So, this is what democracy looks like in Chicago. In her first two years in office, Mayor Lori Lightfoot has won City Council approval for all of her important legislation. But — in a break from rubber-stamp councils of the past — her liberal-progressive agenda has faced opposition.
Lightfoot won approval of her choices for committee chairmen, her budgets and spending plans, overcame a school strike and managed a once-in-a-century pandemic. Yet she had to confront meaningful dissent and accept amendments and compromises along the way.
In our University of Illinois at Chicago report, “Emanuel and Lightfoot City Councils,” we reach the following conclusions:
The City Council is no longer a rubber stamp as it was under Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
The competing council factions and policy conflicts are the face of the new Chicago democracy, and it isn’t always pretty.
Mayor Lightfoot with her liberal-progressive coalition is able to govern and hasn’t lost any votes yet.
Continuing to govern effectively will require amendments and compromises among countervailing pressures to do both more and less.
Key problems remain, including the pandemic, economic recovery, racial injustice, police accountability and better education.
In Emanuel’s last two years in office, 19 aldermen voted 100% of the time to support his positions while Lightfoot’s positions were supported 100% of the time by only two aldermen, Scott Waguespack and Susan Sadlowski Garza. However, both Emanuel and Lightfoot enjoyed the support of 40 aldermen more than 80% of the time.
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Lightfoot, in an email to supporters, rightfully lists numerous accomplishments including raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, passing a fair work scheduling ordinance, reforming fines and fees, ending water shut-offs, battling COVID-19, ending aldermanic prerogative, strengthening the work of the inspector general and creating Invest South/West to provide $750 million to distressed neighborhoods on Chicago’s South and West sides.
Yet nearly all these accomplishments required City Council approval. Council debates were often contentious, and the outcome of the voting was not always predictable. By the standards of the U.S. House and Senate, and those of many state and local governments, such robust give-and-take is considered a desired feature of a democracy. In Chicago, however, they have been a rarity.
Mayor Lightfoot, backed by high voter approval, has not been above using her considerable power. Nor has she been afraid of sharply confronting her opposition, often with harsh words and personal attacks. But she is not a “boss” like Richard J. Daley or Michael Bilandic were.
Mayoral challenges still lie ahead as Chicago emerges from the global pandemic and begins its economic recovery. The old problems, such as institutional racism, neighborhood disparities and income inequality, are still with us. At the end of her first two years in office it looks like Lightfoot will continue to be able to advance her agenda. But she will need the continued support of aldermen who have their own political agendas and are beginning to look to their own reelection.
It is worth noting some of the closest City Council votes so far:
The 2020 budget, which included a small increase in property taxes;
The 2021 budget, which also called for a small increase in property taxes but tied the increase to the consumer price index and will automatically go up every year in the future;
An ordinance to delay for six months the sale of recreational marijuana, which was pushed by the Black Caucus but opposed by Lightfoot;
An ordinance to authorize the mayor to spend $377 million in COVID-19 relief funds;
An ordinance to grant Lightfoot emergency powers to deal with the COVID-19 crisis, which was only approved by a vote of 29-21, after a three-day battle.
Analysis of all of the 77 divided roll call votes and the other controversies in the City Council over the last two years is in our UIC report, written with my co-authors Marco Rosaire Rossi and Thomas J. Gradel.
Despite the city’s challenges, Mayor Lightfoot has succeeded in governing in a difficult time. The City Council has become more of a genuine legislature. In two more years, the voters will render their judgment on how it’s working out.
Dick Simpson is a professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Chicago and is a former alderman.
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