Why I Plan to Vote No on the 2023 Budget
Today, I voted no on the Mayor’s proposed City budget for FY 2023. I made this decision following conversations with neighbors, as well as active negotiations with my aldermanic colleagues and the Mayor’s Office. Every single year—including in an election year—it’s critical that City leaders pass bold budgets that reflect our values and tackle the biggest challenges facing our ward and city—chief among them community violence, housing affordability, and environmental protection and sustainability. We cannot afford to wait for another year or two to pass before we address head-on the problems that most directly affect Chicagoans’ day-to-day lives.
Following what has been perhaps the most painful and destabilizing two-year period in Chicago history, it could be easy to eschew bold-but-necessary action as our community continues to recover from the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. However, it’s more critical than ever that we craft a budget that unequivocally sets us on a course of robust growth from which all Chicagoans can benefit, regardless of zip code.
Whether it’s more frequent street and basement flooding, growing lakefront erosion, a diminishing tree canopy, or rising energy costs, climate change is wreaking havoc across Chicago—and it’s not letting up. That’s why we must re-establish the Department of Environment. Such an entity will prove indispensable as we work to power city buildings with 100% renewable energy by 2025, expand electric vehicle charging infrastructure citywide, improve our dismal recycling and composting rates, and reduce the carbon footprint of our existing stock of buildings. I’m glad that four additional positions have been added to the Office of Climate and Environmental Equity, bringing its total workforce up to 10. But anything short of an independent and empowered Department of Environment will prevent us from adequately addressing the climate emergency Chicago now faces.
The proposed 2023 budget includes hundreds of millions of dollars from the American Rescue Plan Act—the federal pandemic-relief package that was designed to help Chicago and cities across the country weather the worst impacts of Covid-19. To be clear, we should lament this feature of the budget, rather than celebrate it. Just last year, City Council passed a budget that channeled these federal funds toward a host of public safety initiatives, and at a time when certain types of violent crime were on the rise. Sadly, the $25 million we earmarked toward preventing and responding to domestic violence has yet to be spent, while less than 20% of the $85 million we allocated for violence-prevention organizations has gone out the door.
Critically, violence-prevention organizations like Chicago CRED are among the most effective tools we have for systemically reducing gun violence. Indeed, Chicago CRED recently noted that individuals who complete its program are approximately 50% less likely to become involved in gun violence as a victim or perpetrator. Accordingly, it’s unacceptable that peer organizations like READI Chicago and Communities Partnering 4 Peace are operating without more robust City support, particularly at a time when every community across Chicago is demanding a more thoughtful and effective approach to enhancing public safety. Going forward, City departments must find ways to get violence-prevention and other funds tied to Covid-19 relief out the door more quickly.
Along with community violence, housing instability and homelessness is an issue with which Chicago has been struggling for years, and that has been worsened by Covid-19. Indeed, the Economic Roundtable projects that chronic homelessness will increase by a staggering 49% over the next few years if we don’t do something to intervene. And while the current year’s budget includes $85 million for rapid rehousing and permanent supportive housing assistance, that was made possible by one-time federal pandemic-relief funds that will soon dry up. Accordingly, we need a permanent funding source to ensure these supports remain, and the Bring Chicago Home proposal is just that.
Currently, nearly every property sale in Chicago is subject to the same real estate transfer tax, or RETT, regardless of whether the sale is a $250,000 bungalow or a multimillion-dollar downtown skyscraper. The Bring Chicago Home proposal includes a progressive rate structure for the RETT in which the tax rate would be higher for property sales exceeding $1 million. This is precisely the sort of bold-but-necessary policy that City leaders should debate and adopt, rather than kicking the can down the road.
You can read my detailed thoughts below, including my positions on a number of important issues:
+ Investments
The 2020 budget includes very modest new investments for affordable housing and environmental protection.
