Mayor Brandon Johnson’s plan to balance his revamped $17.3 billion budget with a $68.5 million property tax increase — and by raising taxes on everything from cloud computing, streaming services and parking to downtown congestion and plastic bags — squeaked through a City Council committee Tuesday.
The Finance Committee’s 14 to 12 vote sets the stage for the marathon budget stalemate to potentially end on Friday, averting what might have been Chicago’s first budget shutdown in anyone’s memory.
The full City Council will meet Wednesday to defer and publish the budget and the revenue ordinance used to support it, then return on Friday for the final vote.
Johnson managed to eke out a two-vote victory in the Finance Committee, but he took a verbal beating in the process.
Council members Anthony Beale (9th) and Ray Lopez (15th), two of the mayor’s most outspoken aldermanic critics, questioned the mayor’s decision to lump the $68.5 million property tax increase into an overhauled revenue package after Johnson’s original proposal for a $300 million property tax hike was unanimously rejected.
They accused the mayor of “nickel-and-diming” beleaguered Chicago taxpayers to support a budget that has ballooned by $5 billion since the pandemic. That includes $50 million in additional spending in the mayor’s office alone.
“We’re going to just continue to fine and fee the people of Chicago without any thorough cuts and efficiencies that they’ve been asking for,” Beale told Budget Director Annette Guzman.
Beale was not appeased when Guzman argued that the city’s corporate fund has only grown by $1 billion. The rest of the increase is in “grants, special revenue and enterprise funds.”
“The budget is still bloated. And we’re going to go ahead and accept it. This is not what the people of Chicago are asking for. The people of Chicago are asking for cuts and efficiencies. Not layoffs. That’s the narrative they want everybody to believe—that we’re pushing for layoffs,” Beale said.
“There’s enough bloat, fat in this budget to balance it without $300 million, without $150 million, without $68 million…If you take away just the $50 million the mayor has added to his budget, there’s enough. Now, you’re down to $38 million.”
Lopez pointed to a poll commissioned by the “Common Sense Caucus.” It shows that 63% of those surveyed support cutting vacant positions across city government and that a majority favor a 5% cut in overall spending.
“One of us is being truthful. One of us is actually connected to reality. Time is going to show which one of us is correct,” Lopez said.
Lopez accused the mayor of presenting the Council with a “manufactured crisis” to try and “force our hand and threaten us to be here for the holidays.”
Downtown Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) demanded to know what promises the Johnson administration made to Council members in exchange for their votes.
When he didn’t get it, Reilly dissected the mayor’s revised revenue package, which encompasses a broader congestion fee on ride-shares, including weekend rides.
“When those constituents are hailing an Uber home from their late-night shift working in the hospitality industry downtown now on a Saturday or Sunday night, they’ll have their local alderman to thank for taking money out of their pocket because they worked until 3 in the morning to earn, just so they can get home safe because the CTA is too dangerous,” Reilly said.
“We already have the highest parking garage tax in the entire nation….Now, you’re about to make it even bigger,” Reilly added. “When you’re at the grocery store and you’re paying your bag tax, that’s now ten cents. Thank your local alderman for that, too….The [cloud computing] going up two points, [already] the highest in the nation at a time when our tech industry is starting to consider other locations to do business. Couldn’t pick a better time for that $128 million tax [increase], folks. And then we’ve got the city’s amusement tax that will be applied to streaming and cable television. So those of you who get that monthly bill, thank your local alderman.”