Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration has informed aldermen that a proposed sale of outstanding debts owed to the city of Chicago, which was supposed to net $90 million in this year’s budget, is garnering no interest from banks or other financial services firms.
The apparent failure of the debt sale looks like it will blow a hole in the current year’s budget that will need to be addressed, although the size of that shortfall is yet to be determined.
We certainly agree with members of the council majority who included the debt sale among other revenue-raising measures that the mayor and his administration gave their idea no real chance of succeeding.
From the start, Johnson castigated the plan to sell some of the $8 billion owed to the city in unpaid ambulance charges, water bills, red-light and speeding camera tickets and other obligations as “immoral” and “morally bankrupt.” This page rejected his argument, saying among other things that it’s unfair to the people who pay their debts to give a tacit pass to those who just don’t. Johnson allowed the budget containing the proposed debt law to become law without his signature.
He then went on a barnstorming session in various wards throughout the first quarter in which he and his finance team warned that the debt sale, among other of the council majority’s novel revenue-raising options, was unlikely to succeed and that the budget would be short by the middle of the year.
So is it even slightly surprising the city can find no one interested in trying to collect this debt, at least given the way Team Johnson has conducted the process and the mayor’s messaging?
Among the reasons potential bidders gave for taking a pass were “reputational concerns of potential buyers” and “future policy or legislative decisions,” according to a recent memo city Comptroller Michael Belsky wrote to the council.
Well. Yeah.
When you have a mayor trashing his own city’s plan, that surely will raise a vendor’s “concerns” about the effect on their reputation.
Johnson took a preliminary victory lap of sorts in July, iterating that he’d said from the start the debt sale was a bad idea. The crocodile tears then flowed. “I didn’t want to be right about this situation,” he said.
This would be easier to stomach if Johnson hadn’t leaned heavily on nuisance fees and fines in past budgets. About $1 billion in unpaid debts was added in less than two years during Johnson’s term as of November 2025, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
The job of the executive branch, whether at the national or local level, is to enforce and execute the laws of the legislative branch.
We don’t know how difficult this debt-collection plan would have been to execute under an administration committed to enforcing all laws, even ones it doesn’t like. But we surely know it had no chance under this City Hall.
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