Public Safety
The budgets for our various public safety departments are holding relatively steady. The Police Department will receive $1.94 billion, up $64 million from the current year’s budget. There are approximately 14,100 budgeted positions (the same number as the current year’s budget). Approximately 1,670 of these positions will be vacant at the start the year—12% of the overall CPD workforce.
I remain concerned with how senior CPD leadership is choosing to allocate resources. The University of Chicago Crime Lab recently conducted a workforce allocation study that called into question whether the deployment of patrol officers adequately reflects where and when shootings are likeliest to happen. We know this not because CPD shared the study with City Council or the public, but because the Chicago Tribune received a redacted copy after submitting a FOIA request. That continued withholding prevents City Council from doing its job of providing adequate oversight over our City’s largest department.
Also concerning is the fact that, for years, the budgeted amounts for CPD overtime and misconduct lawsuits have not reflected actual expenditures. Earlier this month, the Chicago Tribune found that between 2012 and 2021, the City budgeted approximately $720 million for overtime but spent approximately $1.2 billion. The Tribune further observed that during the same period of time, the City budgeted $329 million for police misconduct lawsuits but paid out $639 million. Going forward, CPD leadership must be more transparent about actual expenditures, and City Council must do a better job holding them accountable; after all, these are hundreds of millions of dollars that could potentially be spent instead on pension obligations, housing supports, mental health services, and local infrastructure improvements.
And to date, CPD is unable to identify the number of civilian positions that are occupied by sworn officers, leading too many officers to spend their time on tasks like recordkeeping and time entry—tasks that could be done just as efficiently and more cheaply by civilians. CPD must better ensure that officers spend time on services that they are best positioned to perform, including responding to and investigating incidents of violent crime.
One silver lining is the new Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability. Created by City Council last year, the new Commission began operating two months ago in September, and pursuant to its statutory obligations, it recently released a detailed set of observations and recommendations regarding CPD’s budget, including that CPD should publish quarterly reports on district-level staffing, call response times, and canceled days off.
The Commission also recommended that the City provide quarterly updates on the work of Chicago’s Crisis Assistance Response and Engagement (CARE) Team. Composed of paramedics, crisis workers, and crisis-intervention-trained police officers, these Teams respond to non-violent mental health 911 calls in three of Chicago’s 22 police districts (including the 19th District, which covers all of the 47th Ward south of Lawrence Ave).
It’s critical that the City’s Department of Public Health (CDPH), which oversees these Teams, expands their reach citywide as quickly as possible, and ensures that they operate 24/7. (Currently, they only operate from 9am to 4pm during the workweek.) In addition, we need CDPH to ramp up hiring of new mental health clinicians at the City’s public clinics; only a third of the new positions have been filled to date. And as noted above, we must get violence-preventions funds out the door more quickly. The work these organizations perform is among the most effective methods for reducing gun violence; we simply can’t afford to sit on dozens of millions of unspent dollars for another year.
Environmental Protection and Sustainability
In recent months, City government has announced multiple ambitious plans and goals relating to environmental protection and sustainability. By themselves, however, they won’t guarantee that Chicago meets the moment in its ongoing battle against climate change.
In fall 2019, Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced the creation of the Office of the Environment to be housed within the Mayor’s office. Unfortunately, that proposal included only one position—a proposal that was so out of step with the scope of the problem that some dubbed it a “cubicle” of the environment.
Several weeks ago, Mayor Lightfoot announced that the Office of the Environment would be renamed the Office of Climate and Environmental Equity and include six total positions. But this represents only one additional person beyond the five existing environmental policy team members, and is less than half the size of City Hall’s press office. While I commend the Administration for adding another four positions to bring the Office’s total up to 10, as well as adding several positions to the Department of Streets and Sanitation to help implement a third party’s recommendations for improving Chicago’s dismal recycling rates, we can and must do more, and quickly.
Housing
My office continues to hear regularly from residents who are struggling to find and keep homes they can afford, including neighbors who are currently unhoused. And with interest rates on the rise and a recession looming, the housing crisis is likely to get worse before it gets better.
