In the waning days of 2025, Chicago aldermen calling themselves the \u201cCommon Sense Caucus\u201d pushed through their own 2026 budget plan, a substitute for Mayor Brandon Johnson\u2019s budget proposal.<\/p>\n
Now 2026 is here, and the aldermen are back at work. This time, they\u2019re beginning research for next year\u2019s budget \u2014 one that would govern the city\u2019s finances in 2027.\u00a0The city faces a projected $1.17 billion budget gap for 2027, just slightly lower than the $1.2 billion shortfall it faced when work on the 2026 budget began.\n<\/p>\n
Government budgets are always political documents, but the political heat this year will be even higher than in 2025. After all, 2027 is a municipal election year. Johnson is expected to seek reelection, and some in the City Council could well run against him.<\/p>\n
In short, there is substantial work to be done now, before politics make the challenge even more difficult. And the trouble is, the City Council lacks effective tools to do this important work. Exhibit A of this inadequacy: the City Council Office of Financial Analysis.<\/p>\n
COFA is a well-intended entity. But since its establishment just over a decade ago, it has fallen far short of its objective to establish itself as an independent voice on budget analysis. With the stakes and projected budget deficit so high again this year, it\u2019s time for the council to address the shortcoming.\n<\/p>\n
The City Council launched COFA in 2015 to provide fiscal analysis to the city\u2019s legislative body, independent of influence by the mayor. The idea was to do for the city of Chicago what the state\u2019s Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability does for Illinois.\n<\/p>\n
At the state level, the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability issues analyses of the state\u2019s budget, its bonds, special economic and fiscal situations, and the solvency of its pension funds that make news and move markets.<\/p>\n
COFA so far is a mini-me of its statewide counterpart\u2019s model and has fallen short of examples set by New York City, San Diego and Pittsburgh, on which it was modeled.<\/p>\n
For starters, COFA\u2019s five-person staff is too small for the matters at hand. It also lacks access to key data available to the mayor\u2019s budget office. Those budget planning documents and other material are collected at taxpayer expense and should be available to the City Council\u2019s budget watchdog, too.<\/p>\n
COFA\u2019s annual report on the mayor\u2019s proposed budget accurately summarizes the mayor\u2019s plans, but that\u2019s not good enough. Especially when the city faces big budget gaps, the City Council and the taxpayers need timely, probing and well-informed analysis to serve as a basis for better budgets.<\/p>\n
To be sure, the City Council passed an ordinance last year that requires the mayor\u2019s budget office to share more information with COFA, but there still are information gaps that need to be addressed.<\/p>\n
COFA also tends to proceed cautiously, and weigh in too late, when asked for analysis on city budget matters. At the height of the budget debate, in mid-December, it provided some useful back-of-the-envelope estimates, but the broad and general findings had little impact on the substance of the budget debate.<\/p>\n
One missed opportunity for impact: when COFA accepted at face value the assumptions made by the consulting firm EY, which Johnson hired to estimate the impact of proposals for new revenues or cost savings. When Johnson during the budget debate began raising doubts about EY\u2019s estimates, it was clear COFA could have provided the sort of independent, verifiable data that no one else was able to produce.<\/p>\n
If even the mayor had doubts about EY\u2019s findings, then surely the office should\u2019ve been asking pointed questions about them, too.<\/p>\n
The aldermen who are challenging Johnson for leadership on the city\u2019s budget are providing a public service. Thanks to their monthslong policy struggle, the City Council ultimately passed a budget<\/a> in which proposals were pressure-tested, and growth-constricting ideas, such as Johnson\u2019s proposed \u201chead tax\u201d on the city\u2019s largest employers, were killed outright.<\/p>\n As the Common Sense Caucus and other aldermen look ahead to the next budget season, they could start with a look at how to strengthen COFA. They could empower it to obtain data unfiltered from the mayor\u2019s budget office, seek to build authority and expertise in key areas \u2014 such as the state\u2019s agency has done with pensions \u2014 and staff COFA adequately to fulfill its mission.<\/p>\n The aldermen also could begin sending information requests early in the year, rather than waiting until late in the fall. After all, COFA\u2019s resource-starved staff cannot meet the urgent need for objective, insightful and authoritative data on short notice.<\/p>\n The aldermen could go even further and build expertise on their committee and aldermanic staffs. All too often, aldermanic staffers are focused exclusively on constituent services, with scant expertise or resources made available to research and formulate policy proposals.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a tradeoff that benefits the reelection prospects of aldermen but shortchanges the city when it comes to drawing up budgets and making other policies. Too many aldermen view themselves primarily as providers of city services, and not enough of them focus on the legislative aspects of their jobs.<\/p>\n The City Council, cowed into acquiescence under Mayors Richard M. Daley and Rahm Emanuel, has found an independent voice under Mayors Lori Lightfoot and Johnson.\n<\/p>\n The city and its residents benefit when the City Council is strong enough to challenge the mayor. The competition creates better policy outcomes. Strengthening the City Council Office of Financial Analysis would be a good next step toward establishing a true separation of powers as a bulwark of Chicago city government.<\/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":"In the waning days of 2025, Chicago aldermen calling themselves the \u201cCommon Sense Caucus\u201d pushed through their own…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":520624,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[3232,960,231854,24970,5386,1818,36234],"class_list":{"0":"post-520623","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-budget","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-chicago-aldermen","11":"tag-chicago-city-council","12":"tag-il","13":"tag-illinois","14":"tag-mayor-brandon-johnson"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115905430116547973","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520623","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=520623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/520624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}