Mayor Brandon Johnson told aldermen Wednesday it’s imperative to invest in Chicago’s future generation in the next budget, a rousing and unsurprising election year speech delivered to a City Council that has so far refused to rally to his tax-the-rich ideas.
“James Baldwin said that the children are always ours, every single one of them. He was right,” Johnson said. “He also said that he was beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing that may be incapable of morality.”
Johnson’s $17.6 billion spending proposal for 2027 is up $760 million from this year and revitalizes his corporate head tax proposal with a twist. Now named the “equitable employee tax,” the $25-per-worker monthly fee for companies with over 125 employees would offer a full rebate if the headquarters are located within designated areas mostly on the South, Southwest and West sides.
In invoking the great American author Baldwin to call for a city that invests in “every single one of our children, in every single neighborhood,” Johnson was reciting a quote that’s also long been displayed on the X profile of his close ally, Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates.
Johnson anchored that promise to the heart of his “Fair Share” budget, a nod to Mayor Harold Washington’s 1986 spending plan of the same name. He pitched his tax, bond plan and other revenue-raisers as imperative parts of his effort to skirt property tax hikes and layoffs while expanding city services like tree trimming and rodent control.
The mayor attacked President Donald Trump, a favorite punching bag for solidly blue Chicago, for defunding “the literal demands of the formerly enslaved” before he went off script after outlining the size of a nationwide spike in corporate profits this year.
“There is no reason to coddle or feel sorry for corporations. They are doing just fine,” he said. Several allies clapped, but most aldermen quietly stared.
Johnson did not acknowledge during the speech how the council voted down his head tax a year ago in a historic revolt, but later told the Tribune he is hopeful aldermen will now heed his call to impose it because “we’ve already done it” with past taxes on leased property like cloud computing software and social media companies.
“I’m going to remain hopeful because it’s a matter of life, right?” he said.
Meanwhile, he cast his sure-to-be-controversial plan to borrow $480 million to pay for police-related settlements as equally imperative to his social justice mantra of righting the city’s past wrongs while also “increasing savings.” His press team said the bond would save between $300 million to $400 million compared with litigating the misconduct lawsuits.
As Johnson walked into council chambers and took his place behind the dais, his supporters in the gallery broke into applause, then a chant of “Four more years!” It was a clear reminder of Johnson’s two audiences. He spoke to the City Council, launching his bid to win them over to his budget. But he was speaking to voters too.
Johnson shouted out 11 aldermen throughout his budget address. Two names he applauded despite them breaking with him a year ago and voting with the opposition — Aldermen Ronnie Mosley, 21st, and Desmon Yancy, 5th — a sign the mayor acknowledges he must lean on ideological friends despite the rocky relationships he’s had with some of them.
Yancy remained seated and stone-faced, sipping coffee when Johnson name-dropped him. One day earlier, the alderman wrote a blistering Tribune editorial pointing out the fellow progressives and Black aldermen the mayor has lost in his coalition.
It resonated with Ald. Michelle Harris, 8th, who on Wednesday was seen in the hall outside the chamber giving Yancy a one-armed embrace while exclaiming, “You the man. You wrote that editorial.”
Aldermen across the political spectrum seemed resigned to another long budget season. Many hurried out of chambers after, some playfully doing arm curls with the thick books of the spending plan while ducking questions.
The chief budgeteers of last year’s stunning rebellion against Johnson’s budget — the first instance of a mayor’s plan going down in 40 years — again gave a big thumbs-down to Johnson’s head tax. But their coalition did not seem eager to debut a counterproposal anytime soon, only pointing to where they were a “no.”
“This budget is totally out of whack, and so there’s a lot of spending going on in this budget, and there’s no cost savings,” Ald. Anthony Beale, 9th, said. “This was nothing but a reelection campaign speech that was just presented to the people of the city of Chicago.”
Council Finance Committee Chair Ald. Pat Dowell, 3rd, added she had concerns about whether the excessive borrowing would prolong “a credit card-type of government” and lead to a downgrade, though she said the plan requires more examination before she could take a stance.
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“It’s the combination of looking for efficiencies, and also whether or not we have to have all of these new programs,” Dowell added. “We’re not even sure all of these programs are effective, right?”
Altogether, 23 aldermen stood with the group that harshly criticized Johnson’s budget — a sign of the razor-thin margins he must navigate if he is to secure a majority of the 50-member body. And while the looming 2027 election could persuade foes to lay down arms sooner, it could bring a new degree of ferocity from both sides in the upcoming battle.
In a briefing with reporters Tuesday night, administration officials said the mayor hopes to close 76% of the projected $882.4 million gap he unveiled this summer with structural, versus one-time, fixes. That’s an improvement from last year, when his initial proposal ranged between using 60% and 65% structural measures to close the deficit.
The jump includes the reworked head tax, which they say will net $102 million if passed, a boost to lease transaction taxes up to 20% worth another $234 million, and a smattering of other tweaks to liquor, sports wagering and “package waste” taxes that would raise another $60 million.
