Mayor Brandon Johnson answers questions during a press conference on the fifth floor of City Hall on Feb. 3, 2026. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune)
By The Editorial Board | Chicago Tribune
For years now, conservative voices have railed against the outsize influence of public-sector unions on the running of American cities, with Chicago serving as one of the leading examples. Now, more left-of-center voices are sounding the alarm and saying the stakes for Democrats in charge of America’s largest cities couldn’t be higher.
The highest-profile recent example came Sunday when CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, who hosts a thoughtful Sunday show on issues of the day, aired a segment on blue cities. Pegged off New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s recent $126 billion budget, Zakaria made a stark pronouncement: “Blue cities are out of control. Promising more, spending more, delivering less and pushing off the fiscal problems to some future date.”
Sound like any city you know?
Zakaria isn’t a journalist who routinely trots out Heritage Foundation talking points. He’s a frequent and effective critic of Donald Trump.
He’s not alone. The New York Times on Monday published an op-ed by Nicholas Bagley, law professor at the University of Michigan, and Harvard visiting fellow Robert Gordon headlined, “Mamdani Will Need to Change How He Governs.” The two identify the generous pension benefits city workers receive as a key reason city taxpayers can’t afford their own municipal governments. “The question is whether one segment of workers should retire with greater security than others, at the expense of services the public depends on,” they wrote.
A rhetorical question. No reasonable person (other than maybe the members of these unions) could be in favor of that.
In other words, Democrats, the call now is coming from inside the house.
This page has been making these same arguments for years, so we quote from these sources (and there are others in the center-left lane we could cite) merely to say the alarm bells are ringing ever more shrilly for Democratic politicians like Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and, yes, Gov. JB Pritzker. Both continue to saddle taxpayers of the future with paying for the exorbitant promises of today.
Editorial continues here.
