Mayor Brandon Johnson signed an executive order Tuesday prohibiting the sale of medical debt and establishing responsible debt collection, according to the mayor’s office. Called the “Fair Recovery” executive order, the measure protects Chicagoans from unnecessary financial hardships, harassment and coercive tactics typically associated with outside debt collection agencies.
The news comes after the Chicago City Council passed an alternate budget that replaces Johnson’s corporate head tax proposal with other revenue-generating items including selling city debt to outside collectors to bring in roughly $90 million in revenue.
On Friday, the council voted 29-20 in favor of the revenue proportion of the alternate budget. They followed up Saturday with a 30-19 vote to finalize the appropriations part of the package, which is how the city spends the money.
Mayor Brandon Johnson held a press conference Tuesday at City Hall just before 11:30 a.m.
“It feels like just a few years ago, where this entire coalition stood on the other side, looking at the mayor’s office demanding the very things that we want in this budget,” Johnson said to the room of allies who cheered and shouted “We love you.”
In an email from the mayor’s office, officials confirmed Johnson is neither vetoing nor endorsing the alternate budget. “Today I want to announce I will not veto the budget approved by the Chicago City Council. I will not add my signature affirming the budget as presented. In this moment, I will not add the risk and speculation of a government shutdown to the profound worries Chicagoans face,” Johnson said in the press memo.
As part of the day’s announcements, Johnson also signed an executive order capping police overtime spending and creating new oversight of the Chicago Police Department.
According to the mayor’s office, the overtime executive order “states that, barring legitimate emergencies, the Chicago Police Department (CPD) cannot unilaterally exceed the budgeted overtime cap. If CPD deems it necessary to administer overtime beyond the appropriated amount, the measure requires the department to submit an ordinance before the City Council amending the annual appropriations ordinance, only after receiving authorization from the mayor and the Office of Budget Management.”
Asked why he’s not signing the alternate budget, Johnson told reporters, “Well, because there are some elements of this budget that, quite frankly, I don’t want to give a signal to the people of Chicago that I support what I believe is one of the most detrimental and immoral aspects of this budget.
He continued, “I can hardly wait till we have politicians in this city, in this state, in this country, that are more concerned about the signals that we send to working people than big corporations.”
Over the summer, community organizers have staged rallies and phone banked to encourage residents to urge their alderpeople to vote in favor of taxing rich corporations through a corporate head tax.
Some of the alders in the alternate budget bloc have defined the corporate head tax as a “job killer” and a discouragement to economic growth. Chicago once used the head tax as a source of revenue from the 1970s until former Mayor Rahm Emanuel got rid of it in 2014. A recent WBEZ analysis found no evidence the head tax or its repeal impacted job trends.
On Tuesday, Johnson also spoke to the moderate and conservative-leaning alderpeople who formed the bloc to create an alternate budget without his corporate head tax proposal.
“If those City Council members are not looking out for working people then I’m happy to do it,” Johnson said.
Johnson clarified that the city of Chicago already reaches out to people who owe debt and encourages them to pay. He said the alternate alder bloc wants to sell that debt to another entity “to use practices that we know, historically, have been detrimental and harmful to people in this city, in this country.”
Johnson continued, “We’ve established parameters around how the city of Chicago will approach debt, because we do believe that people should pay their debt.”
Johnson also clarified that the medical debt includes emergency medical response services and ambulance transport.
“There’s about $800 million of medical debt right now that people of the city or around the city owe to the city of Chicago,” Johnson said.
At times during the presser, Johnson listed out the wins that he and his allies achieved during this budget cycle, including funds for more youth jobs, which the alternate bloc tried to freeze in an earlier version of its proposal.
“If you think that after we secured 98.4% of what we wanted in this budget, that somehow that’s going to pause our momentum, in fact, I would actually argue that it has motivated and strengthened our momentum,” Johnson said. “There were there were things that we fought for in this budget that people said wasn’t possible, and the fact that we delivered it, it proves that not only is it possible to challenge corporations to put more skin in the game, it’s actual proof that we can challenge Springfield to put more skin in the game to fund our schools, to fund healthcare, to fund good paying jobs, to continue to fund the things that protect working people.”
Some of Johnson’s allies spoke ahead of him at the press conference, which began around 11:00 a.m.
“We will not forget which alders chose corporations over community, because we’ve been organizing across the city for months and we’re not stopping now,” Grassroots Collective Senior Organizing Director Rocio Garcia said during the press conference.
Ald. Lamont Robinson (4th Ward) said, “I thank Mayor Johnson for instituting the safeguards that will protect Chicagoans from the most egregious types of medical debt collection.”
Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates also took the podium. “We are undergoing a generational transformation in the city of Chicago, and that’s what is so confusing about this time, because you have pundits trying to figure out who won,” Davis Gates said, speaking about political pundits who have illustrated the budget cycle as a battle between the mayor and alderpeople.
“What I do when pundits try to figure out who won is really, like, ask a Black woman who’s my mom’s age, because they know and understand that in a city like this, how difficult it is to even understand what’s happening in this building, much less knowing who’s won,” she continued.
Davis Gates added that the “why” gets lost in the middle of the battle narratives. “You have to wake up every day to win for a city that has sold off parking meters and skyways at the expense of our schools of mental health care,” Davis Gates said. “These are the reasons why we’re here in this moment to recapture what was once lost.”
Davis Gates also spoke about the history of the government lagging behind the people. She referenced the Black Panther Party’s free breakfast program in the 1970s, and how public schools now feed children.
“You see how government lags the people?” Davis Gates said. “The people say that the rich have to pay their fair share. The mayor of Chicago says the rich have to pay their fair share. Twenty of our aldermen say that rich have to pay their fair share, and the people are saying that the rich have to pay their fair share. So we’re going to continue to knock doors, and we’re going to continue to be led by a man of conviction and values who means what he says and does the work of the people.”
