The mayor is engaged not so much in a negotiation with an adversary as in a partnering up with a trusted co-conspirator to commit a white-collar bank heist.
The mayor is engaged not so much in a negotiation with an adversary as in a partnering up with a trusted co-conspirator to commit a white-collar bank heist.
C hicago is admittedly infamous across the nation (if not the world) for its tales of union and civic corruption, to the point where we as residents simply factor it in as part of the cost of living and doing business around here, maybe even something that gives us a bit of character. (Poor character, mind you, but a burly sort of personality regardless.) And perhaps it’s that tolerance for corruption and poorly functioning government that has put the city where it now stands: with an already collapsing public-school system on the verge of complete financial implosion, and a mayor actively working against the interests of the city itself.
To briefly explain the most important story in Chicago politics right now: The notoriously radical and maximalist Chicago Teachers Union has stalled in the final stages of negotiating a new contract with the city. Among the terms the CTU is demanding — and which Mayor Brandon Johnson is supporting — is that the city, already wildly overburdened with unmeetable pension obligations, assume $175 million more of the responsibility for the pensions of non-teachers in the CPS system. How to pay for it? The idea was to force Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez to take out a high-interest $300 million loan to fund it for a year and then just pray for Governor J. B. Pritzker to toss the city some money next time around because “now they have to.”
Martinez, in an act of financial responsibility unusual for this town, has refused to go along. (I suspect he concluded that if someone had to sign the city’s financial death warrant, it wasn’t going to be him.) So Mayor Johnson, who campaigned explicitly on how eager he was to shovel money at the teachers’ union — nobody can claim they weren’t warned — has now turned to campaigning to get him fired.
Legally, Johnson’s hands are tied: The only people in the city who can fire the CPS CEO are the members of the Chicago Board of Education. But this shouldn’t have been a problem, as those members are appointed by the mayor and not elected (yet), and Johnson got to pick a fresh batch of them back when he took office last spring. One would have assumed they would willingly assent to whatever it was their patron demanded.
Oh no, not so. The city’s entire school board — his own handpicked team — resigned en masse on Friday rather than carry out his bidding. It was an utterly stunning turn of events, blindsiding literally everyone in the city, and its repercussions could not be clearer: Earlier today, Johnson announced an entirely new seven-person slate for the school board, and one assumes they understand they are being appointed strictly to follow orders from on high. If not, get ready for Chicago to add its own majestic new spin on the Saturday Night Massacre, this time from a series of school boards getting the hatchet for themselves refusing to play hatchet-man.
Allow me to briefly explain some city lore. Understand that Brandon Johnson is partial to the Chicago Teachers Union and its negotiating demands not just because he is a mindless progressive. No, in this specific (and all-important) case, Brandon Johnson is a bought-and-sold mindless progressive. The difference matters.
Johnson is not merely sympathetic to the CTU, he is a literal creature of them: Originally a schoolteacher, he first became a union organizer in 2011 and helped lead the infamous Chicago teachers’ strike in 2012. When he first ran for local office (as a Cook County commissioner) his campaign was paid for completely by the CTU, which unsurprisingly funded his mayoral campaign last year as well. It was understood by all that when Johnson won, that meant the union — by far the most powerful in the city, and easily one of the most radical in the nation — had finally gotten its own man into office.
So it is understood by all in the city that Johnson is engaged not so much in a negotiation with an adversary as in a partnering up with a trusted co-conspirator to commit a white-collar bank heist. Chicago has more than doubled the amount it spends per student in recent years, only to see educational outcomes spiral down even further; the union’s sole response is “more pay and better benefits and more money for underperforming schools as opposed to special ed or gifted programs” — in other words, change nothing, merely enlarge the problem. I will not be surprised if the Chicago Teachers Union gets what it wants — they’re haggling over a contract with their own pet, after all — and I will not be surprised if the ruin of our school system here accelerates accordingly.