Faced with a potential $150 million deficit in the city`s 1986 budget and continued recalcitrance in the Chicago City Council, Mayor Harold Washington`s administration Tuesday threatened to lay off more than 400 workers by May 1, unless agreement is reached on ways to raise new revenues.
Ernest Barefield, the mayor`s chief of staff, said 61 city employees would be laid off ”effective immediately,” an additional 317 vacant positions would be eliminated from the budget and plans to hire 600 new employees would be put on hold.
”If a responsible municipal budget is not passed by April 15, we will begin immediately to reduce the city budget by another 169 positions,”
Barefield said. ”If our budget is not passed by May 1, we will reduce expenses by another 181 positions.
”Every two weeks, the number of personnel to be laid off will increase, as the potential savings is diminished by time.”
Barefield said the emergency measures were needed to help erase a potential gap in the city`s $2.1 billion budget, which was supposed to have been approved Dec. 31. Estimates place the potential deficit at as high as $150 million. Barefield said the layoffs and cutbacks would save $24.6 million.
”We are losing $1.1 million in revenue every week that the city council delays action,” Barefield said at a City Hall press conference. ”We will have no choice but to reduce positions and lay off personnel every week the city council stalls.”
Later during an appearance on WBBM-AM radio`s ”Ask the Mayor” program, Washington contended that ”it was necessary to make some drastic cuts in our personnel, because the city council failed to hold up to its responsibility to providing a meaningful budget for the city, not withstanding the fact that we`ve given them some reasonable alternatives.
”You want viable a police department, first-rate fire department with a good response time, sewers that work, water fresh, and you want your streets to be in a state of repair–you want money. There is no more money. It`s dried up and gone.”
The mayor said he has been searching for a ”viable revenue source” that has some potential for growth and again proposed a wage tax on those who work in the city but live elsewhere.
A tax on commercial leases, expected to raise $78 million this year, was declared unconstitutional by a Cook County Circuit Court judge.
Barefield declined to say which of the city`s 50 departments and major bureaus would face the cuts. But, he said, the targets will be announced soon. Layoff letters will be mailed this week to the first 61 city workers to be laid off, Barefield said. The workers will be given 14-day notices.
According to Sharon Gist Gilliam, the city`s budget director, 53 percent of the city`s employees are in the fire and police departments. About 27 percent of the city`s work force is in the three departments of Streets and Sanitation, Public Works and Health.
Barefield stopped short of saying the police and fire departments would escape layoffs but added, ”We would not anticipate laying off police and fire (personnel) unless absolutely necessary.”
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He charged that the Finance Committee was ”playing politics with our bond ratings and our very solvency.” The committee`s chairman, Ald. Edward Burke (14th), is a leader of the anti-administration majority bloc in the council.