Three months ago, Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th) survived an effort to remove him as Housing Committee chair because he’d attended a rally outside City Hall rally where an American flag was burned to protest U.S. support for Israel.
Sigcho Lopez escaped punishment on a divided City Council vote, and only after a private apology and public forgiveness.
Now, he’s poised to become the City Council’s powerful Zoning Committee chair with the power to oversee Chicago development. And Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th), who resigned as Zoning chair amid charges of bullying and intimidating colleagues, is the odd man out in the game of musical chairs.
Sources said Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office informed alderpersons over the weekend that Johnson plans to fill the long-vacant zoning chair with Sigcho-Lopez, fill the Housing Committee chairmanship that Sigcho-Lopez is vacating with Vice-Mayor Walter Burnett (27th). Emma Mitts (37th), chair of the Committee on Contracting Oversight and Equity will stay where she is, under the mayor’s plan.
“If the mayor believes I can serve well in this position, then I will do my best to serve the people of Chicago with integrity, honesty and fairness,” Sigcho-Lopez, a member of the Council’s Progressive Reform Caucus, told the Sun-Times.
Mitts told the Sun-Times in May that she had accepted Johnson’s offer to chair the Housing Committee, only to be told by senior mayoral adviser Jason Lee that the job had been promised to Ramirez-Rosa. At the time, Mitts said the double-cross left her “very stunned” and wondering who’s running the show.
“There’s no doubt about that — I’ve been bamboozled,” Mitts said.
“The mayor asked me and he never came back and told me [otherwise]. I had no knowledge of what was going on. That’s sort of like a back-door slap. … I don’t think I should be used as a pawn here.”
On Monday, she was more accepting of the outcome.
“I’m OK with it,” she told the Sun-Times.
Johnson had responded to Mitts’ rare public outburst in May by insisting he had not “made any commitment to anyone” about committee chairmanships, but laid the groundwork to restore Ramirez-Rosa to his Council leadership team.
“Ald. Ramirez-Rosa is a leader. He’s one of my strongest allies. What he has done in City Council over the course of his time is remarkable,” Johnson said then.
“We have to create restorative practices to ensure that we are modeling what’s best. If we’re committed to restorative justice and restorative practices, then we need to make that commitment.”
But in the weeks and months that followed those remarks, Johnson faced a behind-the-scenes backlash to restoring Ramirez-Rosa to a leadership post.
“He didn’t have the votes and he knew it. He couldn’t risk another embarrassing City Council defeat” after the Council had already voted to tie the mayor’s hands when it comes to canceling the gun-shot detection technology contract with ShotSpotter, said one alderperson, who asked to remain anonymous.
And Mitts,for her part, had said she would oppose any effort to restore Ramirez-Rosa to Council leadership in the wake of last year’s controversy. Ramirez-Rosa had to apologize to Mitts in November for stepping over the line in a desperate attempt to prevent the Council from approving a non-binding referendum that would have allowed voters to weigh in on whether Chicago should remain a sanctuary city. Johnson cast the tie-breaking vote that spared Ramirez-Rosa from censure.
He narrowly escaped censure over his conduct, but only after Johnson cast the tie-breaking vote to spare him. Ramirez-Rosa apologized on the Council floor and hugged Mitts at a cathartic Council meeting. Mitts admonished him, but accepted the apology and hug, then voted against censure. She has since had several private meetings with him at Johnson’s request.
Ramirez-Rosa could not be reached for comment on Monday, and Lee did not return phone calls or text messages.
Johnson’s decision to put Sigcho-Lopez, a progressive firebrand at the center of a flag-burning controversy, in charge of the Zoning Committee is certain to face a backlash from a development community that craves stability.
Ald. Bennett Lawson (44th) has been serving as interim Zoning chair since the Ramirez-Rosa resignation.
But Ald. Monique Scott (24th) said she, for one, has no problem with the change, arguing the mayor was simply moving Sigcho-Lopez “from one committee chair to another.”
“What’s impactful about that? He’s a sitting chairman now. If the Council had a problem with it, they would have spoken up when he was in front of the burning flag,” Scott wrote in a text message Monday. Instead, “they were defending him when others and myself spoke out.”