Chicago spent less than $160 million on a host of programs including affordable housing, mental health, violence prevention, youth job programs and help for unhoused Chicagoans through Dec. 31, 2023, according to reports to the federal government.

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s first budget, which took effect Monday, includes no new taxes, fees or service cuts. Johnson now must make good on his promise to use the city’s $16.7 billion spending plan as a down payment on investments in working-class Chicagoans.

The budget, which takes effect Jan. 1, 2024, includes no new taxes, fees or service cuts, making it much easier for alderpeople to back the plan touted by Mayor Brandon Johnson as a down payment on promises to invest in working-class Chicagoans.

The newly created Department of Reentry would have a budget of $5 million and four employees charged with helping formerly incarcerated individuals in Chicago get what “they need to thrive in this city,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said.

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s first spending plan eliminates a $538 million shortfall and prioritizes new investments in affordable housing, mental health services and environmental justice.

Even though the Chicago Police Department has exceeded its overtime budget in each of the past five years, the City Council is once again poised to set aside just $100 million to cover the department’s overtime bill in the 2024 budget.

The working group formed by Mayor Brandon Johnson in June to tackle Chicago’s acutely underfunded pensions has yet to craft a comprehensive plan to address one of the major fiscal challenges facing the city.

More than 1,000 people – mostly migrants – lined up hours before the city clerk’s event on Oct. 12 at Gill Park in Wrigleyville was scheduled to start, overwhelming the 15-person staff, City Clerk Anna Valencia told WTTW News.

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s 2024 spending plan would increase the overall CPD budget to nearly $2 billion, accounting for more than 31% of the city’s $5.7 billion corporate fund, by far the most of any city agency or department.

City officials have issued 150% more municipal ID cards so far in 2023 than in all of 2021 and 17% more than in all of 2022, according to city data.

The analysis by Fitch said the rating upgrade “is driven by a decline in the city’s long-term liability burden stemming from steady growth in the economic resource base and improved debt management practices.”

COPA Chief Administrator Andrea Kersten announced in June that she would seek to clear the agency’s backlog of cases more than 18 months old, which she said were compromising the ability of the agency to investigate more recent complaints alleging significant misconduct by officers.

Several alderpeople, from across the political spectrum, asked Budget Director Annette Guzman why the mayor set aside just $150 million in his spending plan to care for the migrants, even though that is less than half of what the city will have spent to care for Chicago’s newest arrivals through the end of 2023.

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s first spending plan does not include a property tax hike to keep up with the rising rate of inflation, or new taxes or fee hikes to cover the city’s budget deficit.

The spending plan crafted by Mayor Brandon Johnson and his team will provide the most comprehensive response to the myriad of intractable problems facing the mayor, including how to handle the more than 1,700 vacant positions in the Chicago Police Department, since he took office nearly 150 days ago.

The budget gap is nearly three times the size of the gap forecasted by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot as she left office, but is still smaller than any projected shortfall since 2019.