Mayor Brandon Johnson’s ‘Treatment Not Trauma’ initiative takes step forward as fiscal questions remain

Despite significant fiscal hurdles ahead that could delay implementing a core piece of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s agenda, aldermen Tuesday pushed forward with plans to reopen Chicago’s mental health centers as advocates vowed the work will be done by the end of Johnson’s first term.

The ordinance that unanimously cleared the Chicago City Council’s Health and Human Relations Committee was just the opening step by launching a working group to examine how to bring back the clinics and establish a non-police 911 response program for some people in distress.

Although Johnson himself recently hinted toward a more gradual approach amid a projected $538 million budget gap, committee Chair Ald. Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez said the group — christened the “Treatment Not Trauma” coalition — will call for six clinics closed by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel to be reopened over the next four years.

“Our hope is that we are going to be able to accomplish that, and we are going to push for it,” Rodriguez Sanchez, 33rd, told reporters when asked about reviving the clinics during this City Council term. “But again, this is an ongoing conversation with the (Johnson) administration.”

Rodriguez Sanchez commended how far advocates have come, particularly after four years of roadblocks.

Tuesday’s vote follows years of effort by progressive leaders and community members who have pushed back after Emanuel closed half of the city’s 12 public mental health clinics in 2012. Johnson’s predecessor, Lori Lightfoot, vowed to reopen those clinics in her 2019 mayoral campaign but dropped the plan after taking office.

The ordinance heads to the full city Council for a final vote next month.

Earlier this month, the mayor cautioned that while he is “committed to reopening the mental health clinics, how many we can reopen within the first four years — to be perfectly frank with you all — that’s still to be determined.”

“There are real budgetary dynamics that we have to address, and I’m committed to doing that,” Johnson said earlier this month.

The city is facing significant fiscal strain as Johnson prepares to deliver his first budget proposal as mayor. The mayor’s office estimated the $538 million gap was due to his decision to hold the line on property taxes, historic inflation and rising pension and contractual costs, as well as the cost of addressing the roughly 15,000 migrants who’ve arrived in Chicago since August 2022.

Still, Johnson touted Treatment Not Trauma as a chief campaign promise during the mayor’s race and has continued backing the initiative since assuming office in May. Advocates, in turn, have been pushed forward to continue that momentum.

“This, in my mind, is the equivalent of when you dig up the space, because this is the start of finally reopening all the mental health centers that we’ve been fighting for for so many years,” Cheryl Miller, an activist with Southside Together Organizing for Power, said during a news conference ahead of the vote. “This fight has been a decade in the making.”

After Lightfoot dropped the plan of reopening the six mental health clinics, arguing that funding third-party clinics was a more effective use of resources, progressive leaders and community members contested that argument by saying nonprofits and other contractors offered less transparency than government clinics.

Also part of Treatment Not Trauma is a measure to prop up a citywide crisis response team without police.

Chicago has run the Crisis Assistance Response and Engagement — or CARE — since 2021, following worldwide protests sparked by George Floyd’s murder by a police officer in Minneapolis. The CARE model, which mostly deploys Chicago police officers alongside mental health professionals but does have a pilot without cops, has reported no use-of-force or arrests after 1,155 calls as of this month.

Attempts by Rodriguez Sanchez and other progressive aldermen to pass Treatment Not Trauma languished under the Lightfoot administration, even as she expanded the Public Health Department’s mental health budget from $12 million to $89 million. But after Johnson’s electoral victory this spring was seen as a mandate for his progressive agenda, Rodriguez Sanchez worked with Johnson’s team to put forth Tuesday’s ordinance that requires a working group to be made within 30 days of passage.

The task force, appointed by the mayor, must contain representatives from six city departments — Public Health; Assets, Information and Services; Human Resources; Emergency Management and Communications; Fire; and Budget. But the legislation did not list a requirement that a representative from the Chicago Police Department be part of the working group.

That was an omission Ald. Bennett Lawson, 44th, pointed out.

The current list of departments is a “floor” and “if it is needed to consult with other agencies including CPD, there is nothing that limits their participation,” Rodriguez Sanchez said.

Lawson responded that the law enforcement perspective is “important too.”

“I imagine they will be consulted, as we talk about emergency response calls they are handling,” Lawson said.

The working group would be required to meet at least three times before May and present its report to the mayor and the Health and Human Services Committee by May 31. The ordinance does not name any specific officials who would be tapped to serve on the working group, which will be advised by at least 10 community members to guide recommendations.

Those community member appointees must include at least one representative from a federally qualified health center and one from a community mental health center. The community panel must also include a Chicago Department of Public Health behavioral clinician and clients of CDPH’s mental health clinics, plus organized labor, behavioral health experts, researchers, advocates of domestic violence survivors and youth and community organizations.

The ordinance does not detail the scope of the endeavors beyond “developing a suggested framework and road map for the city to expand mental health clinical services, non-police response for behavioral and mental health crises, and community awareness of available mental health resources.”

But Rodriguez Sanchez said while reopening all the clinics is not possible in the first budget, she envisions the group will be “determining how many clinics we’re going to be opening in every budget and how that process is going to go.”

“I’m going to be brief because the hard work has already been done,” said United Working Families organizer Crystal Gardner, a West Sider. “When discussing Treatment Not Trauma on the West Side, mental health professionals, leaders and residents all have been moved from not knowing anything to believing in this very thing. They’re like, ‘What’s the holdup? I need this. Come with me.’”

ayin@chicagotribune.com