While the mayor framed the lease tax increase as a charge on data centers, artificial intelligence and other technology companies, a coalition of business groups blasted the increase to the personal property lease transaction tax, arguing its impact wouldn’t be limited to “Big Tech.”
“Small businesses rely on tools and equipment subject to this tax, and the tax would actually drive up costs on a wide range of business necessities, from machinery to technology platforms and other leased assets,” a joint statement from retail, manufacturing and building owner groups, the city’s Chamber of Commerce and the Civic Committee said.
The amended head tax would only apply to 2.8% of Chicago businesses, mayor’s office officials estimate. The criteria for what communities are eligible for the full refund are based on the city’s Socioeconomically Distressed Areas, which are determined by “equally weighted data points” of median household income, unemployment rate, poverty rate and high school graduation rates, the mayor’s press team said.
That exempts most of the South and West Side neighborhoods that Johnson sees as his political base, though many aldermen representing those areas left his coalition and joined forces with the opposition during the scrap over the 2026 budget. It also includes much of the Southwest Side and pockets of the North and Northwest sides.
The package waste levy would add the city’s current 15-cent “bag tax” charge at retailers to also include delivery packages, with exemptions for food, medicine and other necessities. It would not require Springfield approval, Johnson said, as it would apply to “waste” from existing packages rather than a tax on services.
The nonstructural fixes include another round of borrowing to pay for historic police misconduct settlements and another sweep — albeit smaller than in recent years — of the city’s special taxing districts known as TIFs.
On the police settlement bond, Johnson plans to ask the council for authority to borrow $480 million. Of that sum, at least $250 million would be spent next year, covering half of the recently approved $260 million Guevara global settlement over wrongful conviction lawsuits and $120 million for other settlements approved this year that the city doesn’t have money for. Another $100 million would be available to pay for other 2027 settlements that exceed the city’s settlement budget. That debt would be paid over the following five to seven years.
Johnson plans to declare a TIF surplus of $522 million, a smaller sum than last year’s record $1 billion sum. That would work out to $118 million for the city’s coffers and $286 million for Chicago Public Schools — almost the exact gap the district left when it passed its budget earlier this summer.
Another $120 million would come from cuts and efficiencies, including $34 million in personnel savings that officials said are from vacancy reductions and position freezes, not layoffs. About 36,000 full-time positions are in this budget.
The Chicago police budget proposal is $2.24 billion, up from $2.12 billion this year.
Johnson’s press office confirmed the city is planning not to fill 368 police officer vacancies and 11 sergeant positions. On top of that, 132 sworn police vacancies will be slashed and converted to civilian positions, a process Johnson has undertaken throughout his term in a bid to free up desk-duty officers and cut costs.
The budget retains a $5 million line-item amount for gunshot detection technology, which the Johnson administration confirmed on Tuesday would return soon to a handful of police districts on a pilot basis.
The mayor cast his proposal against a slew of federal cuts to Medicaid, food assistance and rising costs of utilities, groceries and housing. To that end, that is why he is also rolling out $132 million in new spending, he said.
Johnson proposed spending more on day-to-day quality-of-life issues, adding 20 new crews to the city’s forestry and sanitation departments to clean up illegal dumping and overgrown lots, clear storm debris, trim 10,000 extra trees annually, and create a total of 28 rodent control crews.
He is also doubling down on key campaign promises to add youth jobs and restore mental health care coverage. Johnson proposed opening a new clinic — though he did not say where — expanding his 911 non-police crisis response teams to seven days a week and spending an additional $24 million on youth jobs, with a goal of employing 40,000 young people in 2027.
The budget proposal adds $15 million to homelessness services, $13 million in rental assistance and $2 million to the Flexible Housing Pool, which offers social services and rent subsidies.
Pension contributions are slated to climb to $2.94 billion, a figure that includes both the $2.58 billion sum required by state law and continuation of the “pension advance,” an extra payment designed to help keep the city’s four retirement funds from going underwater. The $75 million the city netted in the renegotiated parking meter deal will make up part of that overall pension payment.
This year, Johnson is setting aside $363 million for the advance. While in past years, that money came from reserves built up while the city was flush with federal pandemic relief money, the city is mostly drawing from its main operating fund to pay for it this year, squeezing out spending on other day-to-day costs.
“I will say one last thing: you’re not going to cut your way to a fair budget. You’re just not,” Johnson told reporters Tuesday before taking a dig at an unnamed council member who he said called last year for reducing the “line item for tree stump removals, and then they came back to me this year and said that you have to restore it.”
Not 24 hours later, the mayor sang a more conciliatory tune after his speech shouting out nearly a dozen aldermen.
“Did you see the list of things that we’ve done together?” the mayor said. “It expresses my commitment to continue to work with individuals — even the individuals who may not necessarily want to be the godparent of my children.”