UPDATE 12/15/2024 — This morning on V103’s “Chicago Speaks” show with Darryl Dennard, West Side Ald. Jason Ervin (28th Ward) said an updated budget will be proposed on Monday, and it will not include a property tax increase.
ORIGINAL — It’s been an eventful season in Chicago City Hall as Mayor Brandon Johnson and City Council members continue their search for middle ground to close the city’s $1 billion shortfall.
An anticipated budget vote scheduled for Friday was delayed because there weren’t enough votes to pass it, according to council members who voted 32-17 to recess and return to vote on the budget on Monday. The proposed $17.3 billion budget package included a $68.5 million property tax hike and increased taxes on cloud computing, streaming services, parking and plastic bags.
“Our community doesn’t want taxes. Our community wants efficiencies, and I think that that is important,” Ald. Monique Scott (24th Ward) told reporters on Friday. She previously voted “no” on the proposed budget on Dec. 10 while it was still in the Finance Committee.
“We’ve suffered a lot in Chicago, taxes that you just keep pounding our residents over and over again. We have to come to some kind of collaboration,” Scott continued.
After Friday’s delay, The TRiiBE learned that a round of political text messages were sent out to some Chicago residents, encouraging them to tell their alderperson to vote “no” on the latest budget proposal.
The texts were sent by One Future Illinois, a political action committee (PAC) led by some of Chicago’s business and real-estate bigwigs, including investment banker Steve Koch, who served as deputy mayor under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel; Jesse Ruiz, who has previously served as former deputy governor for education under Gov. J.B. Pritzker, interim CEO of Chicago Public Schools, chair of the Illinois State Board of Education and board president of the Chicago Park District; Mike Ruemmler, who managed Emanuel’s 2015 reelection campaign; and more.
The TRiiBE reached out to One Future Illinois about the texts and is awaiting a response.
Myron Ford, Sr. is a 59-year-old homeowner in the 20th Ward. He received the text, asking him to contact Ald. Jeanette Taylor and tell her to vote “no” on the budget. He ignored the text.
“This is the first time I’ve received a text message from this number,” Ford said.
He said he thought he’d been added to the text list because he sometimes goes to community meetings, but he doesn’t remember giving anyone his phone number. He’s been following the city budget debate minimally.
“You start talking about the property tax increase, that ain’t going. I can barely afford to stay in my own neighborhood,” Ford said, referencing the gentrification happening around the incoming Obama Presidential Library. He said Woodlawn is becoming “Obamaland.”
He also thinks the idea of removing youth jobs from the budget is “deplorable.”
“There are very few old homeowners in this neighborhood that have been around as long as I have. There are people from out of state buying properties as investment properties. They have different mentalities,” Ford explained. “I’m invested in my community; they are just invested in the property.”
(Editor’s Note: If you received a text message from a PAC about the budget vote, please reach out to The TRiiBE at info@thetriibe.com).
Johnson and the City Council are working against the clock; they have until Dec. 31 to vote and approve a budget.
Johnson needs at least 26 votes to pass a budget. Progressive Caucus member Ald. Jeanette Taylor (20th Ward) told The TRiiBE that, though she is a Johnson ally, she would have voted “no” on Friday. She was absent due to illness.
“I do understand my community not being able to afford a property tax increase,” Taylor said.
Taylor added that there are “a lot of moving pieces to this budget” and feels that spending needs to go to a “pre-COVID” level.
She added that the council members’ pushback on the budget is something they should have been doing under past mayoral administrations, too. She said the back-and-forth is part of the “democratic process.”
“I don’t know why y’all shocked or why y’all surprised. This is what the democratic process is supposed to look like. We’re supposed to negotiate. We’re supposed to have the conversations. We’re gonna make some hard decisions, but we have to right-size government,” Taylor said.
During a press conference Friday, a collection of alders from the Black and Progressive caucuses stood in solidarity behind Johnson. Those alders were Pat Dowell (3rd Ward), Michelle Harris (8th Ward), Byron Sigcho Lopez (25th Ward), Jessie Fuentes (26th Ward), Walter Burnett (27th Ward) and Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th Ward).
Johnson expressed confidence in the City Council’s ability to pass a revised budget package before the Dec. 31 deadline.
“We’re going to keep working, and we’re going to keep collaborating with alders to pass a balanced budget before the end of the year,” Johnson told reporters. “We have been in very fruitful conversations and making some good progress. We’re not going to stop doing that.
Meanwhile, different sets of alders from the Progressive Caucus and more conservative-leaning caucus took questions from reporters in the hallways outside of City Council chambers.
Ald. Marty Quinn (13th Ward), who spoke alongside Scott and more than a dozen other alders, said they’ve identified areas that needed to be cut from the budget. He specifically called out increases in funding for City Council committees.
“We found that out of the Water Fund, someone was getting security. The treasurer was getting security. We found that the Housing Committee was getting $50,000,” Quinn said. Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th Ward) is the chair of the City Council’s housing committee.
