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The day after Election Day is typically one for conciliatory statements and pledges of unity. Today is no exception to that time-honored tradition. After Paul Vallas all but formally conceded the mayoral race to Brandon Johnson on election night, Mayor Lori Lightfoot was quick to follow up with a statement promising to cooperate with the incoming administration. And that’s as it should be.
Similarly, the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago — the de facto voice of the downtown business community — offered its own pledge of comity to Johnson today: “We look forward to working with him and the entire Chicago community as we build on our City’s significant strengths, meet our big challenges, bolster our economy to create opportunity for all, and ensure Chicago is the best place in America to live, work, and do business.”
Of course, it’s what happens once the afterglow wears off that really counts — and it’s going to take more than some warmly worded press releases to build a genuine sense of trust between Chicago’s business leaders and an incoming mayor who won office via a populist message that painted those very leaders as complicit in the city’s myriad woes. It’s no secret that a vast number of the business leaders in this town placed their bets — and their bucks — on the other guy. They spent big and they lost. And along the way, they highlighted some very real concerns about the policies advocated by the victor and how those ideas will affect Chicago’s economic vitality.
The work of building partnership will require effort and good will, both from downtown business owners and managers as well as from the mayor-elect and his circle of supporters. Now that Johnson has won the job and assumed responsibility for fixing monumental problems ranging from crime to economic inequity, education to transit, pension shortfalls to neighborhood development, the time will come — and perhaps soon — when he will realize he needs the business community’s help to craft and fund solutions. The corporate community, in turn, now knows there’s a new sheriff in town, so to speak, and if any of the ills that so concern business owners and managers are going to be addressed, they’ll have to deal with, persuade and seek compromise with Team Johnson.
That said, the onus is mainly on Johnson at this point. This is the job he asked for — and it’s a big one. Business leaders have to hope the rhetoric that worked for Johnson on the campaign trail — most notably, his inflammatory assertion that the election was “about Black labor versus white wealth” — does not inform his governing philosophy to the extent that many worry it will. One of Johnson’s first acts should be to engage business on solving that gap without the incendiary rhetoric — and Crain’s ongoing monthly Equity series contains op-eds written by people from across the corporate and philanthropic spectrum whose perspectives would be worth seeking out.
As Crain’s columnist Greg Hinz pointed out on the morning after election night, Johnson’s first job must be to sort out what to do about a still-raging public safety crisis that was a major factor in Lightfoot’s ouster — and almost propelled his opponent into the fifth floor office. Crime — as well as the city’s increasingly global reputation for an out-of-control atmosphere of violence, as overblown as it may seem to some — is the No. 1 issue on the minds of business leaders. It’s not just affecting the quality of life of those living and working in the city; it’s also making employers and investors skittish about doing business here.
Johnson has said he wants to shift more money to dealing with the root causes of poverty and crime. A laudable goal. But neighborhood police districts are still short more than 1,000 officers from pre-COVID days. As a candidate, he argued that more cops on the streets don’t necessarily make those streets safer. Fair enough. But do fewer cops make streets safer? The proof is playing out before our eyes.
On a related front, the outgoing mayor has made investment in South and West Side neighborhoods a high priority — one Johnson would be right to pursue as well, though Lightfoot’s Invest South/West program deserves a thorough review of its effectiveness so far. What Johnson would be wise to consider is that the downtown itself is also a neighborhood, and one whose vitality affects the entire city. When people are afraid to live, work or play in the city’s core, that has a chilling effect on the economy as a whole. Downtown development matters — especially now, as the central business district struggles to recover from massive COVID-era changes in workforce habits. What is to be done with acres of office space that is unused or underused? That’s a problem the next mayor must grapple with — and one that won’t be solved without bringing business leaders and investors to the table.
Finally, Candidate Johnson laid out a raft of taxing proposals in the intermediate stage of the campaign, only to back away from a few of them — in particular, a tax on Metra commuters — as the sprint to the runoff wore on. Here’s hoping Mayor Johnson will drop some of the other nonstarters on his taxing to-do list, especially the head tax. At a time when Chicago must do everything it can to retain employers and attract even more, a tax on hiring is a truly awful idea.
All that said, everyone in the Chicago area — even people who live and work outside the city limits — should be pulling for Johnson to succeed. We all have a stake in the outcome.
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