Attempts by aldermen to ban video gambling machines from their wards were struck down by colleagues Thursday in a rare rebuke of the control council members have over vice and other issues in their neighborhoods.
Two ordinances banning the machines in six different wards — the 26th, 27th, 28th, 33rd, 35th and 49th — were decisively defeated during a City Council License Committee meeting.
The vote broke from procedural norms and the long-running but not uniformly honored tradition of aldermanic prerogative, in which the council follows the local alderman’s lead on how to vote on ordinances dealing with their wards.
And it showed aldermen remained divided as a plan legalizing gambling machines in bars, restaurants and other locations throughout Chicago races ahead.
Mayoral ally Ald. Jason Ervin, who sponsored an ordinance to ban the machines in his West Side ward, at first asked for it to be held but was rebuffed by committee chair Ald. Debra Silverstein, a Johnson opponent.
“I don’t know what the rush is,” Ervin, 28th, said. “This is unprecedented by this body. Just understand this: I have never in my 15 years in council, for a ward-based matter, to be done in this matter. So this is highly unusual.”
Before that, Ald. Walter “Red” Burnett also asked for the ordinance that he sponsored banning the machines in his West Side 27th Ward be held. Burnett and Ervin were part of the bloc of 18 aldermen who sided with the mayor during a grueling fight last December that saw a City Council majority pass the 2026 budget over Johnson’s objections.
The $16.6 billion budget pitched legalizing video gambling as a revenue-raising move, but Johnson has been wary of allowing such machines to proliferate, while his team has argued they will not bring in as much money as promised.
Council supporters of the budget that includes the gambling machines will be reluctant to eat into the proceeds by allowing individual wards to outlaw them.
The legalization, set to trigger gambling in neighborhoods across the city, was not a major focus of budget debates.
In the weeks after the budget passed, proponents of the gambling machines argued Johnson was intentionally withholding a required communication to the Illinois Gaming Board process allowing the state to begin processing Chicago applications.
Last month, Ald. Anthony Beale approved a resolution triggering City Clerk Anna Valencia to share that communication. The state then began accepting applications.
On Thursday, Northwest Side Ald. Anthony Napolitano argued there was in fact precedent for the body to overrule the local alderman, citing the case of an affordable housing project in his ward that passed in 2022 through the council against his will with the support of Mayor Lori Lightfoot.
However, the controversy over video gambling also touches upon vice regulations that the body has traditionally allowed aldermen to have final say over banning, including with liquor, cannabis and hemp licenses.
The machines could also decrease profits from the first Chicago casino, run by Bally’s.
And several aldermen who have moved to preemptively ban the machines from their wards have cited issues like gambling addiction and a spike in burglaries targeting the machines in other parts of the state where they are already legalized.
