A budget forecast released by Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office shows the city faces an estimated $882.4 million budget shortfall for the 2027 fiscal year.

“We have difficult and consequential decisions ahead of us as we work to address the structural financial challenges that have confronted Chicago for decades,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said.

“We cannot continue to govern by searching for loose change in the couch, or every time that there’s a budget challenge, we revert back to proclivities that have caused tremendous harm to working people in this city,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said.

Bally’s is slowing construction on parts of its $1.7 billion casino and entertainment complex in River West, following the Chicago City Council’s approval of video gambling terminals in bars and restaurants.

Mayor Brandon Johnson expressed confidence that he’ll be able to present a balanced budget in October after his Budget Director Annette Guzman abruptly resigned this week.

City officials said last week Chicago is grappling with an $89 million shortfall — revised down from the $130 million figure the mayor announced earlier this month.

An analysis is ongoing to determine when — and how much — Chicago can afford to send to its pension funds in addition to the $2.85 billion that state law requires the city to contribute this year, officials said.

“I want to say this clearly,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said. “There were other options. We did not need to cede to big money interests and fall back on the tired practice of balancing budgets on the backs of working people.”

The Chicago Police Department has overspent its budget five years in a row, according to Chicago’s annual financial reports.

The Chicago Financial Future Task Force published a final report Thursday that included 58 policy recommendations, such as instituting a downtown congestion fee, restructuring electricity tax rates and instituting property tax increases based on the national consumer price index.

Crafted by Mayor Brandon Johnson, the measure forces social media companies to pay a tax of 50 cents per month for every active user after the first 100,000 users, under the city’s amusement tax authority.

Chicago is required to pay $2.85 billion this year into its pension funds in order to comply with a state law designed to ensure the pension funds can pay benefits to employees as they retire.

Mayor Brandon Johnson warned again on Wednesday that the Chicago City Council may have to make emergency cuts if revenue baked into the city’s 2026 spending plan fails to materialize.

Chicagoans will get a small break on their grocery bills but be forced to pony up to cover a host of tax and fee hikes that a deeply divided Chicago City Council approved to fill a massive budget shortfall over the objections of Mayor Brandon Johnson.

The city budget, which will take effect Jan. 1, will double CPD’s overtime budget from $100 million to $200 million, the first increase since 2020, when the budget for police overtime went from $95 million to $100 million, records show.

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s decision not to veto the budget he called “morally bankrupt” immediately averts what could have been the city most severe fiscal crisis in more than 40 years.