Rich Miller: Fact-checking Mayor Johnson after he blasts Springfield lawmakers

Last week, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson repeatedly slammed Statehouse legislators.

“Some of the same individuals who claim to support an elected representative school board only got the gospel once I became mayor of Chicago,” Mayor Johnson told reporters during one of the most combative and counter-productive press conferences I have ever seen.

No.

Lori Lightfoot campaigned for mayor supporting an elected school board, then did everything she could to stop it. But a bill was passed in Springfield and then signed into law in 2021 over her opposition. One victory she did manage was stripping out a proposal to require City Council confirmation of all school board appointees.

After Johnson was elected, he and the Chicago Teachers Union first demanded (under a lawsuit threat made by the union during a Senate hearing), then suddenly opposed a fully elected school board. They ended up demanding a temporary hybrid board. So, similar to the bill passed in 2021, half the board and the board President will be appointed by the mayor for two-year terms, and the other half will be elected by voters.

Let’s continue with the mayor’s remarks: “These are the same individuals in Springfield that did not fight for adequate funding, that when massive school closings were taking place, none of them stood up in that moment to say, ‘You know what, maybe the authority of the mayor is too much?’”

Just 47 current state legislators (by my quick count) were in office back in 2013 when Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed those schools. That’s barely a quarter of the legislature’s 177 members. The mayor is fighting with ghosts.

Anyway, the CTU pushed legislation at the time to reverse then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s 2013 school closings. House Bill 3283 had 32 House sponsors, and one of those sponsors is now House Speaker Chris Welch.

A similar Senate bill (SB1571) made it out of committee. But the two Democratic legislative leaders blocked the bills. Even so, the CTU shortly thereafter contributed to both their campaign funds.

More Johnson: “Now you actually have a mayor who recognizes democracy, has given the people exactly what they asked for, what they voted for. And all of a sudden, they want to rehash the policies of Bruce Rauner, who called for state control and takeover. So, we’re not going down that route.”

That Rauner proposal was laughed out of the General Assembly. It would have put a state authority in charge of the school district and allowed the district to declare bankruptcy. Nothing even remotely close to that is being considered by normal-thinking legislators. The only item kicking around right now might be requiring city council approval of his appointments, but even that’s doubtful. Could there be some guardrails? Sure. Could the mayor provoke a state takeover by deliberately tanking the district’s finances? We’ll see.

Mayor Johnson also told reporters that he, as a CTU staffer, helped pass the evidence-based school funding bill in 2017. But the reality is that the CTU hotly opposed the bill which actually passed.

The Sunday before the bill was voted on, the CTU held a conference call with several Democratic legislators and I managed to obtain the call-in number and code and then listened in.

The compromises made to reach a veto-proof majority on that bill included adding the Invest in Kids tax credit program. But that “voucher” plan was “not something that we can live with,” CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey told legislators on the conference call. The compromise was, “the language of our enemies,” CTU President Karen Lewis said on the call. State Rep. Chris Welch pointed out during the call that if this deal was the only way the House could find a three-fifths super-majority to pass something at risk of a threatened Rauner veto, “then why shouldn’t we support it?” As I wrote back then, President Lewis’ retort to Welch was blunt: “Quite frankly, you’re destroying public education” by supporting the compromise. “We’d rather have no deal,” and no additional state money included in the legislation than agree to the compromise, VP Sharkey said.

“The Illinois Democratic Party has crossed a line which no spin or talk of ‘compromise’ can ever erase,” the union thundered after the House passed the bill.

Does that sound like they helped pass the bill?

And more Johnson: “This [school] board and the people of Chicago, my administration, will continue to advocate in Springfield for more.”

Once again, with feeling, the mayor has yet to ask the governor or the legislative leaders for the billion dollars he claims the state owes the school district.

• Rich Miller also publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter, and CapitolFax.com.