WaPo Torches Chicago Mayor for Economic Gimmicks Bankrupting the Windy City

WaPo takes down the Windy City mayor…

In a blunt editorial titled “Chicago has lost its mind,” The Washington Post accused Mayor Brandon Johnson of mismanaging the city’s finances and doubling down on the same short-term budget gimmicks that have plagued the city for years.

The board noted that Chicago’s net operating budget ballooned by nearly 40 percent between 2019 and 2025, growth that Grant McClintock of the Civic Federation said was only possible because it was “subsidized in large part by temporary federal pandemic funding that kept the City financially afloat.”

That cushion is gone.

“The pandemic is over, but many of the programs and personnel positions established during that time remain, and without the benefit of the federal funding that previously supported them,” McClintock said.

The editorial singled out one proposal in particular as a flashing red warning sign.

“The mayor proposes to increase the tax on the lease of ‘personal property’ like computers, vehicles and software from 11 percent to 14 percent, and to bring back the city’s ‘head tax,’ which would result in large employers paying $33 per worker, per month,” the board wrote. “By making it more expensive to do business or hire workers in the city, these measures threaten Chicago’s future economic growth and tax collections.”

Asked about the editorial during a Monday press conference, Johnson fired back.

“Their assertion is just way off base,” he said. “In fact, we just saw the Civic Federation also substantiate what I’ve been saying all along, that there is no empirical evidence that somehow the revenue that we would generate from less than one percent of the largest corporations lead to causing harm within our job growth.”

Johnson went further, arguing that critics cherry-pick the Civic Federation when it suits them — while ignoring moments when the group backed his ideas. He claimed the same federation previously advised the city not to pay the full pension amount and supported his proposed community safety surcharge.

Despite Johnson’s defense, the Post wasn’t persuaded.

The editorial warned that the mayor’s tax hikes are just one piece of a broader pattern of fiscal sleight-of-hand.

“Other gimmicks include a temporary hiring freeze that will do nothing to address the long-term mismatch between spending and revenue, diverting surplus funds earmarked for economic development of blighted areas into the general fund and the school system (once again sacrificing future growth to fund today’s expenditures), and slashing additional payments the city has been making to shore up the city’s underfunded pensions,” the board wrote.

More over at WaPo:

Chicago has lost its mind, the Editorial Board writes. https://t.co/Alzsx3vFXg

— Washington Post Opinions (@PostOpinions) December 15, 2025