Cook County has announced a “good news budget” plan for fiscal year 2025.

Unlike the city of Chicago with its looming budget holes and “everything’s on the table” approach, including tax hikes, Cook County's $9.9 billion dollar proposal announced last week, up 6.8% percent compared to last year, includes no plans to increase taxes, cut services or layoff any workers to cover a $218 million projected budget gap.

“First of all, I’m a teacher but I don't give grades to other elected officials,” Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle said on Monday. “In the county side, we’ve made tough choices and hard decisions for 14 years. And so, we’re in a real good place and I’m grateful to our finance teams over that period of time for bringing us here”

Preckwinkle’s $9.9 billion plan calls for investments in opioid addiction remediation, community violence intervention, firming up how generative artificial intelligence can be used, adding employees at the assessor’s office to help with property valuations and adding solar panels to county properties. 

The county will have $100 million in its disaster fund, with half that balance carrying over from disaster funding untapped this year given a drastic decrease in migrants arriving in the area after President Joe Biden implemented quotas at the southern border.

“Fifty-three percent of it, $5.9 billion, is health care,” Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle said of the overall budget. “Seventeen percent is public safety, so that’s the courts and the jails. And so that’s 70% public health and public safety, and then 30% is everything else we do … it’s infrastructure work. It’s our violence prevention work. It’s our economic development work. It’s animal control. It’s everything in the kitchen sink.”

County agencies will testify at hearings throughout the next two months, and commissioners will get a chance to put their stamp on the spending plan Nov. 7, with a final vote scheduled for Nov. 21.

But with only one Republican on the county board  it’s likely the bulk of her priorities will manifest.