CHICAGO — Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson delivered a public message Monday to aldermen who are threatening an imminent vote on their own 2026 budget plan: Bring it on.

Speaking at a City Hall news conference, the mayor castigated the slim City Council majority and said that if those 26 aldermen are so confident in their counterproposal to his $16.6 billion spending plan for next year, then prove it.

“Well, we don’t know that they have 26 votes, because nothing’s been voted on,” Johnson told reporters. “So I’m saying put it on the board. Let’s see. Do people actually want to vote on doubling the garbage fees? They should present that. If City Council members want to double the garbage fees in Englewood, Roseland, Austin, then they should put it on the board and vote.”

Johnson was less forthcoming about whether he would veto the alternate budget plan presented in a letter signed by the aldermen last week, arguing their package is unbalanced because about $300 million they are counting on to plug next year’s $1.19 billion deficit comes from ideas he said are legally and operationally unfeasible. The mayor previously vowed to veto any budget approved by aldermen if it hiked property taxes or the garbage fee — and the counterproposal from aldermen would almost double the latter.

“That’s just an incomplete assignment,” Johnson said. “I don’t want us to overly concentrate on whether something is going to get vetoed or not.”

The aldermen who Johnson is fighting with are similarly standing their ground, arguing his plan would imperil city finances.

“The way he’s going about that is just wrong headed, and it leads us straight toward a credit downgrade,” said Ald. Scott Waguespack, one of the leaders of the pushback against Johnson’s plan. “He is hell-bent on costing taxpayers hundreds of millions more because he won’t negotiate or collaborate.”

It’s a game of political brinksmanship with massive stakes for the city as a critical end-of-the-year deadline to pass a budget gets closer and closer.

All sides concede that, while untested and murky, the consequences of failing to pass a budget and potentially entering a city government shutdown would be devastating. But the competing factions are at a stalemate given that Johnson’s pitch to reinstate the head tax has been unable to win over a majority, while the alternative budget presented by 26 aldermen cannot survive a mayoral veto.

Johnson points out 26 signatures on a letter do not necessarily equate to 26 votes on a budget. It just remains to be seen whether his team can win over critical swing votes, especially after coming out on the short end of a telling 25-10 City Council Finance Committee vote on his proposal last month.

Over the weekend, more than a dozen council members who signed the letter met with Johnson’s finance team to discuss their proposals. Aldermen who attended the meeting said Johnson did not appear, and the mayor’s team did not budge on its position during the three-hour session.

“We learned that the mayor is not going to negotiate or collaborate on the budget in any way,” Waguespack, 32nd, said. “They said they were done and that they felt that their budget was the one that they’re sticking with and no changes.”

Instead of negotiating with labor groups, healthcare companies or even aldermen to cut costs and land a deal, Johnson is only going to the media to repeat his position, Waguespack argued.

The head tax is far from the only issue with the budget, the Northwest Side alderman added. Other sticking points include Johnson’s plan to borrow money to cover police lawsuit settlements and firefighter backpay, as well as the mayor’s decision to not make a full previously promised advance payment into Chicago’s drastically underfunded pension system.

Johnson’s Monday response to those advance pension complaints: “Of course we want to make the full advance payment. The context in which that proposal was put forward, we’re not in that context anymore. There’s not this overwhelming pocket of dollars of reserve.”

Several aldermen, including some progressives, have said that measure instituted by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot is a sticking point.

Waguespack, meanwhile, said he thinks aldermen should move ahead on their plan and propose their own amendments to the budget. The mayor does not have 26 votes and must more seriously negotiate, the alderman said.

Such a move, if backed by the council majority that signed on to the letter, would mark the sort of dramatic challenge to Johnson’s power not seen in City Hall in decades. While the mayor appeared nonplussed by that threat Monday, his team has been mobilizing behind the scenes to try to peel away support from the 26.

For his part, Johnson said he remains “open” to negotiating, a point highlighted in bold in a letter sent to aldermen and shared with reporters. Johnson told reporters he is willing to discuss shifting the specifics of his head tax, such as the 100-employee threshold of companies affected or the $21-per-employee per-month cost.

But in the same breath, the mayor hinted he is unwilling to compromise: “This is not about finding compromise, this is really about are we going to show up and protect our values.”

At least one council member not on board with Johnson’s budget plan told the Tribune they were offered a one-on-one with the mayor in recent days, but they do not plan to accept.

Last week, aldermen presented the following amendments to Johnson’s proposal: restoring the advance pension payment from $140 million to $260 million; scrapping a three-year borrowing plan for $166 million in firefighter backpay and covering the full amount with the corporate fund; and shrinking a record $1 billion tax increment financing surplus by $100 million.

To balance the budget, the group proposes a series of “efficiencies,” spending cuts, and tax and fee hikes.

In addition to an increase in the city liquor tax, their plan counts on the city taking in another $48 million by widely expanding the downtown ride-share surcharge area, plus an extra $55 million from the higher garbage collection fee.

Also on Monday, Johnson defended his close ally, former Ald. Walter Burnett Jr., after the Tribune reported that the Chicago Housing Authority board told the federal government this fall that he was not qualified to lead the nation’s third-largest public housing agency.

“His ability to get work done, his decades of service and the fact that he has a very personal connection to public housing, I believe it makes him the strongest candidate to run our system. And I will say, too, him being a Chicagoan, it makes a difference,” Johnson said. “Many people had concerns about certain folks with executive experiences — I put that in quotations — that lived outside of the city, and they left a lot to be desired.”

CHA board Chair Matthew Brewer wrote to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in October laying out what he said were Johnson’s attempts to influence the agency to appoint the former 27th Ward alderman despite the fact that “we do not recommend him as CEO,” according to a copy of the letter shared with the Tribune.

The 10-member CHA Board of Commissioners is not currently controlled by Johnson appointees, but four other members’ terms have expired, meaning Johnson could replace them at any time and wield a majority.

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