The proposed 2023 budget attempts to address these problems largely by rolling over unused federal funds from the current year. In addition, the City will fund 1,200 units of rapid rehousing—up from 800 units in 2022—and five additional positions in the Department of Family and Support Services for homeless outreach and migrant settlement.
As noted above, however, City leaders have failed to make meaningful progress with the Bring Chicago Home proposal, which, if adopted, could bring in over $100 million annually to help combat housing instability and homelessness. And among the various housing-related needs in our community, my office is seeing an especially significant increase in short-term housing requests from domestic violence victims.
Other City Services
One of the complaints we hear most often from residents is outages relating to street and alley lights. The proposed 2023 budget seeks to address this problem, in part, by adding 24 positions to the Division of Electrical Operations within the Department of Transportation (CDOT). Moreover, CDOT has confirmed that the City’s smart lighting program is 100% complete for all cobra head type LED light fixture installations.
We also receive a significant number of tree-trimming and -replacement requests. While the current year’s budget includes a significant increase in the number of tree crews, the Bureau of Forestry encountered major challenges with laborer retention as well as training for forestry vehicle operators. Leadership in the Department of Streets and Sanitation (within which the Bureau is housed) is bullish on its ability to improve tree-related operations, with additional rounds of hiring and training having been completed.
One aspect of the proposed 2023 budget that I support concerns the $1.8 billion in bond funding that is connected to the Chicago Works capital plan. The City will use these resources to fund projects across our ward and city that range from street resurfacing, ADA ramps, and sidewalk replacement to bridge repair, traffic signal replacement, public safety cameras, and lead service line replacement.
One overarching issue that the City will need to improve is recruitment and retention across its various departments. The 2023 budget included 500 budgeted vacancies in the Department of Public Health, 350 in Water Management, 340 in Streets and Sanitation, 320 in Transportation, and 90 in Family and Support Services. In order for the City to spend its budgeted funds quickly and efficiently, we need these vacant positions filled—a problem that, to be sure, public, private, and nonprofit sectors across the country are struggling with.
+ Revenue
Due in part to better-than-expected revenue projections—approximately $260 million in total—the City does not plan to substantially increase taxes in FY 2023.
The 2023 budget also includes a small property tax increase of $25 million that is tied to new property growth from TIF expirations and new development.
In addition, the budget does make use of approximately $152 million in pandemic relief funds to replace anticipated lost revenue for FY 2023.
+ Moving Forward
Last year, City Council approved a plan to spend the $2 billion in temporary funds Chicago received in federal Covid-relief funding. As noted above, however, the City has struggled mightily to get these funds out the door, blunting our ability to improve public safety and expand affordable housing options in the ways the budget envisioned. And while City Council has attempted to increase transparency and accountability in the spending of these funds by creating a standalone Budget Subcommittee on the Chicago Recovery Plan, we must do more.
Next May, municipal leaders will begin a new four-year term at what will almost certainly be a time of great challenge. Indeed, along with the many problems referenced above, we will need to address the City’s fiscal woes. Between 2024 and 2027, the City will likely need to direct at least $180 million in new funds to our growing pension obligations, and while Fitch recently upgraded our rating to BBB (from BBB-), we have a very long way to go before we can routinely count on high investment grades.
I sincerely hope that City Council and the Mayor meet the moment by embracing the transformational change that Chicagoans need and deserve.
What’s in the 2023 Budget?
+ New revenue, savings, and efficiencies
- $98 million from declaring a TIF surplus
- $40 million from an upfront casino payment for pensions
- $20 million from improved revenue collection
- $15 million from fund sweeps
+ Substantial new investments
- $242 million for an earlier-than-required pension payment
- $10 million to improve the City’s human resources, procurement, and information technology infrastructure
- $5 million for assisting migrant new arrivals
- $3 million for access to reproductive health care