Official leaving Mayor Brandon Johnson's administration for Obama Foundation
Mayor Brandon Johnson's chief operating officer, John Roberson, is leaving the administration, ending weeks of speculation — and pushback — over his potential appointment to lead the CTA.
Roberson is exiting the mayor's office to join the Obama Foundation, according to two sources with knowledge of his plans. A member of the administration since the freshman mayor assumed office, Roberson is the last official within Johnson's inner circle with previous City Hall experience.
A source close to the mayor said Roberson is also no longer being considered to lead to the CTA.
Roberson, as well as a spokesperson for the Obama Foundation, did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.
Roberson's transition into the nonprofit sector comes after wearing multiple hats over the course of his government career, including commissioner of the Aviation, Buildings and Sewers departments under Mayor Richard M. Daley. He stepped down from city government in 2005 after he was named as a cooperating witness in a federal investigation into fraud in city hiring and promotions, though he denied that his role in the probe was behind his decision.
Afterward, Roberson served as a top aide under Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and Ald. David Moore, 17th, before returning to City Hall to join the Johnson administration in May 2023. As COO, his main task has been overseeing the nuts and bolts of city operations and ensuring that government services run smoothly.
The most visible role Roberson took on in that respect was managing the behind-the-scenes preparations for the Democratic National Convention's arrival in Chicago last August, when the mayor was thrust into the national spotlight and concluded the made-for-TV week of events with relatively high marks for how the city was portrayed on the national stage.
For the last several weeks, Roberson has been the subject of opposition from transit advocates who feared that the Johnson administration was angling to install him as the next president of the CTA, which has been left without a permanent leader since late January, when embattled president Dorval Carter retired. Those activists sought a thorough search process for the agency's new head, whom they hoped would have previous experience leading a mass transit system.
A former organizer with the Chicago Teachers Union, Johnson took office after running as a firebrand progressive and had appointed Rich Guidice and Roberson as the two City Hall veterans among his top deputies. Their hires were seen as reassurance to the business community who worried the new mayor would shake up city government too much by only bringing in allies from his activist grassroots coalition.
Guidice left as Johnson's chief of staff in April 2024 after less than a year on the job and was replaced by Cristina Pacione-Zayas, who rose up among the Northwest Side progressives and served as a state senator before joining the Johnson administration in 2023.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Hamilton Spectator
6 hours ago
- Hamilton Spectator
NYC, San Francisco and other US cities capping LGBTQ+ Pride month with a mix of party and protest
NEW YORK (AP) — The monthlong celebration of LGBTQ+ Pride reaches its rainbow-laden crescendo as New York and other major cities around the world host major parades and marches on Sunday. The festivities in Manhattan, home to the nation's oldest and largest Pride celebration, kick off with a march down Fifth Avenue featuring more than 700 participating groups and expected huge crowds. Marchers will wind past the Stonewall Inn , a Greenwich Village gay bar where a 1969 police raid triggered protests and fired up the LGBTQ+ rights movement . The site is now a national monument . In San Francisco, marchers in another of the world's largest Pride events will head down the city's central Market Street, reaching concert stages set up at the Civic Center Plaza. San Francisco's mammoth City Hall is also among the venues hosting a post-march party. Chicago, Seattle, Minneapolis and Toronto, Canada are among the other major North American cities hosting Pride parades on Sunday. Several global cities including Tokyo, Paris and Sao Paulo , held their events earlier this month while others come later in the year, including London in July and Rio de Janeiro in November. The first pride march was held in New York City in 1970 to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall uprising . Pride celebrations are typically a daylong mix of jubilant street parties and political protest, but organizers said this year's iterations will take a more defiant stance than recent years. The festivities come days after the tenth anniversary of the Supreme Court's landmark June 26, 2015, ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges that recognized same-sex marriage nationwide. But Republicans, led by President Donald Trump, have sought to roll back LGBTQ+ friendly policies. Since taking office in January, Trump has specifically targeted transgender people, removing them from the military , preventing federal insurance programs from paying for gender-affirmation surgeries for young people and attempting to keep transgender athletes out of girls and women's sports . The theme for the Manhattan event is, appropriately, 'Rise Up: Pride in Protest.' San Francisco's Pride theme is 'Queer Joy is Resistance' while Seattle's is simply 'Louder.' 'This is not a time to be quiet,' Patti Hearn, Seattle Pride's executive director, said in a statement ahead of the event. 'We will stand up. We will speak up. We will get loud.' Among the other headwinds faced by gay rights groups this year is the loss of corporate sponsorship. American companies have pulled back support of Pride events, reflecting a broader walking back of diversity and inclusion efforts amid shifting public sentiment. NYC Pride said earlier this month that about 20% of its corporate sponsors dropped or reduced support, including PepsiCo and Nissan. Organizers of San Francisco Pride said they lost the support of five major corporate donors, including Comcast and Anheuser-Busch.
