The budget for the Chicago Department of Public Health is set to shrink by 16% in 2025, as pandemic-era grants worth nearly $140 million expire, records show.
Mayor Brandon Johnson’s spending plan for 2025 earmarks nearly $700 million for the Chicago Department of Public Health, which is charged with fighting the spread of communicable diseases, providing mental health care and ensuring the safety of food at restaurants and festivals.
The cuts included in Johnson’s budget represent the second year of double-digit cuts to the department known as CDPH, which oversees a wide variety of initiatives designed to keep Chicagoans healthy. This year’s budget for the department is 9.7% less than the city’s budget for CDPH in 2023, records show.
Chicago taxpayers are set to spend $76 million to fund CDPH, roughly the same amount of money they spent to fund CDPH in 2024, records show. The rest of the department’s budget comes from a variety of federal and state grants.
CDPH Commissioner Dr. Olusimbo “Simbo” Ige told members of the City Council’s Budget and Government Operations Committee on Thursday she was working to develop new strategies to replace those grants, perhaps by working with the Cook County Department of Public Health or the Illinois Department of Health.
The steep cuts are a result of the city hitting a so-called “fiscal cliff,” with Chicago’s federal COVID-19 relief funds exhausted, Ige said.
Ald. Byron Sigcho Lopez (25th Ward) urged his colleagues to heed the call from a coalition of public health groups to add $25 million to CDPH’s budget, calling the department’s work “critical” for the most vulnerable Chicagoans.
“Without it, people will really be hurt,” Sigcho Lopez said.
The additional funds will help the city address deep public health inequities, according to a letter from the Health and Medicine Policy Research Group.
“Coupled with racial and class health inequities across virtually every disease, the reality of vast health inequities means both untold suffering and thousands of early deaths annually,” according to the letter. “This is unacceptable and requires a stronger response.”
Ige also reassured alderpeople that she and her leadership team were doing everything possible to fill vacant positions as quickly as possible. The overall size of the department is set to shrink by 124 positions, or 10%, according to the budget proposal.
There are no plans for the city to open any additional mental health clinics in 2025, according to the budget. Three new clinics opened during Johnson’s first year and a half in office. The spending plan earmarks $2 million to create a dedicated unit to dispatch 911 calls from those experiencing mental health crises, and to staff the city’s existing clinics.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
