Mayor Brandon Johnson has tapped former Ald. John Arena to lobby on behalf of Johnson’s administration in Springfield, providing the progressive Northwest Side politician with his second City Hall job since losing a bitter reelection fight in 2019.
Johnson’s chief external affairs adviser, Kennedy Bartley, confirmed Monday Arena would be serving as deputy director of intergovernmental affairs in Springfield. The mayor’s office previously denied there were plans to hire him.
The mayor’s intergovernmental affairs office, which is tasked with lobbying for the mayor’s agenda in City Council, Springfield and Washington, has been in flux during a critical time for his first-term administration. The previous deputy director who handled state government, Mike Ciaccio, resigned in November during a fraught budget cycle that saw the mayor repeatedly pitch new revenue ideas that would require state lawmaker buy-in to address the city’s structural fiscal issues.
Bartley said the key issues in Springfield going forward will be funding for the CTA and potential governance changes at regional transit agencies; securing money for “mandatory categorical” costs at Chicago Public Schools in areas of special education and transportation; and making changes to the personal property replacement tax.
Arena’s job will be “to find common ground with folks to advance the mayor’s agenda, which (Arena) has been consistent with in terms of affordable housing, mental health, youth jobs, and community safety,” Bartley said.
She said that with the new federal administration, City Hall needs to make “sure we’re more aligned than ever with our partners at the state.”
“He’s a fighter and that’s what we need,” Bartley said of Arena.
Arena did not return requests for comment about his latest City Hall post.
Arena lost his 45th Ward City Council seat in 2019 to Chicago firefighter Jim Gardiner. Later that fall, then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot hired him for a $123,996-a-year Planning Department job, drawing outrage from Gardiner and neighboring Ald. Anthony Napolitano of the 41st Ward.
In the Lightfoot administration, Arena worked as a senior adviser in the Department of Planning and Development from September 2019 until resigning in January 2020. He was brought on during a city government hiring freeze that a department spokesperson said did not apply to Arena because the city had been in conversations with him since before the freeze was announced.
Napolitano, who clashed with Arena last year over an affordable housing project Arena supported in Napolitano’s ward, told the Tribune in 2019: “This looks like rewarding someone for failure, rewarding someone who’s a known bully.”
As an alderman, Arena won respect from Chicago progressives during his two terms on the City Council for backing issues such as affordable housing, even in communities where residents opposed such developments. But he also raised the ire of first responders in his ward by calling the city’s inspector general and Civilian Office of Police Accountability to report racially charged online comments about a controversial Jefferson Park apartment development plan that included affordable housing.
Arena is one of many aldermen hired to well-paying city jobs after losing reelection. Among such soft landings in recent years: former 10th Ward Ald. John Pope was hired as a deputy commissioner in the Water Department under Mayor Rahm Emanuel following his 2015 loss to Susan Sadlowski Garza in the Southeast Side ward; and former 41st Ward Ald. Mary O’Connor got hired as a deputy commissioner in the Planning Department after losing in 2015 to Napolitano.
