In a year when personal economies are being squeezed by higher prices for everything from gas to housing to food, few topics can focus people's attention faster than jobs ... or the prospect of losing jobs.
This week, we saw leaders from two of Chicago's biggest employers - the City of Chicago and Chicago Public Schools - both throw around the word "layoffs" as they try to deal with their own budgetary challenges. The fact that both organizations are openly talking about making cuts going into critical election cycles may be an indication of how serious the issue is, though as usual the motivation may be as much political as fiscal.
At CPS, schools Superintendent and CEO Dr. Macquline King and her team pulled the wraps off a proposed operating budget for the 2026-27 school year that closes a $700 million deficit without resorting to additional borrowing, which in itself deserves note (Chicago's Civic Federation said it was "encouraged"). However, it does include layoffs at the central office, the elimination of assistant principals at schools with enrollments under 250 students, and the possible layoff of as many as 760 teachers and more than 800 aides. The fact that as many as 75% of those laid-off educators and aides may be re-hired before the start of school doesn't diminish the impact of the potential cuts, especially for those who are affected. "The budget we present today is balanced, but getting there was not easy," Dr. King told reporters on Wednesday during her presentation.
What's more, the district says it'll be ready to impose other savings measures, including turning five professional development days into mandatory unpaid days off for staff, if state lawmakers don't approve more aid for schools. "This will require a unified call to action," Dr. King said, pledging to work with stakeholders to lobby legislators to approve additional funding.
The Chicago Teachers Union called the proposed budget "dead on arrival," with President Stacy Davis Gates describing it as "beyond reckless," and using it as a new opportunity to demand Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Democrats in Springfield move faster to get into compliance with Illinois' school funding formula, which would mean another $1 billion for CPS. Davis Gates and the union would like the state to find that money by increasing taxes on businesses and wealthier people (what Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson calls "progressive revenue"), but a proposed "millionaires' tax" didn't have enough support to get to the House floor during the spring session, and the governor has said the state's increasing funding as quickly as it can.
The Board of Education has until August 29 to approve a budget for CPS, and it'll be the final such vote taken by the body before it becomes a fully-elected board in November. Expect the financial stewardship of the district ... and the specter of layoffs ... to be a major point in what's already been an active campaign.
As for the City of Chicago, the layoff discussion was tucked into an hours-long City Council committee hearing with members of Mayor Johnson's finance team. What was billed as a mid-year checkup on the city's budget quickly became the latest skirmish in what remains an unsettled battle between the mayor and some moderate aldermen about the spending plan enacted at the end of last year without the mayor's signature, and over his objections.
Budget Director Annette Guzman, Comptroller Michael Belsky and acting Chief Financial Officer Steven Mahr told aldermen on the Budget and Government Operations Committee that the city is forecast to end 2026 with a revenue shortfall of about $90 million, which if unfilled by the end of August could force as many as 2,000 layoffs, including about 1,000 at the Chicago Police Department, heretofore as sacred a cow as exists in city government.
Guzman said that while some of the city's initiatives are overperforming, she and her team showed a series of graphics showing a number of programs enacted in the budget have generated no money, all with one thing in common: each one - from selling off unpaid parking-ticket debt to putting advertising messages on bridge houses and vehicles - was approved by aldermen as an alternative to the mayor's proposed per-employee "head tax" on the city's biggest employers.
"The financial headwinds reflected in this report are substantial," said Guzman, who told aldermen under increasingly pointed questioning that she and her team had tried to warn City Council about unproven and potentially risky revenue-generating proposals, and that they were working to right the ship: "My team and departments will be focused on finding structural solutions, not one-time fixes."
The aldermen who led the "alternate" budget - who have dubbed themselves the "Budget Accountability Coalition" - strongly suggested that the Johnson Administration was deliberately slow-walking provisions of the budget that the mayor personally opposed, which accounted for their under-performance. "Those revenue sources that the mayor singled out as ones he doesn't like ... inexplicably are all at zero dollars!" exclaimed Downtown Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd Ward), with Ald. Ray Lopez (15th Ward) from the Southwest side adding that "our priorities are secondary." Guzman insisted that her office was working "enormously hard" to make the aldermen's priorities viable, despite the mayor's opposition. "Being opposed to something is irrespective of what it takes to achieve them," she told North side Ald. Debra Silverstein (50th Ward).
"I'm sorry, but I disagree with that," Ald. Silverstein retorted.
Aldermen aligned with Mayor Johnson lashed out at their moderate colleagues. "Chicagoans should be angry!" said Pilsen aldermen Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th Ward), while Northwest side Ald. Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez (33rd Ward) suggested the hearing had been filled with "gaslighting."
After the hearing, the Coalition released a statement calling the whole thing "theatre," and suggested that the mayor was engineering the failure of the aldermen's priorities as a pretense to raising taxes on business owners and others. And city leaders have a number of options to avoid layoffs, including approving transfer from surplus accounts and reducing the amount of an expected extra pension payment. But if Chicago winds up being forced to cut jobs months before a citywide election, Mayor Johnson won't be the only person at City Hall facing an uncertain political future.
