Mayor Brandon Johnson campaigned on a promise to deliver Chicago from violent crime by making $1 billion worth of “investments in people” bankrolled by $800 million in new or increased taxes that level the playing field between the haves and have-nots.
His supporters will have to settle for a down payment on the spending front. And they’ll need to wait a while for the tax burden to be shifted to businesses and wealthy Chicagoans.
The $16.6 billion 2024 city budget Johnson presented to the City Council Wednesday will only “begin the critical investments necessary” to deliver on Johnson’s campaign slogan to “build a better, stronger Chicago.”
There’s funding to open two of the city’s six shuttered mental health clinics — and those will be in existing Chicago Public Health Department facilities, to keep costs down.
A pilot program that frees Chicago police officers from responding to mental health emergencies will be expanded, though not enough to provide the citywide alternative Johnson promised.
Young people will get 4,000 more “employment opportunities,” bringing the total to 28,000 summer jobs — down 4,000 from 2019 and far short of Johnson’s promise to double the number of summer jobs for young people and make those employment opportunities year-round.
The bottom line, as Johnson was first to admit, is it will take time to “right this ship.”
“What I present here today is just our first step. The 2024 budget is a down payment on this administration’s priorities to empower people — especially young people — through economic and employment opportunities,” Johnson told the City Council during a 41-minute speech interrupted repeatedly by applause.
“This is how we begin to make transformative change in the lives of our young people — change that we will build upon with future budgets. … All of our investments — in youth, education, housing, mental health and environmental justice, layered together and continued over the years — will fulfill the promise of a better, stronger, safer Chicago.”
Holding the line on property taxes, hotel room tax
On the tax front, Johnson’s supporters also must be patient.
He’s delivering on his campaign promise to hold the line on property taxes and eliminate the automatic escalator that would have increased property taxes to match the rate of inflation.
And he’s not proposing any increases in home rule taxes.
Working-class Chicagoans must wait for Johnson to try to level the playing field, one that the mayor claims is so tilted in favor of the rich and powerful, Chicago families earning $25,000 had a “total tax burden” 33% higher than a family with a $150,000 income.
“We must do better. That is why this budget holds the line on property taxes, fines and fees, and why we will be working with all stakeholders to create revenue that weans us from our addiction to the regressive taxation pushing so many of our working families out of the city,” Johnson said, apparently referring to taxes on services and financial transactions, just to name a few, that need General Assembly approval.
Senior mayoral adviser Jason Lee was asked why Johnson didn’t increase the city’s 4.5% tax on hotel rooms or impose a tax on digital advertising, as recommended by the Action Center on Race & the Economy and the Peoples’ Unity Platform.
“We’re in the process of doing the real estate transfer [tax increases] to create a permanent source of funding for the unhoused. That’s cycling through the Council as we speak. That’s a major addition,” Lee, in line for an 18% pay raise to $183,804-a-year, told the Sun-Times.
“We just established a revenue committee in City Council,” Lee said. “The business community actually wants to participate. They have some ideas. We’re actually in a good place. ... The mayor kind of laying that out ... has compelled many people to realize he was right. We do need sustainable revenue, and they need to participate with ideas.”
Johnson managing shortfall with short-term fixes
With a $538 million shortfall that’s growing with every arriving busload of migrants, Johnson is hard-pressed to deliver on any of his campaign promises.
The migrant crisis, expected to cost the city $363 million by Dec. 31, was “created by right-wing extremists threatened by our values” and “bent on sowing chaos and division in our city,” the mayor said.
But he managed to erase the shortfall, maintain Chicago’s status as a sanctuary city and still deliver for his progressive supporters — even as federal COVID-19 relief funds are drying up — by relying on the same one-time revenue Chicago mayors have used for years to postpone the day of reckoning.
He declared a tax increment financing surplus of about $400 million, Chicago’s highest in 15 years. By closing out five TIFs, he’s generating $49.5 million for the city and more than twice that amount for Chicago Public Schools.
The city again will refinance city bonds, this time to generate $89.2 million and carry over $50 million from last year’s unspent balance.
And there’s $41.5 million in “personnel savings,” presumably from closing out vacant positions, although Budget Director Annette Guzman wouldn’t say where those jobs would be eliminated or whether any are among the 1,700 police vacancies.
