Mayor Johnson's latest budget is a slapdash pastiche of high taxes, higher fees, and a bailout of CPS
Mayor Brandon Johnson’s budget process puts his and his administration’s incompetence and militancy on full display, and Chicago taxpayers are paying the price. Despite the city contracting with professional services firm Ernst and Young (EY) to submit an analysis searching for efficiencies in government, the mayor ignored EY consultants’ roadmap for savings while pushing a wave of regressive taxes and fees that will hit working families and small businesses the hardest.
Ignoring his own efficiencies roadmap
The mayor’s office has shown little interest or ability in tackling the spending side of Chicago’s fiscal crisis, even as total city spending has ballooned by billions since 2019. When Johnson commissioned the $3.1–$3.7 million EY report, its conclusions identified approximate savings and new revenues through efficiencies, consolidation, and smarter procurement between $530 million and $1.4 billion. Yet the mayor’s budget barely touches these recommendations, choosing instead to lean on new taxes and fees.
A wave of regressive taxes and fees
Rather than pursue efficiencies, Mayor Johnson has proposed more than 20 new or increased city taxes and fees that could raise hundreds of millions of dollars, with the flagship proposal being a revived corporate “Head Tax.” None of these revenue measures are tied to income, meaning they fall on a wide cross-section of residents and struggling small and mid-sized employers, undermining growth and job creation. The head tax fight is less about sound budgeting than about preserving a political narrative that Johnson is simply asking “the rich” to pay more, even as the rest of his plan quietly squeezes ordinary Chicagoans.
Media narrative and the Head Tax
Much of the media has adopted Mayor Johnson’s framing by obsessing over the head tax while giving far less attention to the broader package of regressive revenue hikes embedded in his budget. Even some City Council alternatives — such as talk of higher garbage fees to offset head tax revenue — risk reinforcing Johnson’s narrative instead of challenging the underlying problem of over-taxation and overspending. The near silence, locally and nationally, on the cumulative impact of these other taxes and fees makes the budget debate appear narrower and more benign than it really is.
Misleading “dedicated” revenues
Particularly insulting is the mayor’s attempt to link specific new revenue streams to specific spending categories as a way to stigmatize opposition. The most visible example is Johnson’s claim the head tax is dedicated to “public safety” and “violence prevention,” creating the false narrative that opposing the tax is opposing safety investments themselves. This gambit also allows him to posture as increasing core investments funded by “big corporations,” while masking the fact his broader budget strategy leans heavily on taxing the working class and the poor through a range of other measures.
Property taxes and CPS: A back-door hike
Equally misleading is Johnson’s claim he is “holding the line” on property taxes. In reality, his budget steers massive new property tax resources to Chicago Public Schools (CPS) through Tax Increment Financing (TIF) and other mechanisms, while his appointed school board continues to hike the CPS levy. CPS already receives more than half of all Chicago property tax revenues, and recent budgets and forecasts point to continued growth in the district’s property tax revenue through the end of the decade.
Billions in new money, no restraint
Since COVID struck in 2020, CPS has seen an unprecedented surge in funding: Regular state and federal increases, more than $2.8 billion in federal COVID relief, and large infusions of TIF-related property tax revenue. Despite this windfall — and despite the Chicago Teachers Union’s successful push to keep schools closed far longer than most big districts, contributing to a roughly 10 percent enrollment decline since 2019 — CPS raised its property tax levy to the legal maximum year after year. That combination of falling enrollment and rising revenues underscores how little discipline exists on the spending side.
City Hall as CPS’ subsidy engine
Chicago’s budget has increasingly turned CPS into a quasi-subsidiary of City Hall, with subsidies that now exceed $1.3 billion a year once pension assistance, TIF surpluses, capital subsidies, fee waivers, and other supports are included. At the same time, CPS receives about 56 percent of all property tax revenues, more than one-fifth of state K–12 aid, and a large share of federal K–12 funding flowing into Chicago. While the city has shed thousands of public safety positions since 2019, CPS has added thousands of full-time employees and now employs more than 43,000 staff for about 323,000 students — roughly one employee for every seven to eight students, with much of the growth outside the classroom.
CTU as a political machine
The Chicago Teachers Union is no longer simply a traditional union focused on enforcing the contract or improving teaching and learning conditions. It has become a full-fledged political machine intent on expanding its control over City Hall, the school system, and the flow of tax dollars, now backed by a mayor whose political fortunes are intertwined with its agenda. In this configuration, CTU represents not just a bargaining counterpart but an existential threat to Chicago’s long-term fiscal stability.
A manufactured image, a hard reality
The mayor’s communications strategy is designed to frame him as a relentless champion of the working class, standing up to corporations and conservative politicians. However, the substance of his budget tells a different story: He refuses to implement his own consultants’ efficiency plan, pushes regressive taxes and fees, protects and expands CTU-driven CPS spending, and uses the Head Tax as a political smokescreen. Chicagoans should look past the mayor’s slogans: This budget is less about equity and safety than about sustaining a politically connected machine at the expense of the city’s long-term fiscal health.
