Mayor Brandon Johnson on Thursday pointed the finger at Illinois Democrats, including Gov. JB Pritzker, over his outstanding wishlist in Springfield that he has struggled to fulfill for over a year now.

Speaking at a panel at the Hideout, the mayor again blasted state leaders and called upon them to give Chicago home rule authority to implement new levies because they aren’t “bold” enough to do it themselves. Then without naming him, Johnson appeared to take a shot at Pritzker by comparing the two-term governor and possible candidate in the 2028 presidential race to the governor’s political nemesis, Republican President Donald Trump.

“It is derelict of duty, quite frankly, to have all of this blue power and to make an excuse of why we can’t exercise our power. It’s no different than my complaint or quite frankly my frustration with the president,” Johnson said. “You have Democrats in this country or in Illinois who make excuses of why we can’t show up for working people, and then their cop out is, ‘Well, Mayor Brandon Johnson.’ This is the same mayor that went on a hunger strike.”

Johnson argued the reluctance from Springfield to move on his demand for Chicago Public Schools to receive $1.6 billion more — the mayor’s white whale goal, and one that few believe he can achieve soon given the lack of appetite in the Illinois General Assembly amid an austere budget — is not because of lack of funds. “The money is there,” Johnson countered before casting state leaders as tepid.

“They have supermajorities in both houses,” the mayor said about Illinois Democrats. “We occupy the governor’s mansion. Why are we so afraid to stand up for working people and poor people? It just doesn’t make any sense. It’s unconscionable.”

Johnson’s remarks, which he tried to paper over at the end by insisting he has a good working relationship with Pritzker despite “differences of opinion on some things,” came after weeks of mounting attacks at the governor from him and the Chicago Teachers Union. They also coincided with the two Democratic leaders making public appearances together recently in the face of ongoing threats from the Trump administration to send federal troops to Chicago.

Pritzker, for his part, has thrown cold water on the CPS funding demand: “What CTU and the mayor are talking about, which is providing another $1 billion or $1.6 billion for Chicago Public Schools, that’s just not going to happen. And it’s not because we shouldn’t. We should. We should try to find the money, but we don’t have those resources today,” the governor said last month.

The mayor and his closest ally in the labor world have been seeking additional CPS funding throughout the district’s budget crisis that blew up much of Johnson’s second term.

Facing a massive funding gap, the Chicago Board of Education bucked the mayor last week on the 2025-26 budget in a stunning vote. The sticking points were the mayor’s push for a $200 million high-interest loan and a commitment to cover a $175 million pension payment for nonteacher school staff.

Johnson has maintained that CPS must avoid midyear budget cuts, and the final $10.25 billion spending plan that passed may not be enough to avoid that. But his borrowing plans have been panned by critics, including some progressives, and have seen multiple false starts and stops. To that end, Johnson and the CTU’s Springfield strategy has been at the forefront of all their public messaging on how the school district gets out of this fiscal predicament.

Throughout his town halls on the budget over the last few weeks, Johnson sought to make Pritzker and the Illinois General Assembly wear the hat on Chicago and CPS’s budget mess, as he reupped his demands for new revenue. “If they’re not going to be bold enough to go after the ultra-rich, then they need to give us the authority in Chicago to do it, because we are bold enough,” he said at one of the recent events.

Last week, the CTU-backed United Working Families also unveiled a budget proposal that would close a $1 billion deficit by reinstating the corporate head tax, collecting payments from universities in lieu of taxes, collecting $240 million from TIF surpluses and taxing tech companies for “data mining.” The “Babies Before Billionaires” campaign, presented during the mayor’s North Side budget town hall, also called for reallocating $300 million from Chicago police.

Meanwhile at a South Side town hall last month, Johnson ally Ald. William Hall took a shot at the governor over the Pritzker administration’s ongoing plans to rebuild two Illinois prisons.

“Every representative that supported this Pritzker pipeline project got away with it, but yet we decided to attack those who were fighting to make sure that our kids got the best and got their fair share,” Hall said while sitting next to Johnson.