Brandon Johnson‘s decision to call off a budget vote he was certain to lose leaves the embattled mayor with no choice but to consider program cuts, unpaid furlough days and other options he has so far refused to entertain.
Without deep spending cuts and shared sacrifice, Johnson’s $68.5 million property tax increase — pared back from his original proposal of a $300 million tax hike — failed to garner enough aldermanic support to garner overall budget approval. After days of frenzied lobbying, he had only 19 rock-solid votes.
The search for at least seven additional votes to get to the 26 needed for passage will probably require the mayor to scrap the property tax increase altogether, eliminate the $50 million he was hoping to spend to create 2,000 more summer youth jobs and remove the line in the sand he has drawn against any layoffs or other cost-cutting options that could alienate unions he relied on to get elected.
Johnson is now operating from a position of weakness — not strength. He is no longer calling the shots; the City Council is.
Civic Federation President Joe Ferguson argued that all it would take to get Johnson’s $17.3 billion budget over the finish line is $150 million worth of cuts.
That sounds like a lot. But it isn’t when you consider that the city’s budget is 47% higher than it was pre-pandemic, not counting pension costs.
“To say there is no option in the way of…workforce reductions [and] shared sacrifice is just not playing ball with folks that are trying to come to some form of common ground,” Ferguson said.
By “shared sacrifice,” Ferguson means “furloughs and altered schedules — not just with exempt employees and senior employees, but with the labor unions who, I’m sure at this point, understand that we are in a place we’ve never been before.”
“If you look there, you are immediately looking at tens of millions of dollars,” he said.
City Council dean Ald. Walter Burnett (27th), vice mayor and Zoning Committee chair who serves as Johnson’s de facto floor leader, agreed.
“ Furlough days may be what we have to do. That means everybody in the city takes a part in this. I think that’s fair,” Burnett said.
Johnson vowed to work through the weekend to forge a compromise in hopes of passing the budget when the City Council meeting reconvenes Monday.
The mayor said he is open to all ideas, including scrapping the $68.5 million property tax increase.
“We are not Congress. We don’t mint money. If there’s no budget by the end of the year, there’s no appropriations for services to continue,” Johnson said.
Budget Director Annette Guzman said the City Council does not have “continuing appropriation authority” and must, by state law, pass a budget by Dec. 31.
“Whether we are going to levy any property tax — whether it’s the existing property tax we have in place today — we have to have that in place by the end of this year or we’re not able to do things like pay our debt service, pay our pensions,” she said.
Johnson has declared off limits the $272 million pension advance over and above the actuarially required annual payment to the four city employee pension funds. He’s determined to avoid a drop in the city’s rating that could make it more expensive for the city to borrow.
But Wall Street is watching, and the marathon budget stalemate will likely cause that drop anyway. Shrinking the pension advance therefore becomes more likely.
So is eliminating thousands of vacancies.
“Looking at the police vacancies that we know are not going to be filled in the next year, which is about $170 million — you can find $70 million out of that. Then, those who want to do zero property tax can actually say if they’re really about that or not,” said Progressive Caucus Co-Chair Andre Vasquez (40th).
Downtown Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) agreed that eliminating police vacancies “we know we can’t fill” must be considered. He called it a “pretty big concession” from his coalition that is “pro-police and pro-public safety.”
“This is a fair compromise to allow us to plug this gap with the implicit understanding that we could come back and restore those [police] positions next year,” Reilly said. “The exercise should not be finding new taxes to raise to fill that gap. It needs to be cutting costs.”
But Ferguson said the “dirty little secret” is that the budget carries police vacancies that the city can’t possibly fill to cover tens of millions of dollars in police overtime.
Eliminating those vacancies could leave a Chicago Police Department that has roughly 2,000 fewer officers than it did just a few years ago with no way to cover the enormous overtime tied to securing special events and tamping down summer violence.
Johnson said he’s willing to consider eliminating police vacancies. But he stressed that the proposal originated with Reilly and Ald. Anthony Beale (9th).
The fourteen-member “Common Sense Caucus” that includes Beale and Reilly is demanding deeper spending cuts — and putting specific items on the chopping block.
“We’re going to get rid of your $50 million additional summer [jobs] program. We’re going to get rid of Walter Burnett’s $400,000 fund [in the vice-mayor’s office]. We’re going to tell the departments, `Here’s your budget from 2020, plus the cost of inflation going forward. That’s your number. Figure it out,’ ” Beale said.
Ald. Anthony Beale (9th) speaks during a Chicago City Council meeting at City Hall Friday.
Johnson vowed to “hold firm and strong and steady” on creating 2,000 more summer youth jobs.
“Everybody is convinced and knows that good-paying jobs and taking care of our young people and building affordable homes — that is the answer,” the mayor said.
Yet another idea that could be resurrected is raising the $9.50-a-month garbage collection fee that pales by comparison to other cities and suburbs, and has been frozen since its inception nearly a decade ago. The Black Caucus has branded the fee regressive.
But Ferguson believes the opposition to an increase may have been overstated.
Vasquez urged the Johnson administration to use the time between now and Monday to engage in a “real conversation” with members who have demanded more efficiencies.
Johnson said he expects to have “quite a time this weekend bringing people together.”
“Are they disagreements that are any different than any other time? It might be a little bit louder,” Johnson said. “But we also get that noise when the Cubs and Sox play together. It’s just the way Chicago is.”