By Paul Vallas

September 20^th, 2026

Mayor Brandon Johnson is trying to rehabilitate his image with Chicago’s Black community through divisive rhetoric and actions that demonize the White community. While Whites have a right to be offended by his antics, the real tragedy is that in the end his policies are punishing the Black community, as businesses and middle-class residents of all races leave the city, eroding the tax base, which leads to higher taxes, reduced public services, and fewer job opportunities — disproportionately harming vulnerable, low-income Black residents who remain.

The mayor’s latest gambit to mobilize what he perceives to be part of his base is another in his numerous executive orders, this one limiting the awarding of city contracts to companies whose leadership reflects the diversity of the local community and requiring disclosure of ties to federal immigration enforcement.¹ Eager to check all the progressive boxes, his order aims to keep companies that also do business with agencies enforcing immigration law from winning city work. Never mind the constitutional questions the order raises or the impact it will have on the cost of city contractual services, let alone the city’s business climate.

This follows the mayor’s “reparations” gambit and the racially divisive rhetoric that has accompanied it. Is it lost on reparations advocates that the mayor waited until his last year in office to hold his public hearings on reparations — hearings that easily resembled political rallies? He is calling for reparations in a state that fought for the Union and outlawed slavery, one that sent more than 250,000 volunteers to fight to end it, with over 34,000 losing their lives² — in a city where the vast majority of residents, including White residents, are either immigrants or the children, grandchildren, or great-grandchildren of immigrants.

The mayor and his defenders will argue that they are all about promoting diversity and shifting investment directly into historically marginalized communities — focused on affordable housing, mental health resources, youth employment programs, and public-school funding — viewing them as essential structural changes necessary to uplift the poor, who have faced decades of neglect. However, this is a myth, and the mayor has woven a rhetorical “Potemkin Village” that hides actions and policies that are further degrading conditions in Chicago’s Black communities.

The fact remains that, from a purely financial standpoint, the primary beneficiaries of the mayor’s actions and policies are the Chicago Teachers Union and the Mayor’s own immigration and border policies. The Mayor Johnson-controlled school board has increased property taxes by $752 million during Johnson’s tenure, while it has also provided schools with over $1 billion more in additional property-tax revenue through the Tax Increment Financing program. Meanwhile, the city’s Inspector General reported that $639.6 million was spent on migrant housing and other support services during Johnson’s time in office.³

Contrast that with his so-called investment in long-neglected communities. While housing was provided for more than 46,000 migrants, the city has to date produced just over 500 new affordable housing units. Only three of the twelve community mental health centers have been reopened.

The city’s mental health emergency response and intervention program (CARE) has been a disaster, as dispatch volume has plummeted nearly 70 percent since police and fire were precluded from responding. The much-hyped youth summer jobs program has barely returned to pre-COVID levels.

The massive increase in school spending hasn’t translated into improved educational outcomes or choices. Spending over $32,000 per student — a 44 percent increase in per-pupil spending — has improved neither the schools themselves nor school choices for lower-income families, overwhelmingly Black. Johnson’s school board presided over the systematic lowering of academic standards and a return to social promotion, as accountability for poor academic performance was abandoned. The district has even stopped ranking schools by academic performance.

As the quality of schools has degraded, the Johnson-controlled school board has worked to strengthen the teacher union’s monopoly on education — successfully opposing both the extension of the state’s private-school scholarship program for low-income families and the state’s opting into a federal scholarship program. The latter forgoing hundreds of millions of dollars in education support for public- and private-school families alike.

Meanwhile, the teacher’s union has been exerting pressure on the district and state legislature to degrade and ultimately eliminate public school choice.

The CTU’s attack on public charter schools is a well-documented, years-long campaign to destabilize and ultimately eliminate schools that serve more than 54,000 students⁴ — approximately 16 to 17 percent of all CPS students, including a quarter of all high school students.

Approximately 97 percent of charter students are Black or Latino, and 87 percent are low income.⁵ Yet these schools have been systematically denied equitable funding, subjected to onerous mandates, provided shortened renewal periods, and face state- and city-sanctioned encroachment by the teacher’s union.

The CTU’s attack on school choice is not limited to charter schools. As part of a broader plan to control the entire education system in Chicago, it extends to magnet schools — selective-enrollment schools that admit students based on academic merit rather than ZIP code. These schools are among the last remaining ladders of opportunity for low-income students. The union, however, has long viewed them as threats, largely because they highlight the failures of neighborhood schools.

