A quiet City Hall showdown is brewing over video gambling in Chicago, with Ald. Anthony Beale is accusing Mayor Brandon Johnson’s team of trying to undo a hard-fought win from December that legalized video-gambling terminals across the city. A repeal push could upend a slice of the newly approved budget and reopen Chicago’s host agreement with Bally’s, turning a technical policy fight into a high-stakes battle over pensions, jobs, and where the city finds its next dollar.
Beale says the administration is working in the shadows to roll back the City Council’s decision, calling the maneuver “behind the scenes” and warning that a repeal ordinance could land in the council chambers within weeks. At the heart of the dispute is a basic tradeoff: some aldermen want to grab relatively quick, citywide licensing revenue from video terminals, while critics warn those same machines could siphon off higher-taxed casino revenue that Johnson has counted on to help shore up police and fire pensions.
Beale told the Chicago Sun-Times that “They’re behind the scenes secretly trying to repeal this” and argued the mayor “has an obligation to execute the budget that we passed.” Supporters of legal terminals say the council already baked that licensing money into its spending plan and that yanking the measure now would blow a hole in a fragile compromise Johnson opposed but ultimately has to live with.
What the numbers show
The 2026 budget clocks in at $16.6 billion and leans on roughly $6.8 million in licensing revenue from newly legalized video-gambling terminals, according to WTTW. Yet a city-commissioned study projected that legalization would generate about $10 million a year at most and could actually cut into what Chicago collects from higher-taxed casino slots, tightening an already narrow fiscal margin and giving ammunition to skeptics, WTTW reported.
Bally’s warning and the stakes
Bally’s has fired its own warning shot, arguing that widespread video-gambling terminals across neighborhood bars and restaurants would undercut its Chicago casino and trigger a renegotiation of the host agreement. The company says that could wipe out a $4 million annual lump-sum payment to the city and ultimately cost Chicago as much as $74 million a year while putting up to 1,050 jobs at risk. CasinoBeats summarized Bally’s analysis and its contention that lower-taxed terminals scattered citywide would peel gamblers away from the casino floor.
Political math and next steps
Inside Johnson’s camp, aides are not denying that repeal is on the table. Senior mayoral adviser Jason Lee told the Chicago Sun-Times that scrapping the video-gambling provision is “one of the remedies” under discussion. Ald. Walter “Red” Burnett has predicted the council could move to strip the video-gambling section from the budget as early as March, setting up a fast replay of a debate many aldermen thought they had just finished.
The budget’s video-gambling forecast assumes around 3,300 eligible establishments citywide and an 80 percent application rate once the door opens. Licenses would be issued by the Illinois Gaming Board, with the rollout expected to take six to eight months, so any move to reverse course now would hit before a single terminal turns on.
Legal implications
If Johnson’s team formally pushes for repeal, it would not just be a political retreat. Such a move could reopen Bally’s host-community agreement and raise legal and fiscal questions about how firmly the city has committed to pension funding levels and casino-related jobs, industry coverage notes. Reporting compiled by gaming-industry briefers highlights Bally’s argument that neighborhood terminals would shrink taxable slot revenue at the casino and reduce the stream of money tied to police and fire pensions, which could turn an attempted budget fix into a new source of financial stress, CDC Gaming Brief summarized.
For now, the fight is as much about leverage as it is about line items. Watch whether Johnson sends the formal notice to the state that would set licensing in motion and whether a coalition of aldermen coalesces around a repeal. If a rollback reaches the full City Council, Chicago will be staring at a bigger question that keeps coming back: when the numbers do not quite add up, where does the city go next for 2026 revenue?
