At Illinois Policy Ravi Mishra and Lauren Zuar propose three non-starters for balancing Chicago’s budget:
Chicago’s annual budget process is typically a desperate scramble that leaves taxpayers wounded when it could be a measured, responsible process if city leaders would just do three things: cut non-essential staff, cut non-essential projects and push government pension reform.
Although Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson was forced to abandon his plans for a $300 million property tax hike, his 2025 budget adds $181.6 million in other tax and fee increases. It does little to fix enduring structural issues contributing to the city’s big budget deficit.
Cutting non-essential staff and non-essential projects is a completely reasonable idea which no Illinois politician will support. Pension reform has been fully litigated and a constitutional amendment that would allow it has already been proposed and rejected by Illinoisans. That even as the pension liability per Illinoisans continues to mount.
While we’re spinning fantasy strategies, why not think big? We could save billions by shuttering the Chicago Public Schools entirely and contracting the education of Chicago’s children out to the Chicago Archdiocese. They spend half as much per student as does the CPS.
The CPS’s budget has soared over the last 30 years even as the number of children enrolled has languished. The increased spending has not resulted in sufficiently improved performance, either.