Mayor Brandon Johnson plans to appoint West Side Ald. Walter Burnett to lead the City Council’s powerful Zoning Committee after he faced pushback on naming a progressive council ally to the post.
The decision, confirmed by a top Johnson administration official Friday, marks a sharp change in course for Johnson, who for months had tried to put Southwest Side Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, 25th, into the important position overseeing development. Sigcho-Lopez’s appointment faced strong opposition from council opponents who argued he would be too politically radical and hostile to developers.
In Burnett, 27th, a mentee of former Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White who is the longest-serving alderman in the City Council and is currently Johnson’s vice mayor, aldermen said Friday they see a more acceptable pick.
The new choice is “way less contentious,” Ald. Andre Vasquez, 40th, said.
“I think Walter is someone that the whole council can work with and doesn’t bring a lot of controversy to the position,” he said.
Vasquez, member of both the council’s Latino Caucus and Progressive Caucus, earlier pledged to not vote for Sigcho-Lopez. He had also angled for the Zoning chairmanship made available when Johnson’s original selection, Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, 35th, resigned after being accused of using the position’s power to politically bully colleagues last November.
Johnson had promised the Latino Caucus the coveted seat would stay in its ranks. But over ten months later, that intention has given way to the mounting need to fill the chairmanship after no choice emerged who could win the support of both the mayor and the City Council.
The several bids for the position most recently included a push by Ald. Felix Cardona, 31st, a Northwest Side Latino alderman typically at odds with Johnson who sought to gain enough council support to take the seat with or without the mayor’s backing. But in Burnett, Johnson is offering the council a compromise appointee leading a West Loop ward hot with development.
Cardona said Friday he was weighing whether he will continue to pursue the chairmanship, but called it “unlikely” that he would.
“The whole objective was anybody but Byron,” he said.
He praised Burnett and called the new pick a respected “safe bet,” but also lamented the move as an act of “disrespect” toward Latinos.
“That position really belongs to the Latino Caucus,” Cardona said. “As the Latino community, we lost a powerful position in city government.”
The Burnett pick is also sure to be popular with developers who have enjoyed a building boom in the West Loop neighborhood he represents, but who in many cases worried Sigcho-Lopez would use the committee leadership post to press for more affordable housing, fight segregation and champion other progressive priorities prized by the Johnson administration.
“I think he’d be great,” Ald. Sam Nugent, 39th, said of Burnett Friday morning. “Vice Mayor Walter Burnett is a respected colleague who is known to work well with the entire City Council. He is respected by the business community and would be an excellent chairman for the Zoning Committee.”
The pick also won instant praise from Ald. Stephanie Coleman, 16th. The leader of the council’s Black Caucus, now set to gain a critical chairmanship, highlighted Burnett’s “years in the council” spanning four decades.
“Walter is fair. Walter has the relationships, he has the experience,” she said. “He’s just an exceptional individual and leader.”
Before news broke of Burnett’s nomination Friday, first reported by WBEZ, Sigcho-Lopez told the Tribune he was still expecting to go forward as the Zoning chair pick.
But the fissures were evident, he conceded. After defending his track record leading the council’s Housing Committee and promising to not change the impassioned tone that has drawn the ire of ideologically different colleagues — and made his appointment so contested — Sigcho-Lopez said that a pick for the long unfilled chairmanship will move forward at a Rules Committee meeting Monday even if it’s not him.
“We’re going to have a chair pretty soon. The business of the city of Chicago cannot wait for the Vrdolyak 29 to be ready,” Sigcho-Lopez said, suggesting the bloc of aldermen opposed to him has behaved like the group of white aldermen who in the 1980s fervently opposed the city’s first Black mayor, Harold Washington.
“We’re gonna see Monday.”