The City Council approved Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s $11.65 billion budget on Tuesday, despite opposition from a bloc of progressive aldermen and others to the new mayor’s first spending plan for Chicago government.
After aldermen passed her budget by a 39-11 vote, Lightfoot hailed the plan as “a progressive blueprint for the future” and said she planned to celebrate with a cigar and scotch. Lightfoot also invoked the spirit of former Mayor Harold Washington to defend herself from critics who say the budget doesn’t meet her progressive campaign promises.
“Throughout his entire time as mayor, not only were there critics on the City Council, there were also critics on the left who said he wasn’t progressive enough, he didn’t move fast enough, he didn’t do things in the way they wanted him to do,” Lightfoot said. “There are always going to be critics.”
Despite Lightfoot’s characterization of the package as a progressive blueprint, eight of the 11 no votes came from freshman aldermen who ran for election this year as progressives and repeatedly said the mayor’s spending plan didn’t go far enough to protect working-class Chicagoans and force the wealthy to pay more.
Ald. Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez, 33rd, said she couldn’t “in good conscience” support Lightfoot’s budget because it left too much progressive revenue on the table.
“We have been surviving year after year of neoliberal policies that have wrecked public services, closed schools and mental health clinics, and poor people are poorer and rich people are doing better than ever,” Rodriguez Sanchez said.
Several budget opponents took pains to say they believe Lightfoot can put together progressive budget packages in future years that will get their support. This one didn’t quite get there but “moves us in that right direction,” said first-year Ald. Michael Rodriguez, 22nd, who represents the working-class Little Village neighborhood.
Others who voted against it include Ald. Raymond Lopez, 15th, and Ald. Anthony Beale, 9th, establishment aldermen who have emerged as vocal council critics of the new mayor since she took office.
Beale continued hammering Lightfoot for what he said were the soft foundations of the budget, including “over-inflated projections” for revenue that will come in and the mayor’s failure to get Springfield support for her casino and real estate transfer tax plans. The veteran alderman also took a shot at his colleagues.
“This is not a legislative body,” Beale said. “This is a go-along body.”
Supporters defended Lightfoot’s budget as responsible and realistic at a time of continuing financial challenges. Veteran Ald. Leslie Hairston, 5th, said Lightfoot’s plan is “a budget that works for now.”
North Side Ald. Harry Osterman, 48th, lauded the mayor for closing a mammoth budget hole without a commensurate property tax hike.
“When I think about this budget, I think about a couple words. I think of reasonable, I think of responsible, I think of real,” Osterman said. “This is a budget for where we are as a city today.”
In an only in Chicago moment, Ald. Scott Waguespack told aldermen they won’t be retaliated against for voting “no.”
“You should have no fear in your choice,” said Waguespack, 32nd.
Last month, Lightfoot proposed closing what she said was an $838 million shortfall with a mixture of cost reductions, debt refinancing and smaller tax increases.
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Perhaps the most contentious piece of Lightfoot’s budget is her proposal to hike passenger ride-share trips to boost revenue by $40 million. The mayor has accused Uber of “paying off black ministers” to defeat her measure, and the company — which denies the allegation — brought forward its own fee structure it said would raise more money, though Lightfoot dismissed it as “not a real plan.”
Uber has teased a potential challenge to Chicago’s ride-share hike in court, which Lightfoot responded to by referencing her past career as a federal prosecutor and corporate attorney.
“I don’t fear litigation,” Lightfoot said. “If they want to bring it, bring it, and we’ll see them in court.”
Another lightning rod has been Lightfoot’s mental health plan. It doubles spending on those services but does not reopen shuttered city-run mental health clinics, instead relying on partnerships with hospitals and nonprofits.
Her budget also includes a tax hike on all food and drinks sold in Chicago restaurants, which she hopes will raise an extra $20 million in 2020, and an increase to the personal property lease tax on some computer leases of cloud software and cloud infrastructure.
The only property tax increase in the budget is $18 million, which Lightfoot said will go to keeping local library branches open seven days a week. Property taxes will go up by about $65 million overall, however, due to a $32 million increase previously approved by the City Council to pay off bonds and a $15 million hike in the city levy thanks to new property.
Lightfoot also says she will save $150 million in 2020 through so-called “zero-based budgeting,” the practice of making each city department justify its spending from the ground up.
Lightfoot also is still waiting on federal authorities to approve a higher Medicaid reimbursement rate for ambulance trips by the Chicago Fire Department, which she expects will bring in an additional $163 million next year.
Some aldermen have complained the 2020 spending package is built on quicksand until the ambulance money is approved.
The budget includes a clause to increase the city minimum wage to $15 by 2021, a proposal some aldermen and community groups have hammered as inadequate because it does not eliminate the lower wage for tipped workers such as waiters and bartenders.
It also includes sweeteners for all 50 aldermen in the form of $25,000 increases to their ward budgets, from $97,000 to $122,000.
Lightfoot outlined a plan last month that she said would close Chicago’s looming deficit without a steep property tax increase, so long as Illinois lawmakers helped with the real estate transfer tax.
But when the legislature adjourned without passing the tax, Lightfoot outlined an alternative plan that counts on an additional $15 million in savings from the refinancing of bond debt for a total of $215 million in such savings next year.
An extra $15 million will come from various kinds of lower costs, including less health care spending and less overtime for firefighters, aldermen said they were told.
An additional $20 million will come from a city government employee hiring slowdown through 2020.
Although Lightfoot’s plan passed with a comfortable majority, it’s a smaller-than-usual margin for a Chicago mayor’s budget, especially one that doesn’t ask aldermen to vote for a politically damaging tax hike. Rahm Emanuel’s first budget sailed through unanimously, even though it closed six mental health clinics and set the city on a path to see water and sewer fees more than double. And his 2016 spending package that featured a $543 million property tax hike passed 35-15.
Asked about the differences, Lightfoot rejected the comparison and said she earned her votes without typical political dealmaking.
“Different time, different mayor and different process. We could’ve gotten more votes, but that would’ve meant I’d have to deviate from the way I intend to govern which is, I’m not going to put a Christmas tree out with presents underneath and individual names,” Lightfoot said. “We sought, and I think received, the support of 39 aldermen on the merits of this budget, not because we promised individual favors to particular aldermen.”
