Chicago voters appear to have rejected a controversial referendum, backed by Mayor Brandon Johnson and his allies at the Chicago Teachers Union, to empower City Hall to jack up the tax charged on the sale of a swath of properties in the city.
According to unofficial election results, with 96% of votes counted by the Chicago Board of Elections on Wednesday morning, the so-called "Bring Chicago Home" referendum was trailing, with 53.6% of voters saying "No."
Votes were still being counted in the contest, and mail-in ballots were still being received and tallied, election authorities said.
However, the measure appeared poised for defeat, handing a stinging loss to Mayor Johnson and his political coalition.
If successful, the referendum would have empowered the Chicago City Council to restructure the city's real estate transfer tax, which is levied on properties when they are sold.
The new RETT would have sharply increased the taxes on all properties sold for more than $1 million. At the same time, supporters said the city would decrease the RETT assessed on properties sold for less than $1 million.
Johnson and his far-left political allies, including the Chicago Teachers Union, claimed the referendum would result in at least $100 million in new tax revenue for the city, which Johnson and his allies have claimed would be put toward funding programs to alleviate homelessness in Chicago.
The referendum question, however, did not include any language requiring the city to spend the money on homelessness prevention efforts or for any other specific purpose. Rather, it would be left to the mayor and City Council to determine how to spend the new millions of dollars in new tax revenue.
Opponents have noted the Chicago Teachers Union is already maneuvering to claim much of the money to fund a long list of new demands planned to be placed before the administration of Mayor Johnson, a former CTU member and political organizer whose mayoral campaign was most strongly supported by the CTU.
The Illinois Policy Institute revealed documents indicating the Chicago Teachers Union intends to use proceeds from the referendum to help fund housing assistance payments for Chicago Public Schools teachers.
The Chicago Teachers Union contributed $700,000 to the Bring Chicago Home campaign committee, according to campaign finance records.
Opponents also asserted the measure would hammer the city's economy, hitting the owners of storefronts and small apartment buildings, among others, resulting in higher taxes for them and higher rents and home prices for residents of the city.
The Illinois Policy Institute has also noted the referendum will likely only generate a fraction of the revenue that referendum supporters have claimed will be raised. They pointed to the city of Los Angeles, where a similar tax hike referendum only brought in about 15% of the revenue city officials had promised.
In a statement posted to their Facebook page, the Bring Chicago Home campaign committee did not yet concede defeat, but admitted the election results were "disappointing."
"... We are nowhere near the end of our journey," the BCH committee said. "There are still 100,000 outstanding mail-in ballots to be counted, but whatever the final count, one thing is abundantly clear: how determined our opponents are to continue profiting from displacement and inequality."
In statements on Facebook, they blamed the loss on a campaign against the referendum led by "the realtors, corporate landlords and mega-developers" and the Illinois Policy Institute, among others.
The Illinois Policy Institute said the apparent defeat of the BCH referendum demonstrated that voters recognize that the CTU "runs City Hall" under Mayor Johnson.
"Voters don't like what they see," the Illinois Policy Institute said in a tweet.
A spokesperson for the Building Owners and Managers Association of Chicago (BOMA), which helped to lead the coalition against the BCH referendum, did not reply Wednesday morning to a request from the Cook County Record for comment.
The BOMA-led coalition had challenged the referendum, saying Johnson and the City Council had unconstitutionally placed it on the ballot, by essentially placing two questions before voters, when the state constitution limits referendums to one question only, to ensure voters know exactly what they are asked to approve.
In this case, BOMA had argued the referendum asked voters to approve both a tax increase and a tax decrease. They said the language of the referendum left no space for voters to select only one or the other choice, and so infringed their rights to free and equal elections.
A Cook County judge had sided with the BOMA coalition, invalidating the BCH ballot question. But on appeal, a state appeals panel said the courts can't block legislative bodies, like the Chicago City Council, from placing referendums before voters. Courts can only decide if the referendums are constitutional after they are approved.
The Illinois Supreme Court rejected the attempt by the business coalition to appeal that ruling, allowing votes to be counted in the BCH contest.