Think of it as the reality check budget.
As a candidate for mayor, Brandon Johnson had a neat and clean plan to raise $800 million from new taxes in order to pay for a sweeping progressive agenda that undergirded his campaign.
Now that he’s in office, Johnson’s new reality of actually running the city and being responsible for its fiscal health seems to be setting in. The $16.6 billion budget Johnson announced Wednesday was a reality check in two ways.
First, the menu of taxes he proposed as a candidate was nowhere to be seen. And second, the progressive plans he once promised have been toned down — at least for now — by the fact that the city can’t afford to pay for all that Johnson and his backers would like to do.
We’re still getting to know this new mayor, obviously, and the budget merits careful study as City Council hearings start next week. On first review, it appears that when Johnson’s progressive ideals clash with the responsibilities of his office, he is willing to forgo, postpone or scale down his wish list in the interest of closing a $538 million budget gap.
Johnson deploys a delicate balancing act here. He seeks to preserve the progressive vision longer term while dealing with the political and budget constraints he faces as CEO of the city, in the here and now.
“It’s one budget,” he said Wednesday. “We’re talking about years and years and years of historical neglect.”
That’s a commonsense position, perhaps even one that will prove acceptable to the progressives who helped put Johnson in the job.
Finesse like this is something Mayor Lori Lightfoot lacked. Months into her term, Lightfoot already had reversed her initial opposition to the controversial Lincoln Yards megadevelopment and supported relocating General Iron’s metal shredding operation from tony Lincoln Park to Chicago’s environmentally degraded Southeast Side. With these abrupt about-faces, Lightfoot lost the support of many progressives and never got them back.
Johnson, too, built high expectations during the campaign with a wish list of progressive pledges.
There was a sweeping vision for investing in neglected communities, reopening six shuttered mental health clinics, doubling the number of summer jobs for Chicago’s youths, ending environmental racism and handing many public safety actions carried out by Chicago police officers to civilians.
None of Johnson’s proposed new or increased taxes are in his budget plan. The reality of holding office has sunk in.
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With the revenue side of Johnson’s budget facing constraints, the big question heading into his address Wednesday was whether he would persist with some of the big spending plans he laid out during the campaign.
He isn’t doing that, either. Instead — in a fiscally prudent aspect of the budget — Johnson deftly is postponing or paring down some of the ideas that got him elected.
He’ll open two idled mental health clinics, on a pilot basis, not the six he promised. The summer jobs program will grow by 4,000 new positions, but Johnson still is short of doubling the number of young people getting jobs through city programs, as he once promised.
At the Chicago Police Department, he’ll add jobs here but cut them there, while keeping total spending about even with this year. The head count of cops assigned to community policing will more than double, and a few dozen more police will join the office responsible for complying with a federal consent decree. But cuts will come in the number of patrol officers, as well as those devoted to narcotics, gangs, vice and other tasks, and it’s not clear whether an estimated 1,700 vacancies will get filled.
Johnson’s approach to environmental oversight gives a glimpse into the careful balancing act between progressive promises and budget-based realities. Wednesday’s budget address touted a new Department of Environment, but the mayor is adding just a handful of positions and limiting enforcement powers, in an apparent effort to keep a lid on costs.
In short, the reality check budget, on first read, appears to be a balancing act between ideal and achievable.
And without a doubt, certain planks are less than ideal. For example, the $150 million allocated for spending on a surge of asylum-seekers arriving from the Texas border likely is several orders of magnitude too small. And the reliance on tapping the surplus from tax increment financing districts for nearly $50 million in city revenue is a regrettable throwback to the quick-fix tactics of his predecessors.
At least, Johnson is steering clear of the scoop-and-toss tactic of refinancing city debt, which reaps derision from credit rating agencies, though his reliance on refinancing to balance the budget will bear watching. And he has set aside more than $300 million for pension payments beyond the actuarial minimum amount — a fiscally responsible CEO move if ever there were one.
Johnson’s address received enthusiastic support from the City Council. The mood may temper as the public, and even the council, digs into the details over the coming days.
If this is what a reality check budget looks like from our still-new mayor, it’s at least based on relatively sound cost management — without giving up on the progressive agenda that got him elected.
David Greising is president and CEO of the Better Government Association.
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