Aldermen on Thursday weighed a Chicago Department of Public Health budget plan that’s well short of this year’s, as Mayor Brandon Johnson seeks to close a yawning shortfall in his citywide spending package.
The $100 million-plus cut to the health department budget proposed for 2025 by Johnson is largely driven by expiring federal grants tied to COVID-19. Some aldermen at a City Council budget hearing argued the city should find more money to shore up the shrinking department, even while the budget crisis forces them to search for cuts elsewhere as many of them try to find ways to avoid the mayor’s proffered $300 million property tax hike.
“We are starting in a deficit, but I do think that cutting mental health and public health can be costly in the long run,” Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, 25th, said.
The Pilsen alderman called for an additional $25 million in funding for the department, echoing a demand made last month by 82 public health groups, including many progressive neighborhood organizations and backers of the so-called Treatment Not Trauma mental health care plan championed by Johnson.
The CDPH is expected to lose 124 full-time positions in the proposed budget, First Deputy Commissioner Fikirte Wagaw said.
“Failing to increase funding to vital resources is ultimately a disinvestment in public health,” Any Huamani, an organizer for the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, said in a letter calling for more money for the department. “We cannot accept that.”
And with much of the health department’s money set to still come from the federal government, some aldermen worry a sea change at the White House could further shake Chicago’s efforts to fund health programs.
Health Committee Chair Ald. Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez, 33rd, asked CDPH Commissioner Dr. Olusimbo Ige if her department is ready for a second term for President Donald Trump. Ige responded with confidence. While some federal grants are “supplemental” one-offs, many are routine applications, she said.
“We are optimistic that even with the new administration those appropriation dollars that we get routinely as recurring grants will continue to be recurring,” she said.
The department’s proposed budget was among the first to face aldermanic scrutiny as the City Council begins to respond to the spending plan Johnson proposed last week. Johnson’s proposed budget hinges in large part on the property tax hike, a policy that has drawn sharp pushback from aldermen desperate to find another way to balance the city’s books.
That tension was on display when Finance Committee Chair Ald. Pat Dowell, 3rd, asked Ige why the department has its own 10-employee human resources team, separate from the city’s Department of Human Resources.
“We’re trying to find ways to make a dent in our budget; $1 million is $1 million,” Dowell said. “Is this something your department could do without?”
Johnson made new investments in public health a key focus of his budget last year. The city spent around $21 million to add two new city-run clinics and mental health services at a library, as well as to double staffing in the emergency response teams the city dispatches to mental health and substance abuse crises.
But despite Johnson’s ambitions to open over a dozen new city-run mental health clinics, his 2025 budget proposal does not invest as much new money into his Treatment Not Trauma plan while staring down an estimated budget gap of nearly $1 billion. Johnson’s latest budget proposal for new mental health spending was highlighted by a proposed $2 million for a new emergency call center team tasked with handling mental health calls.