Quinn also added that Ald. Chris Taliaferro (29th Ward), who chairs the City Council’s police and fire committee, is receiving $30,000 more in the revised budget.
“It took us 10 minutes to find that. So more work needs to be done,” Quinn said, referring to the budget.
Ald. Maria Hadden (49th Ward) said the Johnson administration needs more time to talk with alders to revise the budget package.
Hadden said she would have voted “yes” on Friday. However, she also expressed frustration with how the Johnson administration has handled the budget process.
“They’re not listening to a lot of advice given in good faith, and when they do listen, it’s a little too late,” she explained. Hadden also expressed her frustration with her colleagues in the City Council.
“A lot of people have been working very hard for a couple of months now to try and fix what was given to us,” Hadden said, referring to the Black, Progressive and Latino caucuses.
“We didn’t like the mayor’s proposal. We’ve been working in good faith together, across the aisle, making amendments, but there are a bunch of people who say they’ve been working on things, but they have not brought anything to the table,” Hadden continued. “We’ve had a group of people pushing for efficiencies, signing letters, doing things like that, but they haven’t actually produced any amendments, and as colleagues, we’ve been asking for them.”
Here’s a look at some of the contentious items being discussed in the current version of Johnson’s proposed budget.
YOUTH EMPLOYMENT
There were 28,000 youth employment positions funded in the 2024 budget. About 27,793 young people were employed in the city’s One Summer Chicago program this past summer.
Johnson’s initial 2025 budget proposal in October included increasing youth jobs by 2,000, which includes expanding jobs for GoodKids MadCity’s (GKMC) Peacekeepers program as well. Johnson is proposing expanding the program from 100 to 200 Peacekeepers.
More than a dozen alders are asking Johnson not to increase youth jobs. They want to see “efficiencies,” or additional cuts to overspending within city departments.
Those alders include Anthony Beale (9th Ward), Peter Chico (10th Ward), Marty Quinn (13th Ward), Ray Lopez (15th Ward), Derrick Curtis (18th Ward), Silvana Tabares (23rd Ward), Monique Scott (24th Ward), Felix Cardona (31st Ward), Bill Conway (34th Ward), Gil Villegas (36th Ward), Anthony Napolitano (41st Ward), Brendan Reilly (42nd Ward), Jim Gardiner (45th Ward) and Debra Silverstein (50th Ward).
Scott explained that their goal is not to eliminate youth jobs. Instead, they’re proposing that Johnson keep the figure at 28,000. The group has been citing an unnamed poll that they commissioned, which suggests that Chicago residents don’t want to see property tax increases.
However, Ald. Taylor said she wants to save youth jobs.
THOSE VACANT CHICAGO POLICE DEPARTMENT POSITIONS
Also at the center of the budget debate is eliminating 1,155 vacant sworn officer positions in the Chicago Police Department (CPD). A joint analysis suggests that $170 million is allocated for over 1,000 vacant sworn officer positions in the proposed budget. Organizers say the money should be reallocated to avoid a property tax hike, and fund public health and youth jobs.
Vacancy line items within CPD’s budget are often used for other department-related costs, according to Sheila Bedi, a clinical law professor at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law and director of the Community Justice and Civil Rights Clinic.
In the past, the money for police vacancies have been used for police misconduct settlements and overtime, according to Anthony Driver, Jr., president of the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability (CCPSA)
“One of the significant issues that have been documented by the Office of Inspector General, by the CCPSA, is that we can’t get a realistic assessment of how much CPD actually costs, and this practice contributes to the lack of transparency,” Bedi said.
Taylor said she is a proponent of removing the positions.
“Every department that’s had a vacancy for more than five years, they need to cut those vacant positions in half,” Taylor said.
Though the rhetoric will be tied to having a “less safe” Chicago, Taylor said the truth of the matter is that fewer people want to be police officers and the positions will be difficult to fill.
“You don’t hear young people say they want to be the police anymore. So I’m not shocked, but of course, that’s gonna be [the] rhetoric. That’s what the FOP gonna say,” Taylor said. “They’ve been holding all those positions for years, at least six years. I’ve been there for six years. For six years, we’ve always kept those vacancies with no real plan to say how we will fill them.”
Reilly and the bloc of alders who were in opposition to Friday’s proposed budget package are open to a discussion about closing vacant civilian police positions with the department.
“We can have a conversation about that, but we’d have to focus on civilian positions and any position that can’t be filled realistically in the next fiscal year. We can talk about that,” Reilly said on Friday.
“I can tell you most of the folks here standing today are 100% pro-public safety pro-police, but that’s part of the conversation,” Reilly explained. “Everything needs to be on the table, I think, to be strong resistance to eliminating vacancies for sworn officers at a time when we don’t have enough police on the force, but civilian positions need to be looked at very carefully.”
Advocates that are in favor of reallocating funds from vacant positions in the department are also recommending that 135 of those sworn officer vacancies be maintained.
The City Council will reconvene on Monday at 1:00 p.m
A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that One Future Illinois spent millions to tank the Bring Chicago Home efforts.
