Mayor Brandon Johnson’s $17.3 billion budget — minus a $68.5 million property tax increase — was finally approved by the City Council on Monday, but the political rifts it caused will linger, endangering Johnson’s future agenda.
The co-chairs of a 19-member Progressive Caucus that usually is the bedrock of Johnson’s support delivered that message loud and clear prior to the 27-23 vote on a budget that holds the line on property taxes, but includes $165.5 million in other taxes, fines and fees.
They admonished the mayor for a series of budget missteps that created a deep distrust between the embattled mayor and an emboldened City Council.
“Mr. Mayor, we have heard a lot about your progressive values throughout this process, and I don’t doubt them. But how we do things is just as important as what we do. And how you’ve led this process has left the City Council fractured, Chicagoans less trusting in government, and it’s left our city in an extremely vulnerable position … with the promise of attacks from a new presidential administration,” said Ald. Maria Hadden (49th).
“We are not prepared, and the fault lies squarely with you and your administration. … This budget may have some progressive outcomes. But the process to get here was anything but progressive.”
Ald. Andre Vasquez (40th) agreed a “lack of leadership and collaboration” from the Johnson administration “made a difficult budget even harder.”
”This budget process has left many Chicagoans, including many members of this Council, feeling a lack of confidence and a lack of trust in the city’s government,” Vasquez said.
“Chicago has a history of making financial decisions in the interest of short-term political expediency that lead to disastrous long-term consequences and this budget represents more of the same. … We cannot continue down this path that undermines the progressive movement, that undermines the ability to govern responsibly, and that further erodes the public’s confidence in government. Chicagoans don’t have any more patience for excuses, for hollow, evasive answers, and for obliviousness from their mayor.”
Even 25-year veteran Ald. Emma Mitts (37th), another member of Johnson’s leadership team, pleaded with Johnson to learn from the mistakes he made during “one of the most stressful” budgets she has ever been a part of negotiating.
“If you intend to move this city forward, you’d better get on the right track with this trust thing because, when everybody starts distrusting you, you’ve got a problem,” Mitts said.
“I see you have a few that you work with here in this Council. But as your senior alderperson in this city, I’m telling you you’ve got to bring everybody together. You’ve got to try. And when you don’t try, you’re going to fail every time. You’re gonna keep having this divisiveness going on in this Council.”
Johnson managed to score a victory on the most important Council vote of the year only after several rounds of changes and calling off a vote last Friday he was destined to lose.
From the rostrum and again during a news conference that followed Monday’s vote, Johnson thanked the Council for working with him to pass a budget that “does not cut services, does not cut jobs, does not raise property taxes and sustains key programs and investments in youth employment, community safety, mental health and affordable housing.”
He sloughed off complaints he has not lived up to his self-proclaimed moniker of “collaborator-in-chief.”
“There were multiple alders who said they wanted us to find more cuts and efficiencies. We did that. ... They wanted us to make some adjustments to some of the investments we’re making. We made those adjustments They wanted me to cut my office. We heard`em. We did it. Isn’t that proof that we actually worked together?” he said.
To those who claim he has relationships to build and damage to repair, Johnson said: ”My phone is available. My door is open. And I can’t wait to continue to work together to go to Springfield to challenge that the ultra rich pay their fair share in taxes" by working to implement a graduated income tax.
Chief Financial Officer Jill Jaworski also addressed concerns about the city’s decision to claim $40 million in savings in 2025 by restructuring the Michael Reese debt that former Mayor Rahm Emanuel refinanced twice.
Jaworski said the massive debt refinancing completed eleven days ago generated significantly more savings than anticipated and that, because of that, the Johnson administration “considered paying down one of our letters of credit by about $40 million.”
“We have subsequently decided we’re just gonna realize the savings in lower debt service this year. But, we are not backtracking on a payment that we were going to make or anything like that. We considered using surplus savings to pay it down. We’ve decided not to,” Jaworski said.
“It does carry an interest cost — just like all of our debt carries an interest cost.”
The mayor originally proposed a $300 million property tax increase that broke his campaign promise to hold the line on property taxes, then he agreed to cut the increase in half after the Council took the extraordinary step of rejecting it by a unanimous vote. He then tried for a $68.5 million property tax hike, to no avail.
