Last January, Mayor Brandon Johnson said he was already preparing City Hall for a potentially painful round of midyear layoffs if revenue fell short, infuriating the rebel bloc that muscled an alternative budget through the City Council after rejecting Johnson’s corporate head tax.
Now, the mayor has what he views as black-and-white proof that his dire prediction has come true — without saying what he intends to do about it.
The midyear budget report shows that the alternative revenues approved by renegade alderpersons over Johnson’s strenuous objections have fallen $131.7 million short of projections.
The sale of long-term city debt was expected to generate $89.6 million, but it has so far produced zero.
The sale of city advertising has come up empty even though it was supposed to rake in $29.3 million.
Johnson’s decision to join forces with Bally’s and continue fighting the decision to lift the Chicago ban on video gambling terminals has put the city $6.8 million further in the hole.
Same goes for the anticipated $6 million expected to be generated by an augmented reality licensing program. That’s a technology that overlays virtual elements into the real world through devices like smartphones and smart glasses.
On Tuesday, the mayor who has never stopped fighting the budget battle he lost, essentially said, “I told you so.”
“We had a pathway that would have avoided this. Had City Council accepted the $100 million from the top corporate earners … we wouldn’t be in this predicament right now. So hopefully, it’s a lesson learned by certain members of City Council because these challenges won’t disappear in one budget,” he said.
“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,” Johnson said.
The show-and-tell presentation did not answer the most important question: what the mayor intends to do to erase the $131.7 million midyear shortfall.
He would only say Tuesday that he is “working hard to avoid cutting services and layoffs” and urging the City Council to avoid “reverting back to a style” of budget balancing that has “left working families in absolute peril.”
“Every single progressive revenue source that I put forward is overperforming,” Johnson said. “The progressive movement is alive and well. We just have a few obstinate individuals that are more aligned with the interests of corporations that are ultimately stalling what could be a full-out revolution in this city. And the people in Chicago want it. They want it desperately.”
Southwest Side Ald. Matt O’Shea (19th) was a leading member of the group that waged a budget rebellion not seen since the 1980s power struggle known as “Council Wars.”
O’Shea accused the mayor of “sabotaging” the alternative $16.7 billion budget to make his doomsday scenario come true.
“We designed a budget that the administration had to execute. These are his own people that he put in place who failed to execute. He needs to look within. Once again, as we’ve seen for the past 3.5 years, he fails and continues to fail,” O’Shea told the Chicago Sun-Times.
“We’re now midyear, and he’s failed to execute much of the budget that was passed. That’s on him. … It’s another example of his failure to — of his administration to — execute. That’s what this is. … He’s saying ‘I failed to lead, so I’m gonna go back to the same lines that I’ve always gone with: Tax the rich and implement plans that the overwhelming majority of not only the City Council but taxpayers don’t want to see,” O’Shea said.
If Johnson follows that now-familiar political script, O’Shea said Chicago is headed for a preelection repeat of the budget rebellion that saw the battle of the budget drag on until days before Christmas.
“I would only hope that the great collaborator wants to sit down and work with us this time, unlike last time. If he doesn’t, then once again, you’ll see the City Council be the adults in the room,” O’Shea said.
The 31-member group including O’Shea that calls itself the “Budget Accountability Coalition” issued a statement saying its sole focus is to put the city on “the best financial footing possible in the wake of Johnson administration actions that have led to credit downgrades and ballooning budget deficits.”
“Instead of executing the financially sound budget that City Council passed last year, Mayor Johnson and his administration have spent six months slow-walking the implementation of new revenues and efficiencies designed to close our budget deficit and prevent this administration from creating excuses to raise taxes on businesses, jobs and working families and skip the remainder of our advance pension payment,” the statement said.
“Chicagoans deserve transparency and the truth from the mayor instead of attempts to shift blame away from the failures of his administration.”