Eyeing budget gap, mayor pledges change
Lightfoot says she has to work better with others
Mayor Lori Lightfoot embroidered her doomand-gloom forecast for Chicago’s COVID-era finances last week with a promise to turn over a new leaf as the city’s leader, acknowledging she needs “to push myself harder to work with people with whom I do not agree and who do not agree with me.”
Facing an estimated $1.2 billion deficit in the 2021 budget that could require her to try to find 26 aldermen to vote for politically life-threatening property tax increases or widespread city worker furloughs or layoffs, the pointedly uncompromising mayor was suddenly promising to play nice.
The one-sentence pledge deep in a speech where the mayor also outlined a nearly $800 million deficit for this year was received optimistically by some, but also with more than a few arched eyebrows from skeptics who figure the she’s just looking for allies in a crisis.
“When you’re faced with a $2 billion deficit, you need all the friends you can get,” said Far South Side Ald. Anthony Beale, 9th, a mayoral critic.
Beale said Mayor Rahm Emanuel “had a very hard time passing a $500 million property tax, so $2 billion (over two years) — and I question $2 billion, I think it’s going to be bigger than that — would be extremely tough.”
Lightfoot has repeatedly vowed not to wheel and deal to increase City Council support for her initiatives, and has regularly sparred with critics, from aldermen to President Donald Trump.
That no-holds-barred style has endeared her to many residents who see Lightfoot as a refreshing break from Chicago’s history of insider political quid pro quo. But it has also prompted grumbling, particularly from aldermen who complain that she won’t even consider their ideas for improving the neighborhoods they represent. The mayor’s approach has worked so far, at least legislatively. There have been some close City Council votes, but she hasn’t seen any of her major initiatives fail. And unlike Emanuel, who would make compromises to achieve landslide vote totals, Lightfoot insists she doesn’t care about margins as long as her proposals pass.
Still, her nod toward diplomacy in her budget speech was sweet music to Northwest Side Ald. Gilbert Villegas, 36th, Lightfoot’s City Council floor leader who will be tasked with selling her 2021 spending package to his colleagues.
“Hallelujah,” Villegas said. “I’ve been telling her people for over a year, ’You’ve got to meet with people, listen to their concerns about their neighborhoods. It will help.’ ”
A majority of aldermen have for decades followed the mayor’s lead, especially on annual budgets that have to be at least nominally balanced. If aldermen don’t like the mayor’s plan for increasing revenue or cutting costs, they have to come up with their own plans.
At a Friday news conference, Lightfoot declined to specify which services may be cut or where the city will get extra cash, saying it’s too early in the process.
When she unveiled the $800 million shortfall for 2020 and the $1.2 billion hole for 2021, the mayor called for a federal relief package for cities, saying that’s the best way for Chicago and other municipalities to avoid big tax hikes or service cuts due to the economic crisis driven by the coronavirus pandemic.
But the administration has to move forward with a budget plan using the tools at its disposal. If a federal package materializes, Lightfoot can pivot later to reduce or eliminate any cuts or tax increases.
In the meantime, aldermen are wondering whether Lightfoot’s need for their support in the search for revenue will lead to a more collaborative budget process this fall.
Ald. Byron SigchoLopez, 25th, said he wants budget talks to include a range of business leaders and advocacy groups who are concerned about police accountability and mental health clinics. But he said the city can’t cut its way out of its deficit without potentially causing more problems.
“We don’t need austerity measures that can worsen the situation of unemployment, of violence, of lack of access to mental health care,” said Sigcho-Lopez, who was one of the 11 aldermen to vote against Lightfoot’s 2020 budget.
He said a corporate head tax should also be on the table for companies like Amazon, Target and Walmart
that he said have a big advantage over local businesses, an idea Lightfoot has opposed.
Ald. Pat Dowell, 3rd, Lightfoot’s hand-picked Budget Committee chair, who will play a major role in ushering the 2021 budget through the City Council, said the mayor’s reputation for being uncooperative isn’t fair.
Dowell pointed to increases in spending on mental health services and anti-violence programming that aldermen asked for and got in the 2020 budget as evidence of Lightfoot’s willingness to listen.
“Can the mayor do things better, reach out more? Sure,” Dowell said. “But I think she’s absolutely been collaborative, and it’s a work in progress. Aldermen are getting their sea legs with her, she’s getting her sea legs with us, and the relationships will continue to evolve.”
Others hinted at potential pushback to come if the city goes forward with cuts.
“Public employees continue to provide critical services to Chicagoans, and we must ensure that we do not jeopardize those essential programs,” Chicago Federation of Labor President Bob Reiter said in a statement.
Democratic socialist Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, 35th, agreed that the mayor hasn’t done enough to work with aldermen but said her comments are a welcome “reset button.”
He pointed back to a website Lightfoot’s political action committee launched last year, shaming aldermen who voted against her first budget. The move was seen by many council members as petty and vindictive after the mayor’s 2020 plan passed easily.
“While we were told this was a new mayor and there’d be no retaliation or retribution, in return for voting no, there was a website the mayor published (criticizing alderman),” Ramirez-Rosa said.
Hours after Lightfoot called for more civility last week, she was asked on WTTW-11’s “Chicago Tonight” newscast about comments she made in April trashing former Chicago Public Schools head Paul Vallas for predicting COVID would blow a major hole in the budget.
Vallas, who ran Mayor Richard M. Daley’s budget office, wrote a commentary saying the city was in a “code red” financial emergency due to COVID. Asked about the piece at a news conference, Lightfoot responded at the time that “some people are desperate to be relevant” and claimed Vallas “probably hasn’t touched a city budget, doesn’t know the nuances, in two decades.”
Lightfoot last week didn’t apologize for the remarks but said nobody could’ve predicted the fallout from COVID in April even though Vallas’s op-ed proved prescient.
Given that, Vallas last week was among those who wondered whether Lightfoot’s outreach to critics is really just a lesson in Chicago-style realpolitik. “Maybe she doesn’t feel she has to be civil with me because I don’t have the power to vote against her in City Council.”