{"id":318114,"date":"2025-10-20T08:33:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T08:33:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/318114\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T08:33:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T08:33:15","slug":"digging-in-on-mayor-brandon-johnsons-budget-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/318114\/","title":{"rendered":"Digging in on Mayor Brandon Johnson’s budget plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mayor Brandon Johnson\u2019s $16.6 billion 2026 budget proposal<\/a> won early praise from progressives<\/a> and disdain from business interests when he unveiled it last week.<\/p>\n

While he framed his pitch as the city withstanding the financial impact of President Donald Trump\u2019s term while avoiding hits to middle-class taxpayers, it pushes off more lasting fiscal reforms that could save future taxpayers money, budget watchdogs say.<\/p>\n

Though it\u2019s likely to go through several tweaks in the weeks to come as Johnson runs a gantlet of aldermanic counter-proposals, here\u2019s a look at his budget by the numbers.<\/p>\n

New or improved taxes, hits to others<\/p>\n

Johnson wants to close a significant part of city\u2019s $1.19 billion 2026 deficit with \u201crevenue enhancements.\u201d<\/p>\n

The largest is a 3 percentage point increase to the city\u2019s existing tax on cloud-based computer services. Though the mayor framed the tax as one on big tech, the tax isn\u2019t due by the companies themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019ll get passed along to every small business that uses cloud computing, that uses offsite data servers, all the streaming stuff,\u201d said Justin Marlowe, director of the Center for Municipal Finance at the University of Chicago. \u201cI think a lot of this framing will be cut through pretty quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

In all, the city is counting on $1.1 billion in \u201cpersonal property lease transaction\u201d taxes with the increase. That\u2019s up from a little over $800 million this year.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a more sustainable solution than many alternatives, Marlowe said, and is ahead of the curve compared to many other cities that haven\u2019t caught up with charges on digital services.<\/p>\n

The mayor\u2019s proposed $21-per-employee head tax, which Johnson\u2019s team estimates would bring in $100 million next year, might be less sustainable, Marlowe warned, since companies can encourage workers to spend more time working from home or move them to suburban offices.<\/p>\n

Johnson plans to dedicate that money to a \u201ccommunity safety fund,\u201d including about $54 million to youth employment and intervention programs; $3.6 million to wellness programs for police officers; and $35 million to violence reduction, street outreach and grants to outside organizations. Another $6 million would go to victim support and just under $1 million would help staff the mayor\u2019s office of community safety.<\/p>\n

Johnson\u2019s planned social media tax \u2014 charging 50 cents a month to Facebook, X and other platforms for each active user in Chicago over 100,000 \u2014 was met with some fears about whether it would withstand an almost certain legal challenge by the country\u2019s top tech firms. It would be charged as an \u201camusement\u201d tax, and bring the city\u2019s total amusement tax revenues up to $303 million next year.<\/p>\n

Johnson\u2019s plan to increase certain ride-share charges would start in April, adding a second \u201ccongestion\u201d zone where riders will have to pay more while also charging a rate based on distance instead of a flat fee. City ride-share charges have helped boost the city\u2019s \u201cground transportation tax\u201d revenues from $17 million in 2015 to $230 million this year.<\/p>\n

There are other one-time revenues in the budget \u2014 including rejiggering the city\u2019s properties by canceling unnecessary leases. The city expects to raise $31.7 million more from the sale or lease of city-owned land, \u201cdriven by higher anticipated revenues from the City\u2019s advertising contract,\u201d according to the city\u2019s budget overview.<\/p>\n

Another big TIF surplus, pension advance retreat<\/p>\n

Johnson has already joined predecessors Rahm Emanuel and Lori Lightfoot in balancing city budgets by sweeping money out of special taxing districts, so-called TIF surpluses.<\/p>\n

But this year, Johnson\u2019s sweep is unique in its scope: He plans to tap roughly a third of the total balance left in all of the city\u2019s TIF accounts at the end of 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is a revenue source that will always be there, but very, very unlikely to be there with the size of the numbers that they\u2019ve been able to depend on over the last several cycles,\u201d Marlowe warned.<\/p>\n

The move throws a key lifeline to both the city and Chicago Public Schools, yielding an estimated $232.6 million for the city next year. CPS would bring in about $522 million. The Chicago Public Library would receive an additional $19 million.<\/p>\n

