With city budget season quickly approaching, and Chicago facing a $1.1 billion deficit for 2026, Mayor Brandon Johnson recently released a list of 26 possible sources of “progressive revenue” in order to plug the gap.
Pardon us, the general public, if we’re not quite breathing a sigh of relief.
The lack of confidence arises from the fact that we’ve seen many of these ideas before. And with the newer ones — such as persuading nonprofits in the city to contribute money they’re not legally obligated to provide — Johnson has yet to show anything close to the political finesse it would require to make such a thing happen, as mayors in Boston, Palo Alto, California, and New Haven, Connecticut, and a handful of other cities have done.
Based on Johnson’s track record, there’s little reason to expect a material portion of the mayor’s menu of ideas might actually become a reality.
A few explanations arise for the lack of confidence: A lack of clear and focused planning, poor communication and failure to develop effective relations across City Council and in state government leaders are among the concerns. If Johnson could solve at least some of these shortfalls, voters could rest more easily as the city faces the struggles ahead. He could start by learning from his errors of omission and commission, adjusting his tactics, forging the connections he needs and drawing from available expertise. These and other adjustments might improve his effectiveness as mayor and would substantially benefit the city.
One of the biggest shortcomings so far is Johnson’s inability to engage constructively and influence policymakers in Springfield. Just this spring, he unsuccessfully delegated efforts to prevent passage of a sweetener for Chicago’s police and firefighter pensions. The miscalculation will cost the city $60 million beginning in 2027 and a total of $7 billion through 2055.
Johnson said at a City Hall news conference after Gov. JB Pritzker signed the bill that his team “worked extensively” with the governor and legislative leaders to alert them of the strain the bill would cause to city finances. After all, the new pension law is an unfunded mandate — a requirement now established in the law, with the entire cost borne by the city.
My own reporting confirms what Pritzker told reporters at the state fair this week: that Johnson never took the next step to personally intervene with legislative leaders and the governor to block the bill. Even after the bill passed — in the waning hours of the legislative session, with little study or debate — there still was a chance Pritzker might have vetoed the measure. But to do so, Pritzker required Johnson publicly to call for a veto. That call never came.
Johnson also fails to galvanize voter sentiment around a few must-have initiatives. His list of 26 available options might seem like a font of fiscal creativity, but as an effort in policymaking, it’s no way to concentrate the electorate’s attention. Johnson would be far more effective if he winnowed the list to a few key options, articulated that clearly and put his full force behind building support for his answers to the city’s huge deficit problem. This is what leadership looks like, and we have not seen enough of it.
In part, that’s because the mayor has yet to show an ability to see, then seize, the big moments that can make a difference. This shortcoming shows up in ways both big and small.
Timely intervention to prevent passage of the police and fire pension sweeteners could have saved the city billions. A far smaller but still notable case in point is the appearance this week by Johnson’s finance leaders — city Chief Financial Officer Jill Jaworski and Budget Director Annette Guzman — at the City Club of Chicago.
In front of this influential audience, the Johnson administration could have laid out a clear path toward fiscal stability. Instead, Jaworski and Guzman focused on long-standing city gripes about the way the state distributes revenues to Chicago and other cities. No new taxes on income or earnings can be passed without state approval, Jaworski noted. And the percentage of income tax that is shared with the city — only 6.5% of what city residents pay, down from the 10% rate that prevailed before 2011 — is unfair, too, she said.
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True, perhaps. But we already know all that. And what are the chances either will change in the foreseeable future, much less in time for passage of Chicago’s 2026 budget? Next to none.
Even when Johnson’s administration does seek to concentrate attention, they sometimes can’t get their story straight. Case in point: Jaworski’s comments to a Bloomberg News audience that it was likely Johnson would seek a property tax hike for next year’s budget. Just a few days later, Johnson said just the opposite, that a property tax hike is not in his plans. This sort of confusion is more than a passing embarrassment: It harms the city’s credibility when the public, other public officials and credit rating agencies are closely watching.
As the mistakes and confusion mount, not to mention the inattention to key developments such as the police and fire pension hike, it’s no wonder analysts writing for the Standard & Poor’s credit rating agency warned last week that Chicago’s rating is viewed under a negative bias. This came a mere seven months after S&P had already downgraded Chicago’s credit to just two notches above “junk” status.
There are ways out of this mess. For starters, Johnson and his team could follow the 10 principles of city budget making that Civic Committee President Derek Douglas, Civic Federation President Joe Ferguson and I introduced in a Tribune opinion piece just last week.
The S&P analysts called for “substantial, structural budget-balancing measures” to avoid another downgrade. By implication, this means both new revenue and cost cuts. A clear statement of priorities from Mayor Johnson, as soon as possible, might begin to provide a meaningful response to the concerns expressed by S&P — and shared by voters and other stakeholders in city government.
As the budget work gets under way, Johnson and his team need to develop new tactics and begin to articulate — clearly, consistently and with purpose — the tough choices ahead on how to close the billion-dollar budget gap. There is no time to waste.
David Greising is president and CEO of the Better Government Association.
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