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Washington Post says Chicago has ‘lost its mind’ under Brandon Johnson

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The Washington Post’s editorial board called out Mayor Brandon Johnson on Monday, arguing that he has mismanaged Chicago financially to the point that he is “losing his mind.”

The panel argued that Chicago has an extensive history of using short-term economic gimmicks and that Johnson and his allies do the same.

The board said Chicago’s net operating budget increased nearly 40 percent between 2019 and 2025, and that budget was “largely subsidized by temporary federal pandemic funding that kept the City financially afloat,” according to Civic Federation’s Grant McClintock.

However, he noted that times have changed in 2025.

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Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson. (Kamil Krazaczynski/Getty Images)

“The pandemic is over, but many of the programs and staff positions created during that time still exist and do not benefit from the federal funds that previously supported them,” he said.

In an editorial bluntly titled “Chicago has lost its mind,” the board warned that a particular policy could be disastrous for the city’s finances.

“The mayor proposes to increase the tax on rentals of ‘personal property,’ such as computers, vehicles and software, from 11 percent to 14 percent and restore the city’s ‘person tax,’ which would result in large employers paying $33 per month per worker,” the board wrote. he said. “By making it more expensive to do business or hire workers in the city, these measures threaten Chicago’s future economic growth and tax collections.”

When asked about a quote from that article at Monday’s press conference, Johnson responded harshly.

“Their claim is far off-base,” he said. “In fact, we found that the Civic Federation confirmed what I have been saying all along, that there is no empirical evidence that less than one percent of the revenue of the largest companies is somehow hurting our business growth.”

He went on to claim that the Civic Federation, trusted by some of his critics, actually told the city last year not to pay the full pension and that the community safety surcharge he proposed was a legitimate option. He underlined his point by saying that the group that critical council members point to as fiscal experts disagreed with the Post’s argument and even supported the tools he was trying to use to stabilize the budget.

He suggested he could point to numerous indicators that show Chicago’s economy is improving despite what critics say.

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Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and President Donald Trump disagreed over law and order in the blue city. (Scott Olson/Getty Images; Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

But the above is just one of many other “tricks” the city has pulled this year, the board wrote.

“Other ploys include a temporary hiring freeze that will do nothing to address the long-term mismatch between spending and revenue, diverting excess funds earmarked for economic development of distressed areas to the general fund and school system (once again sacrificing future growth to fund present spending), and cutting off additional payments the city makes to support underfunded pensions.”

But there is reportedly little democratic consent among the Democratic stronghold, and city councilors have issued an alternative proposal that would increase trash fees, among other things.

Johnson has threatened to veto any budget plan that increases garbage collection fees, the Post reported.

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