenue goes toward paying down debt, and years of budget debates and dysfunctional government in Washington and elsewhere have created an impression that debt is "bad." That's the whole "live within your means" ethos that one expects to see embroidered on a pillow inside Lincoln's boyhood home.
The fact is that households borrow money all the time to make purchases, most often when making a major purchase such as a house or a car (let's leave aside that credit card-fueled shopping spree at Nordstrom). Cities do the same thing when building roads, bridges or other new developments, usually through the sale of bonds that promise the buyer a specific return on their investment.
One of Brandon Johnson's signature initiatives while in office has been the $1.25 billion Housing and Economic Development bond issue that he's used to funnel money toward new affordable housing, grants and other assistance to small businesses, and other improvements across the city, but most notably in areas away from downtown that he's described as neglected and under-supported by decades of leadership at City Hall.
And now, more than two years after approving the five-year bond issue, a majority of aldermen think it's time to raise the borrowing bar. Thirty aldermen on Tuesday approved the proposal from Southwest side Ald. Marty Quinn that would require any future city bond sale to win at least 30 votes, or three-fifths of the 50-member City Council, rather than a simple majority of 26.
"Utilizing a three-fifths vote as opposed to a simple majority allows more voices to be heard," Ald. Quinn (13th Ward), who's retiring at the end of his term in May, said during debate on his proposal. "I see this as a win for the city of Chicago. I also see this as a win for the City Council in gaining its independence."
Mayor Johnson sees it very differently, as was clear during his customary post-Council availability when he described it as "this three-fifths compromise."
That's the same term used to describe the decision made by the Founding Fathers during the 1787 Constitutional Convention as they determined how many representatives each state would get in Congress. After much debate, they decided that slaves would be counted as three-fifths of white residents.
The mayor's use of the "three-fifths compromise" term was hardly accidental, given his history as a middle school social studies teacher and his frequent references to issues of race and class. Reporters caught his use of the phrase in the moment, and followed up by asking whether he thought the proposal was racially motivated.
"I can't speak to anyone's motives," he responded. "The only thing I can speak to is what was asked: who would be impacted?" He went on to discuss the "Black and brown" business owners and residents on the South and West sides who are moving into new homes and seeing boosts to their businesses because of initiatives bankrolled by his bond issue ... investments that he suggested would be harder to make under the Quinn proposal. "The impact would be severely detrimental to the most vulnerable," he said.
But he wouldn't say what he plans to do with Ald. Quinn's measure: "There are definitely major concerns there, and I will address it accordingly."
Put together, that all sounds like a veto threat, and it's not clear whether Ald. Quinn and his allies on Council can find four more votes to override a potential veto ... especially now that the mayor has described it in terms that may make it radioactive.
