A majority of Chicago aldermen plan to vote to reject the $300 million property tax increase that is at the heart of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s proposed 2025 budget.
A group of 29 aldermen met Thursday to call a special meeting next Wednesday at which the full City Council is expected to vote on the property tax hike. The apparent attempt to overturn the mayor’s levy increase comes a week after Johnson outlined his 2025 spending plan – and looks set to throw the just-started negotiations over it into disarray.
“It’s time to reject the property tax increase as soon as possible, so we can negotiate a real budget that actually needs to be passed before the end of 2024,” said Ald. Brendan Reilly, 42nd, wrote in an article on X announcing the special reunion.
Johnson framed the property tax hike, a reversal of a campaign promise, as a painful but necessary move to avoid layoffs of the city’s workforce and deep cuts to services. His administration faced a deficit of nearly $1 billion as it developed its plan to pass a balanced municipal budget of $17.3 billion.
But the mayor’s critics on the City Council say the administration hasn’t taken seriously their calls for deeper cuts before raising property taxes.
Even though 29 aldermen signed the letter and even more oppose the tax hike, it remains to be seen whether the coalition will hold and vote to reject it. Johnson has nearly a week to threaten or cajole a few disaffected people into backing down, or could also use a procedural maneuver to try to block the vote. And Chicago’s budget history is replete with examples of council members speaking out about their opposition to an unpopular mayoral proposal, only to change their minds when it came time to say yes or no.
But by scheduling this meeting, aldermen are taking an important first step in trying to force the mayor to find a new path through them to pass a budget.
“This budget will not have a $300 million property tax,” said Ald. Bill Conway, 34th, said. “We need to make sure that we at least give City Hall the opportunity to work with us. »
Vice Mayor Ald. Walter Burnett Jr., 27, shares his confidence that the Johnson administration is pressuring everyone from aldermen to city workers’ unions to liquor companies to come up with ideas to avoid taxes .
“Nobody wants to be taxed,” said Burnett, who did not join the meeting call and is chairman of Johnson’s zoning committee. “We try to give everyone the opportunity to bring something to the table.”
Some aldermen who did not sign the letter, including several of the council’s most progressive members, said they were still adamantly opposed to the mayor’s proposed tax hike.
Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, 25th, quickly came out against the levy just after Johnson finished his budget speech last week. But if the Pilsen alderman, generally a close ally of the mayor, plans to vote against the measure, he also believes that his colleagues who signed the letter are failing to propose the alternatives that would be necessary in place of an increase property tax to balance a budget.
Sigcho-Lopez proposed reducing the $272 million pension advance payment that Johnson had included in the 2025 budget, a move that bond rating agencies have warned against and which Johnson’s finance team said would harm the city’s long-term fiscal health.
“I’m not here for political theater,” Sigcho-Lopez said Thursday. “I’m here to provide solutions.”
Ald. Daniel La Spata, who also opposes Johnson’s $300 million tax hike but did not sign to call the special meeting, agreed.
“I think the goal is to score political points. I think the goal is to embarrass the mayor,” said La Spata, 1st.
But Ald. Bennett Lawson, 44th, argued that there is an alternative demanded by many of the aldermen who scheduled the special meeting: cuts. The North Side alderman joined harsh criticism of Johnson’s plan because there is not enough time to wait for the administration to begin negotiating more seriously with opposing aldermen over the budget, said he declared.
Chicago could face dire, if unclear, consequences if the City Council fails for the first time to pass a balanced budget by the Dec. 31 deadline.
The city’s budget grew steadily for years before exploding when federal COVID-19 money arrived, Lawson said. Now that the stimulus funds are gone, the larger budget is no longer sustainable, he added.
“Until we realize this, we will have a deficit of a billion dollars or more in the years to come,” he said. “We don’t have the sustainable revenue to support all the programs the government has invested money in us for. »
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