-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
The mayor’s spokesperson Cassio Mendoza confirmed that Johnson’s team on Monday afternoon began calling aldermen to take their temperature on an amended version of his head tax proposal that would raise the monthly per-employee fee to $33 with a 500-employee minimum, an apparent attempt to blunt criticism that his plan would hurt smaller companies.
SIGN UP HERE FOR FREE WIREPOINTS DAILY NEWSLETTER
FOLLOW US
WIREPOINTS ORIGINAL STORIES
Audio and summary Why the Holdup Using Artificial Intelligence to Cut Illinois Government Costs? – Wirepoints
May 19, 2026
8 Comments
A largely unasked question is becoming glaring: Is Illinois doing all it should to use artificial intelligence to make government cost less and work better? So far, the evidence says no.
Note to readers from Mark Glennon re: Ukraine
May 6, 2026
4 Comments
Everybody needs a side hustle these days, and mine is Ukraine, where I am now.
Wirepoints’ Mark Glennon on AM560’s Morning Answer – Chicago’s struggling commercial real estate and more
April 22, 2026
5 Comments
Summary and audio linked here.
Audio and summary
If you look up the word Braindead you will see his picture. This guy is clueless how to run a city or how to work politics. Thanks Stacey. You gave us the dumbest kid in the class
This school teacher, turned union activist, turned Mayor still thinks he is in the class room with children. The Mayor has a hard time dealing with adults with experience in these matters. hopefully he will get pushback at every turn going forward. Maybe more will join in. Look at Minnesota with a school teacher in charge
Mayor Pinhead…you have finally run out of other people’s money.
Can’t wait until this passes, and then the CME Group (which has been in Chicago since 1898) will take all their computers to Texas, Arizona or down to Florida which is what Ken Griffin did with Citadel. Johnson is just betting that these businesses won’t call his bluff, too bad it’ll be the Homeowners, Restaurants, Building owners/management companies that will bear the brunt of his fiscal demagoguery.
A few months back Walgreens announced they were moving 1800 employes back to Deerfield. If they had decided to keep these employes in Chicago this head tax would cost them over $700,000.00 a year. When you consider a company with 500 plus employes is probably part of a publicly traded company subject to stockholder pressure for profits, do you think these companies will stay in Chicago? If they are fast food companies like McDonalds, Burger King, White Castle, Marianos, etc., do you think they will have to raise their prices to cover this $396.00 a year head tax per employee?… Read more »
It’s time for the perennial “LaSalle Street tax” bright idea to pop up again. Get those fat cats to pay their fair share! They won’t even miss it! That will definitely send CME packing.
I suspect this will still hit places like Jewel and cost them 10 million plus. Who does he think will pay that cost?
He knows you will, in the form of higher costs or longer travel times as businesses exit for the suburbs. It’s all about superficial “protection” for his constituents. He can say he protected the “workers” while knowing that overall, their expenses will rise to pay for the new tax burden. Indirect taxation is less accountable and more hypocritical. He’s the star of the school play, orating to the balcony while the audience sneaks out the back door.
On a related note, I love the phrase “hare-brained scheme.” This fellow engineer I worked with back in the 80s returned to the office fuming after a meeting because he heard of a hare-brained scheme one of the foremen described.