Johnson proposed a 34% increase in the liquor tax, then agreed to scrap it altogether after an outcry from the hospitality industry and alderpersons whose bars, restaurants and liquor stores could lose business to surrounding suburbs.
The mayor also agreed to restore 162 Chicago police jobs tied to implementing a consent decree outlining the terms of federal court oversight of the Chicago Police Department after Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul threatened to ask a judge to hold the city in contempt.
And he cut $90 million worth of spending from federal pandemic relief funds, in part by scrapping a second round of guaranteed basic income and a small-business assistance program.
With all of those changes, he remained seven votes short of the 26 needed for passage. Friday’s delay forced the mayor back to the drawing board to hunt for more votes over the weekend.
And in the end, although Chicago property owners bracing for reassessments have been spared a double-whammy, the Chicago Board of Education will once again hit them with a property tax increase that amounts to the maximum allowed by state law.
The mayor’s revised budget also will hit Chicagoans' wallets in other ways, such as adding an amusement tax on streaming services; higher taxes on cloud computing, business software and equipment leases; and higher taxes on parking and downtown congestion.
The city also hopes to generate $11.4 million from “automated speed limit enforcement,” presumably by adding more speed cameras in wards where alderpersons allow it, and $4.6 million by raising an array of license fees, transfer fees and fines, as well as the cost of residential parking permits.
Another late change to the 2025 budget: $10 million in “cost recovery” by charging organizers of ticketed events for police and traffic services and by better scheduling those events to reduce overtime costs.
The final budget also assumes other savings: $1 million by cutting 10 jobs in the mayor’s office; $2.8 million by eliminating middle-management jobs of deputy commissioners and their assistants; and $5 million through unspecified “energy and facilities management efficiencies.”
In all, 26 middle-management jobs were targeted, half in the Chicago Police Department, including 10 assistant program directors and three projects administrators.
Civic Federation President Joe Ferguson said the “revenue and one-time solutions budget” approved Monday appears tailor-made to “avoid actually doing anything other than get to 26 votes” at a time when Chicago is “at the end of the runway” financially.
“The measures taken here … do not put us in any better situation for 2026, where the challenge will be even greater. That is what the rating agencies want to see. They’re not looking at whether or not we have a budget by Dec. 31,” Feguson said of the all-important bond rating that determines city borrowing costs.
“They’re looking at whether or not that budget goes in reverse with regard to bad practices … and manifests an intention through substantive measures to begin to address the true structural challenges the city has. This doesn’t do it. … This is largely a revenue and one-time solutions budget. There is no leaning into the expenditure side. No leaning into the revenue side.”
Senior mayoral adviser Jason Lee said “there are always mistakes,” and the Johnson administration made a few that may have contributed to contentious negotiations and distrust with a Council emboldened by the mayor’s anemic public approval ratings.
But the sometimes messy process was no different than what goes on all of the time in “every other body of government,” Lee said.
And he denied Johnson will pay a political price.
“We’re paid to do a job. It can be difficult. It can be easy. Whatever. If I’m the public, the only thing I want to know is ... what was the outcome? What did we achieve? What does that mean for me as a resident of the city of Chicago,” Lee said.
“This was a negotiation. And the outcome is not bad at all given the realities that we face. There are major efficiencies in this budget. There’s investments in this budget. There’s some new revenue in this budget. Fiscal obligations are met in this budget. What is the outcome that people should be upset with?” he asked.
Lee denied it was a mistake for the mayor to introduce a budget that included a $300 million property tax increase at a time when property owners have or will be hit by reassessment increases.
Property taxes are “the most widely known predictable revenue currently available to municipal governments in the state of Illinois,” and therefore, it made sense to propose it to chip away at the city’s structural deficit, Lee said.
“What we said from Day 1 is, we can work with the Council on finding other forms of revenue to help us meet our obligations, fund our government, make some investments and not have to cut services. … That was achieved in this budget,” he said. “By having a structural placeholder like property taxes, that created the space for a conversation on revenue that was available to us. Ultimately, that was a good process."