Johnson\u2019s TIF proposal was applauded by both the Chicago Teachers Union and many progressive aldermen keen to see what have long been considered City Hall slush funds be put to better use.<\/p>\n

But other aldermen fretted Wednesday about the fate of certain projects in their wards that count on TIF money. Even Budget Chairman Jason Ervin, who generally supported Johnson\u2019s budget plan, said he was worried the city would miss out on opportunities to grow its tax base by using the property tax money in TIF districts to spur development as the program originally envisioned.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I think about the Midwest TIF on the West Side of Chicago, when I think about some of the things that we\u2019ve done in the Northwest TIF, to have to delay those types of things for other communities that are not putting in their total share, in my opinion, is having the residents of the South and West sides ultimately have to bail out CPS when other communities are not having to pay that burden,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Jill Jaworski, the city\u2019s chief financial officer, said officials had done \u201can extensive vetting\u201d of TIF projects on the docket and removed ones \u201cthat have not moved forward, that do not appear to be moving forward. We did not remove any active projects, all the projects that are in engineering, in construction that are actively moving forward all remain in the TIF.\u201d<\/p>\n

That means major housing projects downtown being funded by the massive LaSalle Central district are untouched.<\/p>\n

Johnson\u2019s decision to pull back on the city\u2019s planned extra payments to its pension funds also drew some rebukes from organized labor and watchdogs. The city had originally planned to put a combined $260 million extra into the city\u2019s four funds, but instead proposed $120 million. The total pension payment is a budgeted $2.76 billion \u2014 a whopping figure, but lower than last year\u2019s $2.9 billion payment.<\/p>\n

Skipping it now is especially troubling, the Civic Committee\u2019s Mary Wagoner said, because of the new burden of a recent bill granting more benefits to certain police and firefighter retirees. \u201cwhich adds about $11 billion to the funds\u2019 liabilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

The payments mattered before \u2014 because they kept the funds from going underwater \u2014 \u201cbut they really matter now,\u201d Wagoner said.<\/p>\n

The Johnson administration hoped by now that revenues from the city casino would help fill the gap, but the Bally\u2019s in River North is only projected to generate about $45 million for pension payments, according to the city\u2019s budget overview.<\/p>\n

City budgets for fewer employees overall, but more in Department of Environment<\/p>\n

Budget officials say the current hiring freeze will stay in place next year, another one-time fix that is expected to save about $50 million. In all, the city\u2019s budgeted headcount dipped slightly from 36,206 to 35,760. The biggest decreases were in grant and federal pandemic dollar positions, hitting the Department of Public Health hardest.<\/p>\n

The Department of Environment was one of few departments to see a major boost. It gained 65 FTEs, or \u201cfull time equivalents,\u201d in Johnson\u2019s proposal. Restored under Johnson, the department is slated to take over environmental regulations and permitting across the city.<\/p>\n

The Police Department, the city\u2019s biggest, saw its FTE count decrease only slightly, from 13,807 to 13,793.<\/p>\n

There are 282 fewer budgeted FTEs at CDPH compared with last year, according to the city\u2019s budget overview, bringing the budgeted number to 764. That\u2019s in large part because pandemic-related funding across all departments dropped from $666 million to $164 million in 2026, according to the city\u2019s budget overview.<\/p>\n

The Department of Housing is also seeing its so-called housing \u201centitlement funding\u201d that built up during the pandemic dwindle by $32 million, but its budgeted headcount is roughly the same as last year.<\/p>\n

Anders Lindall, spokesman for AFSCME, which represents thousands of city workers, foreshadowed the difficulty Johnson will face with his overall plan, saying the union was grateful the mayor didn\u2019t cut pay or city services, but \u201cwe can\u2019t forget that more than 70 layoffs have already been announced in the city public health department alone due to loss of federal grants.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis proposal doesn\u2019t include the revenue needed to prevent those layoffs and the erosion of the services those employees provide, such as epidemiologists who protect city residents from disease outbreaks and staff who vaccinate kids in schools,\u201d Lindall said. \u201cWe\u2019ll be asking alders to revisit that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Originally Published: October 19, 2025 at 5:00 AM CDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mayor Brandon Johnson\u2019s $16.6 billion 2026 budget proposal won early praise from progressives and disdain from business interests…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":318115,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,5404,5386,1818,1370,50,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-318114","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-chicago","9":"tag-cook-county","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-illinois","12":"tag-latest-headlines","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-politics"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115405573773075166","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318114","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=318114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}