Mayor Brandon Johnson and his allies quashed a drive Wednesday to stall a key plank of his progressive agenda, pushing forward with an ordinance to establish a citywide minimum wage and abolish a lower minimum wage for tipped workers.
The measure is set for a vote later this week.
The mini-rebellion by a group of moderate and more conservative members of Chicago’s City Council was the most pointed pushback the progressive mayor, who assumed office in May, has received yet and hearkened back to some of the parliamentary high jinks that occurred during the term of his predecessor, former Mayor Lori Lightfoot.
After Johnson’s allies successfully fought them off, one alderman who has tangled with mayors going back to Rahm Emanuel, Ald. Anthony Beale, 9th, retaliated by sending all of the mayor’s new measures to the council’s Rules Committee, a tactic used to stall legislation. Beale said he’s upset with the Johnson administration because he’s opposed to the number of migrants the city has recently sent to police districts in his South Side ward.
The scenario played out after a snafu earlier this week when the Chicago City Clerk’s office failed to post the measure on Wednesday’s City Council agenda with enough advance notice as legally mandated, “due to an administrative and human error,” clerk spokeswoman Diana Martinez said.
Because of that delay, Ald. Michael Rodriguez, 22nd, who heads the council’s Workforce Development Committee, sought to use a council procedure to move the vote until Friday when a special council meeting would be held. But Ald. Brendan Reilly, 42nd, who has raised concerns about tipped wage ordinance, objected and said Rodriguez couldn’t do that because the item itself wasn’t posted the required two days ahead of Wednesday’s meeting.
“Where is the 48 hours? This isn’t transparency, Mr. President,” Reilly said to the mayor. Johnson responded that this is why they are delaying the vote until Friday, but Reilly still motioned to override the maneuver.
The downtown alderman’s appeal failed in a 15-30 vote and another procedural effort to delay the vote beyond Friday from Ald. Raymond Lopez, 15th, also failed in a 18-30 vote. The measure will head to a final vote Friday.
“Mr. President, I think it’s a huge inconvenience to bring the entire Council back Friday, when we are coming back Wednesday already,” Beale said, referring to next week’s mayoral budget address. “I just believe that this is a total waste of our taxpayers’ time and money to convene for one item on Friday.”
During September’s workforce committee hearing on the measure, Reilly also requested a delay in the vote and predicted the change would push additional costs onto customers, reduce already thin margins at bars and restaurants or lead to staff cuts.
The ordinance eliminating a lower minimum wage for tipped employees in Chicago was pushed by Johnson ally Ald. Jessie Fuentes, 26th. If passed, it would make Chicago the largest American city to independently abolish tipped wage for service workers.
The effort has faced opposition from business interests, who say it would kill profits, but the latest measure was pitched as a compromise between the main restaurant lobby and the Johnson administration.
If passed, the ordinance would require the pay for tipped employees to eventually match the hourly minimum required for all other workers in the city over the next five years.
The mayor’s floor leader, Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, 35th, shot down his colleagues seeking to delay the Friday meeting by noting the workforce committee voted “overwhelmingly to advance the one fair wage ordinance to make sure that some of the lowest-paid workers in the state of Chicago see a raise.”
“These are mostly Black women. These are mostly brown women who struggle to make ends meet,” Ramirez-Rosa said. “And in this case, we have opted as a council to defer and publish this item and to take it to Friday because workers have waited too long. It’s time to pass one fair wage.”
Voting to delay Friday’s vote to phase out the subminimum tipped wage were: Brian Hopkins, 2nd, Beale, Peter Chico, 10th, Marty Quinn, 13th, Lopez, Derrick Curtis, 18th, Matt O’Shea, 19th, Silvana Tabares, 23rd, Felix Cardona, 31st, Scott Waguespack, 32nd, Bill Conway, 34th, Nicholas Sposato, 38th, Anthony Napolitano, 41st, Reilly, Timmy Knudsen, 43rd, Bennett Lawson, 44th, Jim Gardiner, 45th, and Debra Silverstein, 50th.
Voting to override Rodriguez’s move to defer and publish the legislation following the clerk’s error were Hopkins, Beale, Chico, Quinn, Lopez, Taberes, Waguespack, Conway, Sposato, Samantha Nugent, 39th, Napolitano, Reilly, Knudsen, Lawson and Silverstein.
The council also voted to establish a working group to explore plans to reopen the city’s shuttered mental health centers and establish a non-police 911 response to crises. It also OK’d requiring Chicago Transit Authority officials to show up to quarterly hearings before aldermen.