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The guy is just mind-bogglingly stupid. Preternaturally dumb.

(This is a Chicago Tribune editorial, BTW.)

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Editorial: Release the ‘unfiltered’ Ernst & Young report, Mayor Johnson.

Leave it to Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration to make something that ought to be simple and straightforward into a convoluted mess.

The city of Chicago in April hired accounting giant Ernst & Young to root through the city’s operations and bureaucracy for ways to cut costs as Chicago faces a 2026 budget deficit topping $1 billion and structural deficits as far as the eye can see. The contract for the firm’s services was pricey: more than $3 million.

So aldermen who ultimately will have to vote for a budget to plug that yawning deficit understandably would like to see what Ernst & Young has to offer apart from yet more taxes and fees. We’d like to see that report as well. And interested taxpayers certainly should have access to the work product their taxes have purchased.

But, no. That’s not how it works in Brandon Johnson’s city government.

At a Tuesday meeting of the council’s Budget Committee, Johnson’s budget director, Annette Guzman, told aldermen that they would get a copy of Ernst & Young’s report after city officials had a chance to fact-check and scrub it — “filtering” was the word she used.

The city then would release a version with “the final options that we believe are — after talking to our own departments who have to do this work — practical for the city of Chicago,” she said.

She pledged to have that abridged report made available to council members before Johnson submits his budget proposal in mid-October.

From an administration that talks ceaselessly of the need for more revenue and gives but the briefest of nods to cost-cutting, one might well think that what Team Johnson thinks is “practical” might not correspond exactly with what the average Chicagoan might think.

To say there’s a deficit of trust between the mayor’s office and aldermen is an understatement. Johnson promised this year to be more forthcoming with the council after his bid to hike property taxes was unanimously rejected last year, but now that budget season is underway in earnest he’s not off to a good start.

Ald. Brendan Reilly, 42nd, a frequent Johnson administration critic who announced Wednesday he is running to unseat Toni Preckwinkle as Cook County Board president, put his objection diplomatically: “The risk here of having it filtered is that perhaps some very good ideas that don’t necessarily match with this administration’s wishes may be excluded from what is presented to us.”

He and other aldermen are calling on the administration to give them the “unfiltered” version.

Of course they’re right. The fact that the administration is resisting something so basic simply creates the impression it’s hiding something. And then the natural question arises: Why? What are they afraid of?

Are they afraid to debate ideas that might lead to shrinkage of government? That might anger public-sector unions bankrolling the mayor and fellow progressives’ campaigns?

A Johnson spokesman tells us the report that will be released will be extensive — nine sections, most of which will be more than 50 pages — and “there are going to be plenty of recommendations that span a range of possibilities and the administration is not endorsing them just because they are in the report.”

Chicago is in a fiscal crisis. Of epic proportions. It won’t end after this year either, even once the council does whatever it ends up doing to balance the books.

The city can’t afford not to consider any measure to save money, no matter how uncomfortable the discussion. And even if some of Ernst & Young’s suggestions aren’t “practical” in the short term, they may very well be worth pursuing over the intermediate or long term.

Whether the report ends up being worth the $3 million or not (and, by the way, past such reports for the city often have been done on a pro bono basis — we’re just saying), the public ought to be able to see what it’s purchased — without any “filtering” by the mayor’s team.


https://www.aol.com/articles/editorial-release-unfiltered-ernst-young-100000546.html