Then there is public safety. Chicago again led the nation in the number of murders, school-age murders, and mass shootings. The overwhelming majority of victims and assailants are Black. Black residents are 14 times more likely to be murdered, while Black women constitute almost a third of all violent crime victims in the city.

Yet Johnson continues to degrade the police department while avoiding direct condemnation of the violence, choosing instead to offer vague invocations of institutional racism and historic disinvestment when explaining the crime plaguing Black communities.

Johnson’s budgets have eliminated 833 police officer positions, while failing to fill vacancies has reduced police strength by hundreds more. His claim of having added 200 detectives has been misleading. While he promoted 200 officers to detective, the failure to replace retired detectives has produced a net increase of less than 50. The department remains 2,000 officers below full staffing strength. Little surprise, then, that police have no officers available to respond to half of all high-priority 911 calls, and arrest rates for violent crimes remain below 10 percent.⁶

As tragic as the mayor’s so-called progressive agenda has been for Black residents, it has been accompanied by a significant increase in the cost of government.

The mayor’s so-called progressive tax agenda is itself a myth: his referendum to allow the city to impose a so-called mansion tax would actually have been a real-estate transfer tax falling overwhelmingly on hard-pressed commercial and rental property, while his so-called tax on large corporations was actually a job-killing tax on mid-size and large Chicago businesses based on their number of employees.

The mayor’s budget, and that of the school board he controls, have dramatically increased the cost of government for everyday residents and businesses — disproportionately in the Black community. Johnson has enacted dozens of secondary tax and fee hikes costing city taxpayers over $752 million, while his school board approved another $750 million in property-tax increases. The dramatic shift in property values from depressed commercial to residential property has contributed to more than $1 billion in additional residential property taxes since Johnson took office.

Chicago has already seen the largest Black exodus of any major U.S. city since 2010; Illinois ranks second among states. Black Chicagoans are leaving because so-called progressive policies have left them in unsafe neighborhoods, denied them school choice, and burdened them with regressive taxes. Johnson keeps offering more of what has made them leave. His policies, programs, and posturing are making things worse for Black Chicagoans. Expect more finger-pointing, not fixes.

Equity cannot be achieved without safe neighborhoods, high-quality schools, reliable public transportation, and policies that build local wealth. Government dependency is not a substitute. Johnson’s actions make it increasingly clear that, at best, he doesn’t understand that or, at worst, doesn’t care. Johnson will intensify his use of the race card as his catch-all excuse for problems he inherited and his growing list of failures.

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Sources

1. Chicago Sun-Times / WBEZ, “Mayor’s executive order targets companies helping with deportation campaign,” Aug. 26–27, 2026; WTTW News, “Mayor Johnson Signs Executive Order Targeting Firms Profiting from Immigration Raids,” Aug. 26, 2026; Fox News, Aug. 30, 2026.
2. Illinois Department of Natural Resources / Ancestry.com, “Illinois during the Civil War”; Wikipedia/FamilySearch summaries of U.S. War Department Civil War enlistment records — Illinois credited with roughly 250,000–256,000 Union soldiers and over 34,000 deaths.
3. Chicago Sun-Times, “Migrant crisis cost Chicago $639.6M, and city followed rules in spending it, inspector general says,” July 22, 2026; WTTW News, July 28, 2026 (Office of Inspector General report by David Glockner).
4. Illinois Policy Institute, “4 things to know about Chicago Public Schools’ new strategic plan,” citing over 54,000 charter students; Grokipedia/CPS enrollment data putting total CPS enrollment at roughly 316,000 and district-authorized charters at 111.
5. Illinois Policy Institute, same source, citing charter enrollment as approximately 98% Black or Hispanic.
6. Wirepoints, “If you’re shot, robbed or assaulted in Chicago, there’s a 50/50 chance there’ll be no police to respond,” July 16, 2024; Guns Save Life, Sept. 14, 2023, both citing city 911 dispatch data showing 52% of high-priority calls unanswered in 2023 vs. 19% in 2019.
7. WTTW News, “Mayor Brandon Johnson Cancels ShotSpotter Contract, Fulfilling Major Campaign Promise,” Feb. 13, 2024; NBC Chicago and ABC7 Chicago, Sept. 2024 coverage of the Sept. 22–23, 2024 decommissioning.

Paul Vallas formerly ran the public school systems in Chicago, Philadelphia and the Louisiana Recovery School District. He was a candidate for Mayor of Chicago.