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.

It took less than five months for the Chicago Police Department to exhaust the $100 million earmarked for overtime set by the Chicago City Council as part of the city’s 2023 budget, according to data obtained by WTTW News through a Freedom of Information Act request.

In all, Chicago owes $35.4 billion to its four employee pension funds representing police officers, firefighters, municipal employees and laborers, according to the 2022 Certified Annual Financial Report. 

The working group formed by Mayor Brandon Johnson to tackle Chicago’s acutely underfunded pensions is set to meet for the first time this week to confront one of the major fiscal challenges facing Chicago’s new leader.

The plan released Wednesday kicks off a debate between progressive political organizations and the mayor they helped elect on how best to achieve the goals they all share.

The projections detailed by outgoing Mayor Lori Lightfoot represent a significantly rosier financial picture for Chicago than the forecast released in August, when city officials projected a likely budget gap of $473.8 million in 2024. 

The Chicago Police Department spent at least $210.5 million on overtime, 56% more than in 2021 and more than double the $100 million earmarked for police overtime set by the Chicago City Council as part of the city’s 2022 budget, according to data obtained by WTTW News.