Mayor Brandon Johnson told aldermen Wednesday it’s imperative to invest in Chicago’s future generation in the next budget, a rousing and unsurprising election year speech delivered to a City Council that has so far refused to rally to his tax-the-rich ideas.
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“James Baldwin said that the children are always ours, every single one of them. He was right,” Johnson said. “He also said that he was beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing that may be incapable of morality.”
Johnson’s $17.6 billion spending proposal for 2027 is up $760 million from this year and revitalizes his corporate head tax proposal with a twist. Now named the “equitable employee tax,” the $25 per-worker monthly fee for companies over 125 employees would offer a full rebate if the headquarters are located within designated areas mostly on the South, Southwest and West sides.
In invoking the great American author Baldwin to call for a city that invests in “every single one of our children, in every single neighborhood,” Johnson was reciting a quote that’s also long been displayed on the bio on the X site of his close ally, Chicago Teachers Union president Stacy Davis Gates.
Johnson anchored that promise to the heart of his “Fair Share budget,” a nod to Mayor Harold Washington’s 1986 spending plan of the same name. He pitched his tax, bond plan and other revenue-raisers as imperative parts of his effort to skirt property tax hikes and layoffs while expanding city services like tree trimming and rodent control — while also stressing the head tax is ultimately only 1.5% of the corporate fund.
The mayor attacked President Donald Trump, a favorite punching bag for solidly blue Chicago, for defunding “the literal demands of the formerly enslaved” before he went off script after outlining the size of a nationwide spike in corporate profits this year.
“There is no reason to coddle or feel sorry for corporations. They are doing just fine,” he said. Several allies clapped, but most aldermen quietly stared.
He did not acknowledge how City Council voted down his head tax a year ago in a historic revolt. Meanwhile, he cast his sure-to-be-controversial plan to borrow $480 million to pay for police-related settlements as equally imperative to his social justice mantra of righting the city’s past wrongs while also “increasing savings.” His press team said the bond would save between $300 to $400 million compared to litigating the misconduct lawsuits.
As Johnson walked into council chambers and took his place behind the dais, his supporters in the gallery broke into applause, then a chant: “Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!” It was a clear reminder of Johnson’s two audiences. He spoke to aldermen, launching his bid to win them over to his budget. But he was speaking to voters too.
Johnson shouted out 11 aldermen throughout his budget address. Two names he applauded despite them breaking with him a year ago and voting with the council opposition? Alds. Ronnie Mosley, 21st, and Desmon Yancy, 5th. It was an acknowledgement that the mayor must lean on his ideological friends despite the rocky relationships he’s had with some of them.
One day earlier, Yancy wrote a blistering Tribune editorial pointing out the fellow progressives and Black aldermen the mayor has lost in his coalition. It resonated; on Wednesday morning Ald. Michelle Harris, 8th, was seen in the hall outside the chamber giving Yancy a one-armed embrace while exclaiming, “You the man. You wrote that editorial.”
But aldermen across the political spectrum seemed to concede it’s going to be another long budget season. And while the looming 2027 election could persuade foes to lay down arms sooner, it could bring a new degree of ferocity from both sides of the upcoming battle.In a briefing with reporters Tuesday night, administration officials said the mayor hopes to close 76% of the projected $882.4 million gap he unveiled this summer with structural, versus one-time, fixes. That’s an improvement from last year, when his initial proposal used 65% structural measures to close the deficit.
The jump includes the reworked head tax which they say will net $102 million if passed, a boost to lease transaction taxes up to 20% worth another $234 million, and a smattering of other tweaks to liquor, sports wagering, and “package waste” taxes that would raise another $60 million.
The amended head tax would only apply to 2.8% of Chicago businesses, mayor’s office officials estimate. The criteria for what communities are eligible for the full refund are based on the city’s Socioeconomically Distressed Areas, which are determined by “equally weighted data points” of median household income, unemployment rate, poverty rate and high school graduation rates, the mayor’s press team said afterward.
