CHICAGO (CBS) – Mayor Brandon Johnson will announce his new budget proposal on Wednesday and with it his plan to attempt the bridge a budget gap of almost $1 billion.
CBS News Chicago has learned the mayor may be going back on one of his most popular campaign promises to do so.
Johnson pledged not to raise property taxes, but some councilors are receiving personal briefings from the mayor’s team, who said that is the way forward. It was not yet clear on Tuesday how large that increase could be.
“I’m the only candidate for mayor who doesn’t want to raise property taxes,” Johnson said in a campaign ad.
That promise, sources told CBS News Chicago, appears on track to last just one year.
During last year’s budget speech to City Council members, Johnson touted new investments, including relaunching the city’s Department of the Environment, adding a Department of Technology and Innovation and proposing nearly $5 million more for services in the field of mental health care.
This year, the mayor will try to balance a budget with a nearly $1 billion deficit with a proposed property tax increase. His team informed some councilors about the idea, but not others, ahead of his budget speech to council on Wednesday.
It is unclear exactly how much property taxes will be increased.
“He doesn’t seem to have many serious cost-cutting measures in mind, so he should do that through new revenue and a $1 billion increase in property taxes. He couldn’t get that past the city council. ” said David Greising, president of the Better Government Association.
Greising noted the automatic property tax increase former Mayor Lori Lightfoot left for Johnson was linked to inflation. He refused to carry it out.
“That would have generated additional revenue that the city could have used last year, that maybe could have been rolled over to this year, so it wasn’t available to him,” Greising said.
Johnson has tried to create new sources of revenue, such as a tax on properties sold for more than $1 million, but that was rejected.
However, experts say a property tax alone would not be enough to close the budget gap. Johnson is expected to say more on Wednesday about how he plans to close that deficit and get a majority of city councilors on board by the end of the year.