7 hours ago
US cities cap Pride Month with a mix of party and protest
NEW YORK -- The monthlong celebration of LGBTQ+ Pride reaches its rainbow-laden crescendo as New York and other major cities around the world host major parades and marches on Sunday. The festivities in Manhattan, home to the nation's oldest and largest Pride celebration, kick off with a march down Fifth Avenue featuring more than 700 participating groups and expected huge crowds. Marchers will wind past the Stonewall Inn, a Greenwich Village gay bar where a 1969 police raid triggered protests and fired up the LGBTQ+ rights movement. The site is now a national monument. In San Francisco, marchers in another of the world's largest Pride events will head down the city's central Market Street, reaching concert stages set up at the Civic Center Plaza. San Francisco's mammoth City Hall is also among the venues hosting a post-march party. Chicago, Seattle, Minneapolis and Toronto, Canada are among the other major North American cities hosting Pride parades on Sunday. Several global cities including Tokyo, Paris and Sao Paulo, held their events earlier this month while others come later in the year, including London in July and Rio de Janeiro in November. The first pride march was held in New York City in 1970 to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall uprising. Pride celebrations are typically a daylong mix of jubilant street parties and political protest, but organizers said this year's iterations will take a more defiant stance than recent years. The festivities come days after the tenth anniversary of the Supreme Court's landmark June 26, 2015, ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges that recognized same-sex marriage nationwide. But Republicans, led by President Donald Trump, have sought to roll back LGBTQ+ friendly policies. Since taking office in January, Trump has specifically targeted transgender people, removing them from the military, preventing federal insurance programs from paying for gender-affirmation surgeries for young people and attempting to keep transgender athletes out of girls and women's sports. The theme for the Manhattan event is, appropriately, 'Rise Up: Pride in Protest." San Francisco's Pride theme is 'Queer Joy is Resistance' while Seattle's is simply 'Louder.' 'This is not a time to be quiet,' Patti Hearn, Seattle Pride's executive director, said in a statement ahead of the event. 'We will stand up. We will speak up. We will get loud.' Among the other headwinds faced by gay rights groups this year is the loss of corporate sponsorship. American companies have pulled back support of Pride events, reflecting a broader walking back of diversity and inclusion efforts amid shifting public sentiment. NYC Pride said earlier this month that about 20% of its corporate sponsors dropped or reduced support, including PepsiCo and Nissan. Organizers of San Francisco Pride said they lost the support of five major corporate donors, including Comcast and Anheuser-Busch.
The Hill
7 hours ago
- The Hill
Thune, Vance cut deal with Senate conservatives to save GOP megabill
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and Vice President Vance struck a deal Saturday night with a group of Senate conservatives who want bigger Medicaid spending cuts to save President Trump's 'big, beautiful bill' from stalling. The deal hatched in Thune's office late Saturday evening paved the way for Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) to flip his 'no' vote on proceeding to the bill to 'aye' and for Sens. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) to also vote for the bill. Without their votes, the 940-page bill to boost spending on border security, immigration enforcement and the military and to cut an array of taxes could not have advanced on the Senate floor. It advanced 51-49. The vote to proceed to the sprawling budget reconciliation package remained open on the Senate floor for more than three and a half hours, stuck for a long time at 47 yes's and 50 no's. For much of that time, the four conservatives — Johnson, Scott, Lee and Lummis — huddled off the Senate floor to negotiate a way to add new language to the bill to further cut federal Medicaid spending. The language in the revised Senate bill is projected to reduce Medicaid spending by $930 billion over the next decade, according to a preliminary analysis by the Congressional Budget office. But Scott and his allies wanted to do more to reduce the amount of money spent on able-bodied adults who are allowed to enroll into Medicaid in states that expanded the program under the Affordable Care Act, which was former President Obama's signature domestic achievement. 'I met with the president today, met with him quite a bit. Met with the vice president. We all wanted to get to yes and we're all working together to make sure that happens,' Scott told reporters after voting to advance the bill. He said conservatives want to 'stop Blue State governors from taking advantage of Red States.' 'Paying for health care for illegal immigrants with federal tax dollars is going to end,' Scott said. Senate conservatives say that Thune and Trump have committed to support Scott's proposal to lower the 90 percent federal matching share for new Medicaid enrollees in expansion states. 'We have been working behind the scenes,' Johnson told reporters who flipped his initial 'no' vote on beginning debate on the GOP megabill to 'aye' to allow it move forward. Johnson said conservatives got an agreement from leadership to vote on an amendment 'that we're confident of.' 'At a certain point we just don't allow single working-age, able-bodied childless adults to sign onto ObamaCare expansion and get that 9-1 match,' he said. Johnson said that states receive a much lower federal matching share for disabled children enrolled in regular Medicaid. He said that conservatives whipped 'something very similar' Scott's proposal within the Senate GOP conference and asserted 'it's very close' to getting the 50 votes in needs to be included into the legislation. Senators will now spend up to 20 hours debating the reconciliation package before holding a marathon series of amendment votes known as a vote-a-rama. A final vote may not happen until Monday. Senate conservatives feel confident that Trump can help secure a majority vote for cutting the federal Medicaid match share in expansion states, even though the proposal is likely to be a hard sell with Republicans who have already complained loudly about the Medicaid cuts already in the bill. 'The leadership wants to do this, too,' Johnson said. 'This is what was key about the two-hour meeting with the president.' He said Trump is 'willing to do what needs to be done to put this nation on a path of eventually balancing our budget.' The cap on enrolling new people into expanded Medicaid would be implemented at a future date to give states some time to adjust to the change. Selling the proposal to more centrist Republicans in both the Senate and House, however, won't be easy. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) declared in early May that a proposal to directly reduce the enhanced federal match for states that expanded Medicaid was off the table. And Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who negotiated with Thune to increase funding for a rural hospital relief fund and to increase the flow of federal Medicaid dollars to Missouri over the next four years, warned GOP colleagues to stay away from bigger cuts to the program. 'I think that this effort to cut Medicaid funding is a mistake,' he said. 'We've been able for Missouri to delay it. … That's not true of all the states. And unless changes are made, after 2030 you'll see Medicaid reductions in my state. I'm going to do everything I can to defeat that.' 'I think that this has been unhappy episode here in Congress, this effort to cut Medicaid. And I think, frankly, my party needs to do some soul-searching. If you want to be a working-class party, you've got to deliver to working-class people. You cannot take away health care from working people,' he said. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who has also voiced strong concerns about the Medicaid funding cuts in the bill, said she voted to proceed to the bill Saturday out of deference to her leadership but warned that does not mean she will necessarily vote for the bill on final passage.
