Lightfoot not yet ready to show her hand about shortfall she inherited from Emanuel

Mayor Lori Lightfoot is buying more time before showing her hand about the budget shortfall she inherited from Rahm Emanuel.

Lightfoot issued a new executive order on Tuesday pushing back the deadline for releasing Chicago’s preliminary budget until Aug. 31. The old deadline was midnight Wednesday.

In a statement, Budget Director Susie Park cited the “shorter transition period” that followed the April 2 runoff. She said the new mayor needs “additional time to analyze year-end totals, program costs and other factors impacting the economy.”

It’s not surprising that Lightfoot would want to hold her cards until after the 100-day mark.

Revealing the budget is part of a high-stakes game of political poker that will give beleaguered Chicago taxpayers some idea of the pain they are facing. But Lightfoot needs to be careful how she plays it. She’ll be stuck with those cards for the rest of her four-year term.

If the new mayor is determined to inflate the shortfall to lay the groundwork for a slew of post-election tax increases, she could lump the structural deficit with debt service, pension payments, yet-to-be-negotiated pay raises for police officers, firefighters and teachers, and a parade of wrongful conviction lawsuits already filed or coming down the pike.

But that kitchen-sink approach would send red flags to Wall Street rating agencies.

She can get away with blaming Emanuel once. She won’t be able to get away with it after that. And if she counts 250 legal cases in the pipeline as part of the budget shortfall, she’ll be stuck with those ground rules.

Emanuel raised the bar by turning the once sketchy preliminary budget into an “Annual Financial Analysis.” The booklet included projections for the next three years based on “worst-case,” baseline and “best-case” economic scenarios.

Politically, Lightfoot also has raised the bar, claiming the shortfall she inherited is “north of” the revised $740 million acknowledged by Emanuel’s Chief Financial Officer Carole Brown.

Lightfoot has refused to get more specific, beyond saying there’s “no question” she’ll be forced to raise taxes and that she is seriously considering asking for state authorization to raise the real estate transfer tax and impose a sales tax on professional services.

The Civic Federation reported earlier this year that Lightfoot was staring down the barrel of an immediate $277 million spike in pension payments — payments that will rise by $1 billion in 2023 — as a five-year ramp to actuarial funding ends and the road to 90% funding begins.

The corporate fund has a two-year gap of at least $613.9 million — even before factoring in the cost of police and fire contracts, retroactive pay raises for the rank-and-file police officers and the 18-month jump in salaries for 1,000 newly hired officers.

The mountain of debt heaped on Chicago taxpayers continues to climb, with debt service payments to match.

So do settlements and judgments tied, primarily, to allegations of police wrongdoing.

Concerned that Lightfoot may be setting him up to be the financial fall guy, Emanuel directed Brown to revise the first-year deficit upward by acknowledging the four city employee pension funds had fallen short of the assumed 7% return on investments.

Lightfoot scoffed at the higher figure and said it was “worse than that.”

Earlier this month, Lightfoot floated a long-shot plan to have the state take over the city’s $28 billion pension liability; Gov. J.B. Pritzker shot it down.

The mayor is left with precious few options.

She can dramatically increase the real estate transfer tax she once earmarked to combat homelessness and raise property taxes in a way that targets wealthier, white communities.

She can ask Pritzker and the Democratic-controlled General Assembly to extend the road to 90 percent funding of Chicago pensions and empower the city to help itself by imposing a service tax.

And she can hit the ride-hailing industry hard, just like she promised during the mayoral campaign, to reduce traffic congestion and level the playing field with Chicago’s shrinking taxicab industry.

But first things first.

By Aug. 31, Lightfoot needs to show her cards and be mighty careful how she does it.

A veteran alderman, who asked not to be named, predicted Lightfoot would ultimately “overstate the budget shortfall to justify” an onslaught of budget cuts and tax hikes.

“It can’t be as bad as she’s going to say. Rahm was locking himself into those numbers” before choosing not to seek a third term, the operative said.

“Probably both of them were [exaggerating]. And somewhere in the middle is the truth.”