Layoffs needed to balance Chicago's budget?

CHICAGO CITY HALL (WBBM Newsradio) -- Mayor Brandon Johnson's finance team is raising the specter of potential city layoffs if Chicago aldermen don't act quickly to close a budget gap, with members of City Council pointing fingers about what caused it.

Budget Director Annette Guzman told members of the Council's Budget and Government Operations Committee Thursday that the city is on track to record a nearly $90 million shortfall for this year, and that aldermen have until the end of next month to take action to avoid the possibility of job cuts.

"The financial headwinds reflected in this report are substantial," Guzman said during her testimony noting that the shortfall equates to as many as 2,000 possible layoffs, as many as half of which could be in the Chicago Police Department.

Guzman, city Comptroller Michael Belsky, and acting Chief Financial Officer Steven Mahr told aldermen that the shortfall was tied to initiatives approved by City Council back in December as alternatives to Mayor Johnson's proposed corporate "head tax" on large employers. The mayor neither approved nor vetoed the budget currently in effect.

Guzman and her team displayed charts showing that each alternative idea included in the budget ... including selling off unpaid parking ticket debt and augmented-reality advertising ... has produced no revenue. Going forward, she told aldermen "my team and departments will be focused on ... structural solutions, not one-time fixes."

"Chicagoans would be mad - and should be angry," said Pilsen Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th Ward), who lashed out at members of the group that led the alternate spending plan, who now call themselves the "Budget Accountability Coalition."

But mayoral opponents, including Downtown Ald. Brendan Reilly, said the report was more evidence that the Administration was deliberately jamming up and slowing down budget initiatives the mayor opposes.

"Those revenue sources that the mayor singled out as ones he doesn't like ... inexplicably are all at zero dollars!" exclaimed Ald. Reilly (42nd Ward), facetiously calling it a "coincidence." Southwest side Ald. Ray Lopez (15th Ward) said the report made it clear that "our priorities are secondary" to those of the Mayor.

Guzman insisted she and her team tried to warn aldermen at the time about revenue sources they thought were unproven, and they're now working hard to put them into place: "I think we're equally frustrated."