Chicago Mayor-Elect Brandon Johnson (L) and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker speak to the press after a meeting in the governor's office on April 07, 2023 in Chicago, Illinois. Credit: Scott Olson/Getty Images

There has been a lot of hand-wringing lately about the testy relationship between Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.

Frankly, they can feud all they want — just so long as they get their jobs done.

If they’re feuding but still otherwise competent in their work, that’s mainly their problem, not ours. If they get along swimmingly but aren’t effective leaders, that’s not acceptable.

Johnson’s now-discredited plan to house up to 2,000 migrants at a time in a tent encampment in Brighton Park has cast the fraught relationship in sharp relief. It made clear that the governor and mayor sometimes just can’t get along — and the result can be tolerable despite their fractiousness.

For Johnson, just seven months into his term as mayor, this presents a question of whether working with the governor, instead of jousting with him, might be better for the city in the end. In the most public spat since Johnson took office, the mayor stumbled. Inexplicably, he bulled ahead with plans for the encampment in Brighton Park even after receiving evidence that this choice was a bad one.

Read more at chicagotribune.com

David Greising is the president and chief executive of the Better Government Association, joining the BGA in 2018. For nearly a century, the BGA has fought for honest and effective government through investigative journalism and policy advocacy.