This blog post examines the City of Chicago’s long-term liabilities. It includes a review of trends in the City’s long-term governmental and business-type activities, liabilities, debt service trends and a discussion of its tax-supported long-term debt and recent credit rating changes.
The Civic Federation on Wednesday released its latest report, City of Chicago FY2024 Proposed Budget: Analysis and Recommendations. The report was prepared for consideration by Mayor Johnson and his administration as well as the City Council in advance of the Council’s upcoming vote on the proposed FY2024 budget in mid-November. The report is also intended to be a resource for the public. Following the report’s release, Civic Federation Acting President Sarah Wetmore testified at…
EXECUTIVE SUMMARYThe Civic Federation supports Mayor Johnson’s proposed FY2024 budget of $16.6 billion. The City of Chicago budget continues to benefit from the region’s strong economic recovery from the pandemic and recently improved revenue performance in areas that had thus far been slower to recover, such as tourism and large events. Further, it reflects several policies that the Civic Federation supports, including $306.6 million in supplemental payments to the City’s four pension funds…
Federation praises supplemental pension payments, increase in Police Department civilian positions, but warns of budget’s structural imbalance and future fiscal strains
In this blog post, the Civic Federation analyzes indicators of the fiscal health of the City of Chicago’s four pension funds based on the most recent FY2022 actuarial reports, dated December 31, 2022. The City of Chicago’s pension funds are severely underfunded due to a combination of statutory underfunding, benefit enhancements, investment losses, optimistic assumptions and other long-term problems. In 2016, the City’s four pension funds began transitioning per State law to 40-year…
This blog takes an updated look at the Chicago Police Department (CPD) budget and staffing levels for 2023 based on the City of Chicago’s adopted budget for fiscal year 2023. The Mayor will introduce a new budget proposal for FY2024 later this fall. How much does the City of Chicago budget for public safety?The total City of Chicago budget adopted for Fiscal Year 2023, which ends on December 31, is $13.3 billion for all local funds. Local funds include all operating funds, but…
In recent years there has been renewed interest in developing and implementing a city charter for Chicago. A key theme in Ed Bachrach and Austin Berg’s 2019 book, The New Chicago Way: Lessons from Other Big Cities, is the idea that a city charter could help reform and strengthen the City’s governmental institutions. The 2023 joint series from Crain’s Chicago Business and the University of Chicago Center for Effective Government, “One City, 50 Wards: Does the City That Works Actually…
Last week, the Civic Federation released its report, Financial Challenges Facing the Chicago Mayor and the City Council, which provided an overview of the City’s top financial challenges, options for additional revenue sources, financial management options to promote efficiencies and several recommendations. Among these recommendations was a call to expand the budget and authority of the City Council’s Office of Financial Analysis (COFA) as an independent source of information and analysis for…
Throughout the 2023 Chicago mayoral campaign, Mayor Johnson stated that it was his intention to avoid increasing property taxes, citing concerns about the burden already placed on many Chicagoans. But, while the impact of property tax increases on individual homeowners and business owners is an important factor to consider, the new mayoral administration must also weigh the property tax in context of the City’s overall revenue needs and its competitiveness compared to other parts of the region…
WTTW
