Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce President Jack Lavin is urging Mayor Brandon Johnson to break the City Council stalemate over the selection of a new zoning committee chair — an impasse that has essentially brought zoning to a halt and stalled more than 40 development projects.
In late November, Acting Zoning Committee Chair Bennett Lawson (44th) gave Johnson a year-end ultimatum: Make his committee post permanent with control over his own staff or he’s done with the time-consuming job.
Lawson stuck to his guns by refusing to hold a Zoning Committee meeting in January, though in February he chaired a meeting that included Foundry Park, a scaled down version of the massive Lincoln Yards development on the North Side.
He had hoped to convince his colleagues to give him the permanent job when the full City Council met on Feb. 18, but the stalemate continued as some members of the Black Caucus pushed for Economic Development Chair Gilbert Villegas (36th) to take over the Zoning Committee and Ald. David Moore (17th) to replace Villegas.
Lawson’s plan to anoint two of his fellow freshmen Council members as vice-chairs also alienated veteran alderpersons.
There was no Zoning Committee meeting before the March 18 Council meeting, leaving at least 41 zoning applications in legislative limbo.
The backlog includes the landmark designation that Chicago-based Golub & Co. needs to qualify for a $47.2 million tax break at 30 N. LaSalle. The developer has already received a $57 million tax increment financing subsidy, but needs the additional tax break to convert a portion of the 44-story office building into 349 residential units.
Lavin views the political stalemate as untenable in an already tenuous business and financing environment.
“Time is money… We have a long list of [stalled] projects. It’s just going to continue to grow. We need the mayor to show some leadership to get it resolved,” Lavin said. “The more we send this message that we’re not open or business, that we can’t get our act together — investors and developers are going to look at the city and they’re going to prioritize their investments elsewhere.”
Lawson wants the permanent job with freedom to hire his own staff after holding down the fort twice — once after Zoning Chair Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th) was forced out over allegations of manhandling an aldermanic colleague, and again after the retirement of City Council dean Walter Burnett.
Johnson had hoped to use Burnett’s resignation to appease critics and shore up his base in the progressive and African American communities.
But in late September, the mayor’s reorganization was derailed in yet another act of defiance by a City Council emboldened by Johnson’s political unpopularity. The same thing happened when Lawson tried to promote himself in February.
Senior mayoral adviser Jason Lee said it’s now up to the City Council to get its own act together.
“The City Council has had multiple opportunities to vote. It’s literally statutorially required for them to vote for a Zoning chair. They also are the ones who have the zoning applications,” Lee told the Sun-Times. “We’ve had multiple recommendations and conversations with City Council on how it wants to organize itself around the zoning chair issue. There’s been multiple iterations. Ask the people who don’t want to vote for it” why the stalemate drags on.
The Johnson administration’s attempt to wash its hands of the stalemate runs contrary to what happened shortly before the mayor took office.
That’s when then-Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson forged a compromise to shrink the number of City Council committees from 28 to 20 and replace Finance Committee Chairman Scott Waguespack (32nd) with Ald. Pat Dowell (3rd), whose endorsement of Johnson was a turning point of his mayoral campaign. The plan installed Ramirez-Rosa as Zoning chair.
Lawson said he hasn’t decided yet whether to call a Zoning Committee meeting in April, but plans to send out the required public notice to give him that option.
“It hurts me to stall the committee long-term because there’s good projects that we need as a city. That’s just not the person I am. But at the same time, I wanted to bring some resolution to this sooner rather than later,” Lawson told the Sun-Times.
The political infighting that has stalled zoning in Chicago only exacerbates tensions between Johnson and a City Council that rejected his corporate head tax and approved its own alternative budget.
Lawson noted that there is no consensus on how to resolve the Zoning chair stalemate, “even in the Council group of 31″ that seized control over the budget process.
“So it’s on the mayor. It’s on us as well to get something done,” Lawson said. “We found this with the budget where we were going to have to do it on our own. This may be another situation where we have to do it on our own.”
