{"id":730311,"date":"2026-04-15T18:38:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T18:38:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/730311\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T18:38:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T18:38:13","slug":"feds-wont-grant-mayor-johnson-ally-waiver-to-take-over-cha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/730311\/","title":{"rendered":"Feds won’t grant Mayor Johnson ally waiver to take over CHA"},"content":{"rendered":"

The federal government on Wednesday officially declined to give former Ald. Walter Burnett a waiver in his longshot bid to lead the Chicago Housing Authority, the latest and perhaps final setback<\/a> for Mayor Brandon Johnson\u2019s close ally.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which last year asked the CHA to pause any vote<\/a> on installing Burnett as CEO, sent a letter to the board saying it completed a review of Burnett\u2019s potential conflicts of interest and will not approve a waiver.<\/p>\n

The conflicts were over the former alderman and his wife, Darlena Williams-Burnett, having an \u201cownership interest in\u201d three properties that are occupied by CHA housing voucher holders, as well as him not meeting a one-year revolving door restriction until this September, according to a copy of the letter.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven Mr. Burnett served as a member of a local governing body that exercised functions or responsibilities with respect to CHA\u2019s programs, and that he retired on or around August 2025, CHA is prohibited from entering into any contracts, subcontracts or arrangements with him, including employment,\u201d HUD official Todd Thomas wrote. \u201cTherefore, CHA may not appoint Mr. Burnett to serve as the CEO within one year of his retirement from a position as a public official with the City of Chicago, or at any time while he or any immediate family member is participating as an owner in the HCV program.\u201d<\/p>\n

Burnett declined to comment when reached by the Tribune on Wednesday. Johnson press secretary Griffin Krueger released a statement saying the mayor\u2019s office was still reviewing the HUD correspondence but disagreed that Burnett\u2019s former job disqualified him from the CHA role.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is clear prior precedent for individuals with Burnett\u2019s background to assume executive leadership positions within public housing authorities across the country,\u201d Krueger wrote.<\/p>\n

The mayor has said he remains undeterred by hurdles in installing his preferred CHA appointment \u2014 despite the fact that the Board of Commissioners openly revolted last month and approved a new CEO over his objections. Keith Pettigrew, former leader of the Washington, D.C., public housing agency, starts his new contract next week<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Johnson has cited Burnett\u2019s tenure presiding over rapid development in his Near West Side ward as well as his lived experience growing up in the Cabrini-Green housing complex when advocating him for the role.<\/p>\n

After the March 17 Pettigrew vote, the mayor continued to endorse Burnett for the job and claimed there are no delays on the federal government side holding up his appointment. If the CHA somehow did move forward with Burnett\u2019s appointment without HUD\u2019s waiver approval, however, it could trigger a default on a contract between HUD and the housing authority that stipulates how CHA obtains its funding from the federal agency.<\/p>\n

But before Burnett would get to that point, Johnson needs to overcome a more local issue: the minefield of board appointment politicking. The CHA resolution finalizing Pettigrew\u2019s appointment also employed a supermajority clause, meaning the soonest the mayor could shore up support for the board to fire him for cause is July.<\/p>\n

Burnett was the longtime \u201cdean\u201d of the City Council at the time of his resignation last summer, having most recently served in the leadership posts of Zoning Committee chair and vice mayor at Johnson\u2019s behest. Though the West Side alderman, who was replaced by his son Walter \u201cRed\u201d Burnett via mayoral appointment, endorsed Johnson\u2019s opponent in the 2023 runoff, he became one of the mayor\u2019s staunchest allies during two years of rocky relations between the fifth floor and City Council.<\/p>\n

But rather than receive the plum executive gig, Burnett has now been out of a job for over a year as Johnson struggled to gain the upper hand over the CHA board despite it being a mayoral controlled body. After Pettigrew\u2019s appointment in March, Johnson launched a full court offensive against the interim CHA head who he said unilaterally orchestrated the vote.<\/p>\n

The result is an unusually public clash between mayor and operating chairman Matthew Brewer, including over whether that executive office title is legitimate. Johnson demoted Brewer from board chair following the Pettigrew vote, but Brewer has so far rebuffed the mayor\u2019s attempt to demote him from operating chair, and for now he\u2019s supported by a majority of the board.<\/p>\n

A coalition of activists\u00a0filed suit last week alleging the Pettigrew vote violated the Open Meetings Act because the agenda did not reveal his name beforehand. That legal challenge is pending in Cook County Circuit Court.<\/p>\n

Krueger\u2019s statement on Wednesday called on the CHA board \u201cto work with the litigants to rectify these errors.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMayor Johnson remains committed to working with stakeholders to address the pressing concerns surrounding the anti-democratic procedure employed by the former Chairman which disenfranchised residents while stoking unnecessary confusion in this process,\u201d Krueger wrote. \u201cAs it stands, litigation over the flawed process will undermine the stability of CHA over the next several months, if not longer.\u201d<\/p>\n

To hear Brewer tell it, though, the board has moved on.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Mayor may disagree with the outcome, but rewriting the facts doesn\u2019t change them,\u201d he wrote in a statement earlier this month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The federal government on Wednesday officially declined to give former Ald. Walter Burnett a waiver in his longshot…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":730312,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,5404,5386,1818,1370,50,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-730311","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-chicago","9":"tag-cook-county","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-illinois","12":"tag-latest-headlines","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-politics"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116410181820761196","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=730311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/730312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=730311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=730311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=730311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}