Every citywide advisory question that reaches Chicago voters means another did not.
So the debate isn’t simply about which ideas deserve a public vote, but about who gets to decide what voters are allowed to weigh in on in the first place.
During Thursday’s City Council Rules Committee meeting, six proposed citywide advisory questions — including three submitted by Mayor Brandon Johnson — vied for a place on November’s ballot, where ultimately only three citywide questions can appear.
Mayor Brandon Johnson’s proposals largely reflected his administration’s policy priorities: asking voters about a city millionaire tax, seeking federal reimbursement for immigration enforcement costs and creating a permanent Property Tax Relief Fund.
The aldermanic proposals, by contrast, focused on long-standing municipal questions: whether to restore ShotSpotter, build a permanent festival space and change the timing of city pension contributions.
When only three advisory questions can appear on the ballot, the distinction matters. Every slot devoted to an administration priority is one less opportunity to gauge public opinion on another pressing issue. That is precisely why mayors should be especially cautious about using scarce ballot space to advance their own agendas.
Particularly compelling, in our view, is the proposal asking voters whether Chicago should restore gunshot detection technology. We have long held that ending ShotSpotter was a mistake. A citywide vote would tell elected officials whether Chicagoans agree.
Oh, and there’s another topic we forgot to mention.
The millionaire tax.
Johnson wanted to ask Chicagoans whether the city should impose a 3% surcharge on individuals earning more than $1 million annually.
Separately, former Gov. Pat Quinn and state Rep. La Shawn Ford today announced an ordinance calling for a citywide advisory question asking Chicago voters whether they support a proposed Illinois constitutional amendment imposing a 3% income tax surcharge on millionaires, with revenue split between property tax relief and education.
For a brief time, two different millionaire-tax questions were competing for one of the city’s few available ballot slots.
How is this productive?
A millionaire tax has already been considered in Springfield and failed to advance. Gov. JB Pritzker wisely declined to push for its placement on the statewide ballot, as we noted in March, pointing to the sound defeat in 2020 of his signature progressive income tax.
There is little mystery about how Chicago would vote on a millionaire tax, as such a proposal has long enjoyed support here. The obstacle has never been Chicago, but the rest of Illinois. This tax idea gets trickier statewide, and given that advancing such a tax would require amending the Illinois Constitution, it’s going nowhere unless the rest of the state gets on board.
Which is why the city shouldn’t commit valuable real estate to an advisory question on this issue. Johnson’s was shot down in committee. The fate of Quinn and Ford’s plan is uncertain — and unlikely.
The committee ultimately rejected Johnson’s millionaire-tax proposal and his property tax relief question while advancing his proposal seeking federal reimbursement for immigration enforcement costs. It also advanced advisory questions on ShotSpotter, a permanent festival site and earlier pension contributions. The full council still must weigh in before any of these questions make it to the ballot — and because the number of citywide advisory questions is limited, not every proposal can ultimately appear before voters.
Thursday’s vote is not the final word. The full City Council still must decide which questions ultimately reach Chicago voters.
But the committee sent an important message of its own: how ideas reach the ballot matters, too.
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