The Johnson administration is relying on “improved revenue projections” to generate $186.8 million and stronger “revenue enforcement collections” to add $35 million.
The $16.6 billion plan is $200 million higher than the 2023 budget. Even as federal stimulus funds dry up, Johnson’s plan includes 311 new positions and an overall city workforce of 36,729, the highest in years. The budget for the mayor’s office ballooned under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot and increases again under Johnson — this time, by $913,202.
How Johnson plans to deliver on campaign promises
During a virtual briefing with reporters Tuesday, Guzman outlined $26.6 million worth of new investments that will serve as a down payment on Johnson’s formidable campaign promises. In addition to a $303 million pension prepayment and $53 million for lead pipe replacement, the budget includes:
- “Reimagining public safety” by adding 398 civilian positions to the Chicago Police Department; creating 440 “promotional opportunities”; adding 100 detectives; returning 70 patrol officers assigned to the Office of Public Safety Administration to street duty; and adding “data analytic support” to evaluate police and fire response times.
- Creating a $900,000-a-year Department of Environment and a Department of Innovation and Technology.
- Bolstering funding by roughly $2.5 million for the bureaus of forestry and rodent control.
- Creating an Office of New Arrivals within the Department of Family and Support Services; adding staff at the Office of Emergency Management and Communications; and bolstering funding for homeless shelters and “wrap-around services” by $6.8 million.
Will Johnson cut CPD funding?
A key question leading up to Wednesday was whether Johnson would cut any of the 1,700 police vacancies — or instead honor his campaign promise to cut “not one dollar” from the Chicago Police Department’s $1.94 billion budget.
Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th), zoning committee chair and Johnson’s floor leader, said he understands why there’s a “slight increase” in the police department budget instead.
“When the city of Chicago voted for the new FOP contract, that effectively tied the hands of any administration when it came to determining the size” of the police budget, he said.
“But this budget makes the types of investments in the root causes of crime that we’ve been asking for for a very long time,” he said, such as “expanding the nonpolice, first-responder pilot so that more communities can have a mental health [professional] responding to 911 calls when someone is in distress and it’s a nonviolent incident.”
A review of the police budget shows the community policing section is more than doubling, while the bureau of patrol will drop by 294 officers, to 9,402. Narcotics, gang intelligence, vice, SWAT, traffic and asset forfeiture also take hits. The Office of Constitutional Policing gets a 44% increase, to 65 employees, with a $6.7 million budget.
Will Johnson’s progressive supporters grow restless?
Although Johnson’s first budget makes only a down payment on his campaign promises, Lee said he firmly believes Johnson’s liberal base will be realistic about the political power of the possible.
“People always want as much as they can get. That’s human nature. But I think most people are patient. They know that we didn’t get here in a year. We got here over a matter of decades with some of the challenges this mayor was elected to address,” Lee said.
“When you’re trying to pivot a big ship like the city of Chicago, you have to begin to turn in the right direction before you just zoom full speed ahead,” he said.
Ramirez-Rosa said he expects smooth sailing in the Council after two weeks of budget hearings and plenty of debate.
“There’s no question that this is a great budget that really reflects our city’s progressive and liberal values. It’s a balanced budget that isn’t balanced on the backs of working-class Chicagoans,” the floor leader said.
Many progressive revenues Johnson championed “required Springfield to take action.” Without legislative action, the new mayor had “limited options,” Ramirez-Rosa said.
“But progressives have always asked for an increase in TIF surplus. We’ve always said, ‘Before you raise taxes on working-class people, look to TIF to help balance the budget,’” he added.
“The largest TIF surplus in history is a progressive measure that is protecting working-class Chicagoans while ensuring that the city is able to continue to invest in the things that make our neighborhoods great,” he said.
Kennedy Bartley is executive director of United Working Families, a group affiliated with the Chicago Teachers Union that helped elect Johnson.
In a statement, Bartley sounded more than satisfied with Johnson’s pledge to reopen two mental health clinics and expand the nonpolice response to mental health emergencies.
“While this is a generational project that will not be solved in one budget alone, this year’s budget blueprint is an important first step toward transforming Chicago into a city that cares for everyone and abandons no one,” he was quoted as saying.
The CTU that Johnson served as a paid organizer applauded its “brother” for “beginning to heal a generation of cuts, closures and harm from previous administrations.”
Contributing: Mitchell Armentrout
