Raising Chicago’s nickel-a-gallon tax on gasoline to 8 cents and imposing a $94 million property tax increase that will cost the owner of a home valued at $250,000 an extra $56 a year.
Eliminating 1,000 vacant city jobs, 450 of them police officers, and laying off up to 500 city employees, but delaying the pink slips until March to give the new Congress a chance to ride to the rescue.
Refinancing $500 million in city debt and raiding Chicago’s $900 million in reserves, but only by $30 million to avoid another drop in Chicago’s already shaky bond rating.
Declaring a record $350 million tax increment financing surplus to generate a $189 million windfall for the Chicago Public Schools, but snatching back $55 million of that money by shifting pension and crossing guard costs from the city to CPS.
Requiring thousands of city employees who don’t belong to unions to take five unpaid furlough days.
Those were among the details revealed Monday as aldermen were briefed on what Mayor Lori Lightfoot has called the “impossible choices” she would need to make to balance what she calls Chicago’s “pandemic budget.”
A property tax increase was her “last resort.” Layoffs and furlough days were “second-to-last.” Yet she is resorting to both those options to plug the gap without federal help.
“I don’t want 500 people to be laid off. I don’t want any amount of people to be laid off. That’s why we’re doing this work. Because we want to avoid layoffs or furloughs and do our part to help patch it all together,” said Chicago Federation of Labor President Bob Reiter.
The CFL has an ownership interest in the Chicago Sun-Times.
The only silver lining for organized labor: Lightfoot has agreed to postpone the layoffs until March to give the new and, she hopes, more Democratic Congress an opportunity to finally approve another round of stimulus funds, including replacement revenue for cities and states.
That also will give Reiter time to complete and push the cost-cutting plan labor leaders are working hard on as an alternative to layoffs. They proposed a similar plan to save $242 million in 2011.
“We’re talking about identifying big money to help them close the gap in lieu of laying off or furloughing anybody. If we propose more than what they need for that, I’m happy to let them figure out where else they can help the city budget once we get the workforce stuff under control,” Reiter said.
“We have all the new things we’ve been able to identify, plus the things the Emanuel administration didn’t adopt. ... As long as everybody is good for their word that, if we can identify savings that would go to offset workforce and service cuts, then I’m feeling pretty good about the work that we’re doing right now. … That should change the full landscape.”
Stacy Davis Gates, vice president of the Chicago Teachers Union, homed in on the 3-cents-a-gallon gas tax increase authorized by the Illinois General Assembly when the state’s gas tax was doubled to bankroll Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s $45 billion infrastructure program.
“A gas tax hits working-class families. A gas tax in the middle of a pandemic when people aren’t taking public transportation is tone-deaf,” Davis Gates said.
County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, swamped by Lightfoot in the April 2019 mayoral runoff, managed to avoid raising taxes, in part, by raiding the county’s reserves by $76.8 million.
Compared to that, Lightfoot’s $30 million raid — just 3% of the city’s $900 million in reserves — sounds timid to Ald. Jason Ervin (28th), chairman of the City Council’s Black Caucus.
“It’s a tough sell having almost a billion dollars sitting on the table and we’re looking at the potential of telling people they will no longer be employed coming into Christmas,” Ervin said Monday.
“We may have to dig a little deeper than $30 million to save folks in our communities. All of these are Chicago residents. If we have the ability to save their jobs, we need to do that. [Cutting] vacancies is one thing. But telling someone they may not have a job and be able to pay their mortgage is quite another. We have two concerns: The human cost and service to our residents.”
A year ago, Lightfoot avoided raising property taxes by balancing her first budget with one-time revenues.
As easy a vote as it was, 11 aldermen voted against a budget they claimed, “woefully underfunds mental health services, relies on property taxes and gives the wealthiest corporations a pass.”
Now, Ald. Gilbert Villegas (36th), the mayor’s floor leader, has the formidable task of delivering 26 votes for a property tax increase at a time of extraordinary hardship for homeowners and business owners alike.
The budget also includes a 20% increase — to 9%, up from 7.5% — in the tax on computer leases and cloud service.
“If property taxes is not something they can support, then I would welcome them to bring some recommendations that we can talk about and see if we can get votes on that,” Villegas said.
“We’re not getting any help from D.C. We’re not getting any help from Springfield. This is a go-it-alone budget for a city we were elected to represent. These are the levers we have. This is what’s being proposed by the mayor. Ultimately, my colleagues will either support it or not support it.”
