Mayor Johnson’s Chicago 2024 Vision Clouded by Challenges
From a rash of carjackings to an eroding tax base to an ever-increasing list of demands from progressives, Mayor Brandon Johnson is being tested.
Over the past few years, Chicago has struggled.
Former Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who rode a wave of popular support into office only a few short years ago, just became the first incumbent Chicago Mayor in decades to lose reelection.
Her replacement, running ostensibly to Lightfoot’s left, Mayor Brandon Johnson inherited a raft of problems.
Long-term public school closures in Chicago may not have exclusively driven rising rates of juvenile crime, but school closures certainly couldn’t have helped. Chicago public school students, already laboring under some of the worst test scores in the country and highest per-capita spending per student, were enrolled in districts that stayed closed longer than the vast majority of U.S. and international school districts.
Chicago public school students are now grappling with a once-in-a-generation learning loss. Some at-risk students left high school or middle school in March of 2020 and never returned.
To solve Chicago’s seemingly intractable problem, and many others, the City of Chicago needs revenue. Unfortunately, Illinois is bleeding…