That exempts most of the South and West Side neighborhoods that Johnson sees as his political base, though many of those aldermen left his coalition and joined forces with the opposition during the scrap last fall over the 2026 budget. It also includes much of the Southwest Side and pockets of the North and Northwest sides.
The package waste levy would add the city’s current 15-cent “bag tax” charge at retailers to also include delivery packages, with exemptions for food, medicine and other necessities. It would not require Springfield approval, Johnson said, as it would apply to “waste” from existing packages rather than a tax on services.
The non-structural fixes include another round of borrowing to pay for historic police misconduct settlements and another sweep — albeit smaller than recent years — of the city’s special taxing districts known as TIFs.
On the police settlement bond, Johnson plans to ask the council for authority to borrow $480 million. Of that sum, at least $250 million would be spent next year, covering half of the recently-approved $260 million Guevara global settlement and $120 million for other settlements approved this year that the city doesn’t have money for. Another $100 million would be available to pay for other 2027 settlements that exceed the city’s settlement budget. That debt would be paid over the following five to seven years.
Johnson plans to declare a TIF surplus of $522 million, a smaller sum than last year’s record $1 billion sum. That would work out to $118 million for the city’s coffers and $286 million for Chicago Public Schools — almost the exact gap the district left when it passed its budget earlier this summer.
Another $120 million would come from cuts and efficiencies, including $34 million in personnel savings that officials said are from vacancy reductions and position freezes, not layoffs. About 36,000 full time positions are in this budget.
Asked multiple times Tuesday night what the topline Chicago police budget number was, Johnson and his team would not say, and the city has not released the full 2027 budget book online. But his press office did confirm that the city is planning not to fill 368 police officer vacancies and 11 sergeant positions.
On top of that, 132 sworn police vacancies will be slashed and converted to civilian positions, a process that Johnson has undertaken throughout his term in a bid to free up desk duty officers and cut costs, though cost of living adjustments from the department’s collective bargaining agreements could offset those savings.
The budget retains a $5 million line-item amount for gunshot detection technology, which the Johnson administration confirmed on Tuesday would return to select police districts on the South, Southwest and West sides on a pilot basis within the next two weeks.
The mayor cast his proposal against a slew of federal cuts to Medicaid, food assistance and rising costs of utilities, groceries and housing. To that end, that is why he is also rolling out $132 million in new spending, he said.
Johnson proposed spending more on day-to-day quality of life issues, adding twenty new crews to the city’s forestry and sanitation departments to clean up illegal dumping and overgrown lots, clear storm debris, trim 15,000 extra trees annually, and create a total of 28 rodent control crews.
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He is also doubling down on key campaign promises to add youth jobs and restore mental health care coverage — Johnson proposes opening of a new clinic, expanding his 911 non-police crisis response teams to seven days a week and spending an additional $24 million on youth jobs, with a goal of employing 40,000 young people in 2027.
The budget proposal adds $15 million to homelessness services, $13 million in rental assistance and $2 million to the Flexible Housing Pool which offers social services.
Pension contributions are slated to climb to $2.94 billion, a figure that includes both the $2.58 billion sum required by state law and continuation of the “pension advance,” an extra payment designed to help keep the city’s four retirement funds from going underwater. The $75 million the city netted in the renegotiated parking meter deal will make up part of that overall pension payment.
This year, Johnson is setting aside $363 million for the advance. While in past years, that money came from reserves built up while the city was flush with federal pandemic relief money, the city is mostly drawing from its main operating fund to pay for it this year, squeezing out spending on other day-to-day costs.
“I will say one last thing: you’re not going to cut your way to a fair budget. You’re just not,” Johnson told reporters Tuesday before taking a dig at an unnamed council members. “What’s interesting is that there were some alders who were very clear about making cuts last year across departments. One of which zeroed out the line item for tree stump removals, and then they came back to me this year and said that you have to restore it.”