Politics
Mayor Brandon Johnson Says City Should Not ‘Tolerate’ Budget That Fires Workers, Cuts Services
Video: Joining “Chicago Tonight” to discuss the 2025 budget are Alds. Jason Ervin (28th Ward), William Hall (6th Ward), Raymond Lopez (15th Ward) and Andre Vasquez (40th Ward). (Produced by Shelby Hawkins)
Chicagoans should not “tolerate” a budget that makes cuts to city services and orders thousands of layoffs, leaving city officials little choice but to hike taxes by a total of $234 million, Mayor Brandon Johnson said Monday.
Johnson said his latest budget proposal, which faces two key tests on Tuesday, meets Chicagoans’ critical needs at a difficult economic moment.
“The other thing that’s important in this budget is that clearly there are a lot of human needs and these human needs are rights and so one of the other things that’s important about making sure that we meet the human needs of individuals is that we don’t cut services and lay people off,” Johnson said at an unrelated news conference. “A budget that would lay off workers and cut services is just, you know, one that should not be tolerated by any Chicagoan. And I know these are difficult financial times, not just in Chicago, but around the globe.”
The City Council’s Finance Committee is set to consider the proposal at 9 a.m. Tuesday, with the Budget Committee set to meet at noon to consider more than a half-dozen pieces of legislation that would implement the proposed $17.3 billion spending plan.
If both panels endorse the plan, a final vote could come on Friday by the full City Council.
Johnson declined Monday to say whether he was confident the City Council would approve the spending plan this week. There are just 22 days before the deadline to avoid an unprecedented shutdown of Chicago government.
The City Council voted unanimously to reject his initial proposal to raise property taxes by $300 million and then quietly killed his second proposal to hike property taxes by $150 million.
Johnson’s third proposed spending plan for 2025 would hike property taxes by $68.5 million and increase a host of other taxes and fees by an additional $165.5 million.
Johnson’s proposal to increase property taxes by $68.5 million is tied to the increase in the cost of living during the past two years. During his 2023 campaign for mayor, Johnson promised not to raise property taxes, blaming the steep increases approved by his predecessors for making it impossible for longtime Chicagoans to stay in their homes.
The owners of a property worth $250,000 will likely pay approximately $50 more a year if Johnson’s proposed tax hike is approved by at least 26 members of the City Council, according to a WTTW News analysis.
The largest tax hike included in Johnson’s revised budget proposal would generate $128.1 million by an increase in the tax levied on software licenses, cloud services and other digital goods from 9% to 11%, records show.
Other proposed tax increases would generate:
- $12.9 million by hiking the taxes paid by those who subscribe to streaming and cable television services from 9% to 10.25%.
- $11.3 million by hiking the tax paid by those who park in garages or use a valet service from 20% on weekends and 22% on weekdays and to 23.25% throughout the week.
- $8.1 million by charging a $3 surcharge on ride-hailing trips that start or end in the Central Business District between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. The current weekday surcharge would drop to $2.75 from $3.
- $5.1 million by charging shoppers 10 cents for each single-use paper and plastic bag at stores and allowing retailers to keep 1 cent to cover costs. The current tax is 7 cents, with store owners keeping 2 cents.
Johnson’s revised plan also relies on an additional $22 million in revenue, including $7 million in additional fines, most related to parking citations, records show.
Johnson’s plan also cuts $90 million in spending, including $31 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds he had planned to use to restart the effort that sent $500 per month to Chicagoans living below the federal poverty line as part of a basic income program, records show.
The revised budget proposal earmarks $8.9 million to reverse deep cuts to the number of employees charged with implementing the federal court order requiring the Chicago Police Department to stop routinely violating residents’ constitutional rights known as the consent decree, bowing to intense pressure from advocates for police reform.
Those estimates assume that the employees who fill 162 positions set to be restored to the city’s 2025 spending plan will be paid significantly less than the average cost of a Chicago Police Department officer, who earns $150,000 annually, including benefits.
That cost of restoring the positions will be covered by an expansion of the city’s automated speed camera network into wards where City Council members have requested the cameras and a study by the Chicago Department of Transportation has found a need for speed reductions, Budget Director Annette Guzman said.
In all, the new cameras will generate $11.4 million, and cost $2.64 million to install, according to city projections.
CPD has fully met just 9% of the consent decree’s requirements in the more than five years since it took effect, according to the most recent report by the monitoring team.
If approved, city officials will earmark an additional $208.8 million for the reform effort in 2025, documents show. Between 2020 and 2024, the city set aside $667 million to implement the consent decree, but failed to spend at least a quarter of those funds every year, according to a WTTW News analysis.
The new budget proposal makes no change to Johnson’s plan to pay an additional $272 million into the city’s four underfunded pension funds. That will prevent the further growth of the city’s pension liabilities and save the city $3.9 billion by 2030, officials said.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
