The Chicago Financial Future Task Force, appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson early this year to give him ideas \u2014 and political cover \u2014 for closing a projected $1.15 billion budget gap, has issued its first report.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a smorgasbord of ideas,<\/a> many of them already familiar, that comes just weeks before Johnson\u2019s scheduled Oct. 16 budget address.<\/p>\n The estimable 24 people on the task force have done a great service by listing the ideas and rationale for passage of 89 potential measures to address the yawning hole in Chicago\u2019s budget for 2026. The group led by Loop Capital founder Jim Reynolds and Chicago Urban League President Karen Freeman-Wilson has even done the math on each proposal, in detail, which is a service in itself \u2014 since too often we don\u2019t get that level of detail on big policy proposals.<\/p>\n The task force\u2019s projected $1.7 billion in increased revenue alone would be more than enough to fill next year\u2019s projected deficit<\/a>. And the task force said its cost-saving ideas, if all adopted, could reduce spending by $456 million to boot.\u00a0<\/p>\n Trouble is, in the real world of Chicago budget making, it would take uncharacteristic political finesse for Johnson to use the ideas in this report to pass a balanced budget through the City Council by the Dec. 31 deadline. If anything, Johnson\u2019s ability to work with council has gotten worse since last year\u2019s protracted battle to pass a $17.1 billion budget<\/a>, but we can always hope.<\/p>\n The chief reasons for this worrisome outlook fall into three \u201cnots\u201d: About half the task force\u2019s ideas are not big enough to make much difference, some are not politically likely and a third group does not fall within Johnson\u2019s progressive agenda. Add to that Johnson\u2019s lack of dealmaking skills, and it\u2019s evident many of these ideas won\u2019t move far beyond the task force\u2019s printed pages.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n A good many of the proposals are not big enough to make a budget-balancing difference. Of the 45 cost-saving and 39 revenue-raising ideas in the report, 51 would raise no more than $20 million each. Twelve have no cost or savings estimate at all, and four actually show a negative return but could be used to facilitate other beneficial actions.<\/p>\n A penny saved is indeed a penny earned. But it would take 115 billion pennies to erase the big budget gap. Go ahead, pass the nickel-and-dime fixes, but Johnson and the City Council should save the budgeteers\u2019 time and effort, and their own political capital, and train their focus on the big stuff.\u00a0<\/p>\n The second \u201cnot\u201d is the group of strong potential fixes that seem unlikely because Johnson would need the state of Illinois to help deliver them.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sure, the Chicago Police Department might get $400,000 for autonomous drones or the legislature might pass a new tax on amusement-ticket resellers that would yield $38 million for Chicago, and a new 911 surcharge could yield $13 million for the city if it passes. But the major proposed measures \u2014 $305 million from a new sales tax on services and a $250 million boost from the state\u2019s local government distributive fund \u2014 seem like nonstarters. Gov. JB Pritkzer is on record against \u201cbroad-based\u201d tax increases such as the proposed services tax, and a major boost in Chicago\u2019s take from the state\u2019s income tax revenues seems unlikely, given the idea has been floated, and rejected, in the past.\u00a0<\/p>\n On top of it all, Johnson has a historically bad track record in getting help from Springfield, so a big turnabout would be needed to get much help from the state.<\/p>\n This brings us to the most important category of likely \u201cnots\u201d \u2014 the ideas Chicago\u2019s mayor could propose, yet so far seems reluctant to pursue. The ideas clash with Johnson\u2019s progressive agenda, and given his unpopularity as opponents are angling to run against him in 2027, he has little room for political compromise.<\/p>\n Increases in the garbage collection fee could raise $300 million a year, and tying property taxes to inflation could bring in an extra $56 million. But progressives in the City Council view the garbage collection hike as unfairly regressive, and Johnson would have a hard time overcoming their opposition even if he gave this idea another try.\u00a0<\/p>\n As for the inflation accelerator on property taxes \u2014 an option available to Chicago mayors since 2015 \u2014 Johnson has never deployed the inflation adjustment. Besides, the 50-0 City Council vote against his proposed $300 million property tax hike last year was so devastating that Johnson already has said he won\u2019t seek an increase this year.<\/p>\n The task force has said the city could find $103 million in savings from cuts to employee benefits, but it would be a surprise to see this union-friendly mayor go after those. And Johnson has shown little stomach for staffing cuts, even though many jobs created with temporary federal COVID-19 money have now become part of the city\u2019s permanent staffing.<\/p>\n Where Johnson does act, he\u2019ll need to make certain the savings are real. For example: The task force estimates up to $162 million in savings from a freeze on filling open positions, yet if Johnson pursues that option, the projected $70 million in savings on overtime pay may not materialize. After all, overtime pay rises when positions go unfilled.<\/p>\n It\u2019s said that budgets are moral documents: They tell us what we value, and what we don\u2019t. That may be true, but Chicago budgets are political documents first.<\/p>\n Johnson created the task force to give himself political cover for the tough decisions he will need to make in order to present a balanced budget. It\u2019s likely that tactic will have some success. And while the group\u2019s work so far is not revelatory \u2014 most of the options are familiar already \u2014 their work in assessing the costs and benefits of virtually every conceivable budget remedy could be beneficial in budget negotiations with the City Council.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now it\u2019s up to Johnson, along with the City Council, to calculate the political costs and benefits of the choices, and address next year\u2019s structural budget gap by selecting from among the task force\u2019s options \u2014 or finding new ones of their own \u2014 and putting the pieces in place in a way that could strengthen Chicago\u2019s fiscal state over time.<\/p>\n Johnson\u2019s political future, and the city\u2019s fiscal health, both weigh in the balance as he considers which ideas just might work.<\/p>\n David Greising is president of the Better Government Association.<\/p>\n Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here<\/a> or email letters@chicagotribune.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Chicago Financial Future Task Force, appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson early this year to give him ideas…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":255931,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,8541,11890,5386,1818,1269],"class_list":{"0":"post-255930","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-chicago","9":"tag-columnists","10":"tag-commentary","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-illinois","13":"tag-opinion"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115270220747936206","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}