Mayor Lori Lightfoot urged the City Council on Monday to “be bold with me … to continue to right historic wrongs” that have created two Chicagos: one for the haves, the other for the have-nots.
“Neglect is not only morally wrong. It is also fiscally foolish. … We have all been carrying a heavy burden for our decades of neglect, whether we acknowledge it or not. It shows up in the billions that we have spent on policing and incarceration. … It shows up in the trauma that shrouds too many of our homes and neighborhoods,” Lightfoot told alderpersons.
“What I have asked this body to do over three prior years and now again today … is to be bold with me. To continue to right historic wrongs so that all of our residents who call this beloved city home will benefit and be able to fulfill their God-given potential.”
Delivering the 2023 budget address that will serve as her re-election platform, Lightfoot called for a laundry list of new and continued investments to ease the intransigent problems of violence, homelessness and poverty.
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Still flush with cash from the $1.9 billion avalanche of federal coronavirus relief funds, Lightfoot’s proposed new investments include:
• $100 million for public safety, including $36 million for consent decree compliance, new police helicopters, replacing with the Chicago Police Department aging vehicle fleet.
• $242 million to launch what the mayor calls a “new pension fund policy of pre-paying future pension obligations.”
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Although Chicago has managed to climb the $1 billion “ramp” toward actuarially-based funding of its four city employee pension funds, Lightfoot said the city is still “essentially making the minimum monthly payment on our pension credit card.”
“We need to begin paying down that pension credit card so we can stop paying compounded interest. Also, this pension advance will prevent the pension funds from having to sell assets in this very difficult market” of stock market decline, she said.
“This new funding will save the city $2 billion in reduced future pension contributions as well as approximately $30 million in preserved assets based on current market performance.”
• $200 million to prevent homelessness, $155 million for affordable housing and $3 million to launch a so-called Tiny Homes initiative.
• $5 million to support migrants shipped to Chicago from Texas and other border states and $3 million for “reproductive services” tied to the influx of women descending in Chicago seeking abortions outlawed in their home states.
• $10 million to improve the city’s technology infrastructure.
• Finally delivering on her campaign promise to re-establish the Department of Environment abolished by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, but only with a section within the mayor’s office — not a full-blown city department.
Lightfoot’s version, called the “Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Equity,” will “steer our climate and environmental justice agenda,” she said.
• More fine and fee reforms, this time focusing on helping businesses and individuals saddled with administrative hearing debt.
In her budget address, Lightfoot, who is running again for Mayor in 2023, touted the $31.5 million Guaranteed Minimum Income pilot that is delivering $500-a-month in cash to 5,000 of Chicago’s neediest families without saying whether the year-long pilot would continue.
Her budget also proposes 14,093 employees for the Chicago Police Department, but makes no mention of incentives to stop the mass exodus of officers that has left CPD with just 11,623 officers, compared to 13,353 officers shortly before Lightfoot took office.
Last week, Lightfoot made the job of passing her pre-election budget a heckuva lot easier.
To avoid what would have been an embarrassing defeat, the mayor scrapped plans for a $42.7 million property tax increase that was already half of what an automatic escalator would have allowed.
The abrupt about-face was the political equivalent of saying, “You can’t fire me. I quit.”
Just one day earlier, the mayor’s own political allies had warned that Lightfoot’s property tax increase would be dead on arrival in the City Council.
To underscore how difficult it would have been for Lightfoot to line up the 26 votes, even for a shrunken property tax increase, License Committee Chair Emma Mitts (37ty) pointed to the unprecedented generational transition under way in the City Council and the political freedom that comes with that upheaval.
Of the 50 members elected in 2019, 15 either already have left the Council or announced they will be departing.
Mitts also made passing reference to public opinion polls done for other mayoral candidates and prospective candidates that show Lightfoot’s public approval rating stuck at 25%.
That’s more than 15 percentage points below where former Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s numbers were when he chose political retirement over, what would have been an uphill battle for re-election.
“With 15 of `em leaving, it’ll be a hard sell. It was hard last time and you didn’t have 15 leaving. And the 15 leaving are all mad at her. Some are running for mayor. Some are saying they can’t get along with her,” Mitts told the Sun-Times.
“If she’s smart, she’ll get rid of the property tax increase and deal with what she has to deal with [financially] next year. Retailers and businesses are hurting. All I keep hearing from people is her numbers are bad in their wards. If you’re [an alderperson] running for re-election, why would you vote for a tax increase?”
Instead driving head first into that brick wall of opposition, Lightfoot took the political path of least resistance, citing city revenues she expects to rebound at a rate $200 million higher than city estimates for 2023.
Now, all she has to do is explain away the hypocrisy of ignoring her own mantra, reiterated just two months ago.
“For years, mayors in this town wouldn’t make the tough decisions around funding pensions properly, so pensions became grossly underfunded. We’d skip property tax increases every single year. And then, suddenly, year after year, you’d have the highest property tax increase in the history of the city. That benefited no one. And it certainly didn’t benefit members of the City Council who had to take those tough votes,” Lightfoot said then.
“It’s easy in an election year to say, ‘Let’s do nothing.’ But our pension obligation continues to grow year after year. So if we do nothing, be sure, taxpayers, they’re coming back for you later.”
After Lightfoot’s retreat, mayoral challenger Roderick Sawyer predicted that, if she wins a second term, Lightfoot would, in fact, “come back for us later.”
Last year, Lightfoot’s $16.7 billion budget sailed through the Council by a vote 35 to 15 thanks to an avalanche of federal stimulus funds that paved the way for an unprecedented, 30% increase in city spending.
The vote to raise Chicago’s property tax levy by $76.5 million — after a $94 million hike in real estate taxes the year before—was 32 to 18.
That increase included: $22.9 million kicking in automatically, tied to the Consumer Price Index; $25 million to bankroll the 2022 installment of Lightfoot’s $3.7 billion capital plan; and $28.6 million captured from “new property.” Not counting new property, the cost of the increase to the owner of a home valued at $250,000 was $38 a year.
Lightfoot easily sloughed off a demand from downtown Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd), the Hispanic Caucus and business leaders to repeal the automatic escalator.
“For the second consecutive year, Chicago businesses will face an increase in property taxes, all while contending with skyrocketing property assessments which, in some cases, have doubled or even tripled in value due to the Cook County assessor’s office shifting even more of the tax burden onto businesses,” Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce CEO Jack Lavin declared on that day.
Lavin noted many businesses are “still struggling” after 18 months of “extra safety costs, capacity restrictions, ever-growing public safety concerns” and overall uncertainty.
“Chicago’s business community needs to see more direct support, an immediate plan to fill police vacancies and bolster public safety … and a stop to these annual increases,” he said.
What the mayor called a “once in a lifetime opportunity to transform” Chicago allowed Lightfoot to play Santa Claus, instead of Grinch.
That’s even after using about two-thirds of federal relief money to replace revenues lost to the pandemic in 2020 and 2021. She salted away $537.4 million of it to use in 2022 and 2023.
Last month, Canadian pension plans that control the Skyway sold their one-third stakes for a handsome profit that valued the overall roadway at $4 billion, courtesy of drivers forking over tolls that have risen steadily since the city leased it to private operators in 2005.
The latest ownership change is expected to generate a roughly $25 million windfall for Chicago taxpayers.
The mayor’s office has refused to say how the money would be used, only that the latest sale is a “win for the city, generating a tax payment in the tens of millions of dollars.”
