It’s rare that we would applaud inaction, but aldermen on Friday tacitly taking down Mayor Brandon Johnson’s tax-heavy solutions to Chicago’s budget crisis qualifies for cheers.
The City Council is scheduled to reconvene at 1 p.m. Monday, with Team Johnson over the weekend having worked to alter the $17.3 billion budget in order to win a majority and prevent a city government shutdown at the end of the month.
So the question is, what now? The council rejected Johnson’s first pass at a budget, featuring a proposed $300 million property tax hike, on a 50-0 vote. The mayor’s version 2.0 of the budget, with the property tax increase trimmed to $68.5 million but with another $166 million in assorted tax increases, fees and fines, would have been voted down, too, had the mayor and his aldermanic allies not moved Friday for a face-saving recess.
At some point, whether today or later this week (or this month), there will need to be a budget version 3.0 that passes muster. Most everyone involved agrees that any budget capable of attracting at least 25 aldermanic votes will include no property tax increase. So the mayor and council at a bare minimum will have to find $68.5 million in cuts or alternative revenue to fill that hole.
The temptation will be for a simple solution that allows Johnson and the council to balance the budget, if only on paper, and hobble back to their families for the holidays. In a news conference on Friday, where Johnson tried gamely and unconvincingly to spin this nearly unprecedented city budget crisis as a new day of transparency and collaborative governance, the mayor more than once pointed to $170 million in budgeted but unfilled Police Department jobs as a source for cash. And several times he noted that Aldermen Anthony Beale, 9th, and Brendan Reilly, 42nd — both ordinarily staunch supporters of Chicago police — had said they were open to eliminating some of those positions as part of a budget solution.
Meanwhile, Ald. Walter Burnett, 27th, Johnson’s vice mayor, told the Chicago Sun-Times that the council needed to consider unpaid furlough days for the city’s workforce, something Johnson stubbornly has said is a nonstarter.
“That means everyone in the city takes a part in this,” Burnett said. “I think that’s only fair.”
We agree with Burnett. To this point, Johnson hasn’t asked city workers, most of whom are represented by unions who’ve refused to make any concessions in this moment of crisis, to contribute to a solution. Instead, Johnson has put the entire burden on businesses and ordinary Chicagoans, who already are maxed out on taxes, fees and fines. Instead of trimming unnecessary or highly discretionary spending, he has called for more speed cameras.
What is clear is that the City Council must pass a budget before Dec. 31. Otherwise, according to the administration, services will halt and the city’s credit rating will surely take a massive beating.
That can’t happen. Period.
But what does that revised budget look like, and, at least as importantly, what must Johnson be prepared to consider next year when the city again likely will be hundreds of millions short of what it needs to function in 2026?
As Johnson clumsily tries to play old-school budget games mastered by mayors past — buying aldermanic votes with promises of field houses in their wards or adding tens of thousands of dollars to their committee budgets — the broader truth underscored by this chaotic, embarrassing budget battle is that Chicagoans are tapped out. Chicago’s government, bloated over the pandemic era by nearly 50% in dollar terms and that’s without even accounting for the effect of bolstering woefully underfunded pensions, is unaffordable.
It must be right-sized for all our sakes. Aldermen know they have lost most of their constituents’ support when it comes to this budget.
This task won’t be a one-year exercise. The most important achievement of the aldermen who’ve stood fast against more property taxes and called out the tax-and-spenders in the mayor’s office and on the council is changing the narrative around city government.
Johnson can continue to talk about “investing in people” all he wants, but what ordinary people in Chicago now see far more plainly than before is how we got to this moment. Our city irresponsibly spent the once-in-a-generation federal largesse from the pandemic era on a much larger government workforce far beyond what taxpayers should or could support once the fed funds were gone. That’s not rocket science. People have figured it out. And politicians always have to most beware that which is easily understood by voters.
Given the angst at City Hall this year, it’s hard to imagine a property tax increase happening next year, either, without real cost-cutting occurring first. And that won’t mean just eliminating unfilled positions. Once the new year dawns, the council must get engaged quickly in analyzing city government department by department so that the fat can be trimmed responsibly, without harming the quality of city services. We’ve seen enough analysis to date to be confident that’s doable.
However the 2025 budget impasse is resolved — and some form of shared-sacrifice furloughing should be part of the emergency plan — the responsible message to deliver right now to city workers and to taxpayers is that there will be more painful decision-making needed next year. And possibly the year after that.
That will be difficult for unions and city workers to hear; no one should relish people losing their jobs, whether in the public or private sectors. But the silver lining, we believe, is that such a message would help instill within the business community desperately needed confidence in Chicago’s future.
At root, lack of growth — both in population and in private investment — is what is holding Chicago back. Prudent fiscal management and acknowledgment of budget realities are the first steps to reversing those negative trends.
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