Chicago City Council members, it’s time to show up for the people in your wards.
Over two dozen Council members have called a special meeting for Wednesday to put the brakes on the record $300 million property tax increase included in Mayor Brandon Johnson’s proposed $17.3 billion budget for 2025.
Every council member should attend and be willing to make tough choices in order to find additional budget cuts and new sources of revenue. Easier said than done, but they owe it to Chicagoans to find shared sacrifices.
Johnson and his team are dealing with financial missteps by former mayoral administrations, along with declining revenue, as they told members of this editorial board in a recent meeting. Their proposed budget includes cuts to every department. But regardless of the past, all this is now on the mayor’s doorstep, and homeowners and businesses already facing higher tax bills from reassessments have to be the last resort for new taxes.
The Council needs 26 members for a quorum Wednesday to proceed with a special meeting, and 29 last week co-signed a call to meet and vote down Johnson’s property tax increase, forcing the mayor back to the bargaining table, as the Sun-Times’ Fran Spielman reported last week. At Wednesday’s meeting, 34 votes will be needed to suspend the rules and immediately consider and vote on the proposed budget and tax increase.
Ald. Ray Lopez (15th) is right when he says all 50 of his colleagues should be at City Hall. As public servants, their absence would send exactly the wrong message — “I don’t care” — to constituents.
A mayoral adviser has said Johnson is open to negotiating. That’s a good sign, though Johnson apparently has little choice — Council members seem to be getting bolder by the day in asserting their independence from this administration.
As Civic Federation President Joe Ferguson put it, “Maybe it’s time for the City Council to step into the power that they have always had but never exercised before and be a true co-equal branch of government that actually comes forward with alternatives that do involve shared sacrifice.”
We expect Council members to become even more outspoken, now that the Johnson administration seems to be playing hardball with them: Alderpersons were recently told they can’t intervene anymore on behalf of their constituents’ 311 requests for basic city services, as Spielman reported. Instead, those requests now have to go up the chain to be approved by one of two top city officials.
Furloughs, canceling new programs
When hearings on the mayor’s budget began last week, alderpersons were already talking about options to the massive property tax increase, such as skipping or reducing a $275 million pension advance payment; reducing layers of middle management; instituting mandatory furlough days for city workers; and canceling $55 million in new programs, which is the best place to start.
Council members have a blueprint to work from in a Civic Federation analysis of the mayor’s 2025 budget. Among the list of options in that analysis:
furlough dayssuspending noncritical capital spendingincreasing garbage collection fees, which the analysis reports are substantially higher in similar citieslifting the ban on video gambling to allow the city to receive a cut of video gambling taxes from the statereducing Chicago Fire Department staffingincreasing liquor taxesimplementing a local grocery taxbringing back a corporate head taxincreasing other taxes, such as on ride-hailing services, grocery bags, gasoline and city stickersusing more tax increment financing surplus funds to help balance the city budget
None of these options will be popular. New taxes of any kind never are. Labor unions will understandably balk at furlough days. Businesses still struggling to recover from the pandemic will balk at a head tax. No one wants to pay more for city stickers, grocery bags or anything else.
The Civic Federation report also suggests long-term options to right the city’s fiscal ship, such as instituting a government efficiency task force. City Hall should take those suggestions seriously.
Because Chicago shouldn’t be in this same situation year after year, watching the mayor and City Council tussle over how to close yet another deficit.
That rerun is beyond old. Time to switch to a new channel.
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