CHICAGO CITY HALL (WBBM Newsradio) -- Mayor Brandon Johnson rolled out a revised version of his budget plan for next year at Friday’s City Council meeting, but there’s no indication this new budget is any more likely to win support from aldermen.
The most notable change is to the Mayor’s controversial plan to collect $21 per worker per month from the city’s largest employers.
The budget introduced last month exempted companies with fewer than 100 employees in the city. The revision to the so-called head tax raises the minimum exemption to 200 workers, after criticism from business leaders and even some of the mayor’s supporters on the Council.
Southwest side Alderman Marty Quinn says even with that change, getting approval in the council is, as he puts it, a big lift.
"There’s a healthy amount of opposition against the head tax, and it also begs the question well, where’s that money going?" said Quinn (13th Ward) before Friday's Council meeting. "It’s not like that money’s going to pay off our supplemental pension payment."
The mayor wants money from that tax - which he calls a “community safety surcharge” - to go into a proposed $100 million violence prevention fund.
Quinn calls the head tax a "job-killer."
"I’m a border ward, so it’s easy for businesses ... and I do have an industrial park ... to pick up and move to Bedford Park, which is just on the other side of 65th Street," he said.
The mayor's team is hoping for approval next week, but that seems far from certain.