Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot will unveil her 2021 budget forecast next week, kicking off what could be a painful budget cycle for the city’s taxpayers.
Earlier this summer, Lightfoot administration officials said next year’s budget could include a $1 billion shortfall. They also said the coronavirus pandemic put a $700 million hole in 2020’s spending plan, raising questions about how the city would plug its deficit.
Lightfoot officials said the city will host a budget forecast on Monday, helping answer just how big the hole will be. But Lightfoot’s plan for plugging the yawning budget deficit will come later in the fall.
After the forecast, Lightfoot will hold four virtual town hall meetings aimed at getting feedback from residents “with a focus on engaging youth and the Latinx and African American communities.”
The format will preclude protesters from interrupting her town halls.
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The mayor upended traditional political calculations last year when she pushed through a budget without major property tax hikes or other fee increases to plug what she said was an $838 million shortfall. Politicians typically pack tax increases into their first year’s budget to attempt to keep the backlash as far from the next election as possible, but Lightfoot relied on several one-time fixes including a huge tax increment financing surplus, $215 million from debt refinancing and the elimination of vacant positions in city government to help plug last year’s deficit.
She closed that gap without a large property tax increase, in part by trying to get $163 million more from federal authorities for the cost of ambulance rides by the Chicago Fire Department, money that has been slow to materialize.
She also hiked fees on Uber and Lyft rides downtown, doubled the tax on food and drinks bought in Chicago restaurants and pushed through an increase to the personal property lease tax on some computer leases of cloud software and cloud infrastructure.
The ambulance reimbursement, in particular, remains a controversial subject among some aldermen who are unsure the federal government will follow through.
Lightfoot has called for more federal assistance to cities dealing with the pandemic to help balance their budgets. She also has refused to take property taxes or job cuts off the table.
Chicago Tribune’s John Byrne contributed.
Twitter @royalpratt
