Chicago City Council Picks Villegas as Zoning Chair

Chicago City Council broke a months-long impasse Wednesday, electing Ald. Gilbert Villegas (36th) as Zoning Committee chair and handing Mayor Brandon Johnson another political defeat at the hands of an increasingly assertive Council majority.

Ald. Derrick Curtis (18th) was elected to replace Villegas as Economic Development Committee chair. The reorganization ended a stalemate that had stalled 85 development projects across the city and left the Zoning Committee effectively paralyzed since the fall.

The vote landed as a fresh rebuke for Johnson, whose two previous picks to lead the committee both failed to secure majority support. The mayor had backed Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th) and then Ald. Daniel La Spata (1st) for the chairmanship, but couldn’t deliver the votes for either.

The Council didn’t wait for him to try again.

“It certainly is another example of the Council stepping up and sort of rescuing an item to fill a void of what’s not happening on the Fifth Floor that’s consistent with what took place with the budget,” said Ald. Marty Quinn (13th), one of Johnson’s most outspoken critics.

Quinn’s reference to the budget fight wasn’t incidental. Villegas and Curtis were part of the renegade Council majority that approved an alternative budget last fall, defying Johnson’s push for a corporate head tax. That bloc has since operated as a persistent check on the mayor’s agenda, and Wednesday’s committee reorganization, as reported by the Chicago Sun-Times, confirmed the coalition still has the numbers to move without him.

Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd) framed the move as unavoidable given the backlog piling up at the Zoning Committee, the one panel where inaction carries direct economic consequences for neighborhoods across Chicago.

“It’s the one committee that simply must meet or you get this massive backlog of important legislative matters that would cause real harm to allow them to languish. We can’t let it happen,” Hopkins said.

The chair vacancy opened when longtime Zoning Committee Chair Walter Burnett retired. Acting Chair Bennett Lawson (44th) stepped in but gave Johnson a year-end ultimatum in late November: make the post permanent and give him control over his own staff, or he was done. Lawson followed through by refusing to hold a Zoning Committee meeting in January.

He relented in February. Lawson chaired a February meeting that advanced Foundry Park, a scaled-down version of the Lincoln Yards development on the North Side. But that session was more exception than resolution. The stalemate held when the full Council met on Feb. 18, with some members of the Black Caucus pushing for Villegas to take the chairmanship and Ald. David Moore (17th) to step into Economic Development. Lawson’s effort to install two fellow freshman alderpersons as vice-chairs also drew resistance from veteran members who saw it as an overreach.

By Wednesday, Lawson’s path to the permanent job was closed.

The 85 projects stuck in committee limbo represent real money and real delays for developers, community groups, and residents waiting on everything from mixed-use buildings to neighborhood infrastructure tied to zoning approvals. The Chicago Department of Planning and Development oversees the regulatory process those approvals feed into, and weeks of missed committee meetings compound quickly.

Villegas, a Northwest Side alderperson who has served since 2015, brings institutional weight to the chair. His tenure on Economic Development gives him familiarity with the deal structures and community agreements that often intersect with zoning decisions. Curtis, representing the 18th Ward on the Southwest Side, takes over Economic Development with a committee that carries its own substantial workload.

For Johnson, the political math is stark. He came into office in 2023 with a progressive mandate and a Council he expected to move with him. That relationship has eroded steadily. The budget fight last fall exposed the limits of his coalition. Wednesday’s committee reorganization, done around him rather than with him, shows the opposition bloc isn’t just reactive, it’s organized.

The Council’s next scheduled meeting will test whether the new committee structure can clear the backlog quickly or whether the 85 stalled projects face more delays as Villegas builds his committee operation. The Illinois Policy Institute tracks city budget and governance data that analysts will likely use to measure the economic cost of the months-long freeze on zoning activity.

Quinn put it plainly. “The Council,” he said, “is stepping up.”