Twenty-nine Chicago aldermen told Mayor Brandon Johnson in a Sept. 28 letter that they will not support a property tax increase or a head tax to close the city’s projected $882.4 million deficit for 2027.
Signers include Aldermen Raymond Lopez (15th), Marty Quinn (13th), Silvana Tabares (23rd) and Derrick Curtis (18th). The letter sets three terms for the mayor’s 2027 budget: No property tax increase, no head tax or other tax on job growth, and no reliance on state revenue the General Assembly has not approved.
“We should not spend that has not yet arrived,” the aldermen wrote.
The mayor is scheduled to present his budget Oct. 21. The mayor’s office was asked for comment and did not respond.
The projected gap is $283.9 million smaller than the 2027 deficit the city forecast last year, according to the current 2027 Budget Forecast. The letter called it “a fiscal challenge of the first order” nonetheless.
Cuts first, then questions
The aldermen said the city should cut the recurring cost of government before asking anyone to pay more.
They pointed to a $3 million Ernst & Young report the mayor’s office commissioned in 2025. According to the letter, the report identified more than $1 billion in savings. Savings include: retiring long-vacant positions, cutting management overhead, reforming procurement, controlling overtime and civilianizing posts that do not require a sworn police officer.
“If the budget claims an efficiency, the Council and the public should be able to name the position, contract or program that was actually cut,” the letter said.
The aldermen also asked the administration to say how much of the deficit is permanent and how much is one-time.
According to the letter, the administration has named the deficit’s drivers; about $400 million in police misconduct settlements, $90 million in added pension costs, $70 million in higher debt service, cost-of-living adjustments and inflation.
“The settlements are largely one-time. The pension and debt growth is not,” aldermen wrote.
The letter also said borrowing, refinancing, reserves and asset sales should not pay for recurring operations.
The aldermen did not rule out all new revenue.
Once meaningful recurring savings are on the table, they wrote, they are prepared to weigh “reasonable, locally controlled revenue options.”
They would start by collecting money already owed to the city.
‘Not going to happen’
Quinn said signers wanted to stake out their positions early in the budget process.
“The mayor’s disingenuous to the taxpayers if he thinks he’s going to come back from Springfield with a new bucket of money,” Quinn said. “It’s not going to happen.”
Lopez said the mayor has no path forward without serious changes to spending or revenue or without help from Springfield.
Quinn called the mayor’s Springfield agenda unrealistic.
During the veto session the vote threshold rises to three-fifths: 71 votes to pass a bill in the House and 36 in the Senate, he said.
“People aren’t going to be eager to support the current mayor,” Quinn said. “His work product in Springfield has been a complete failure.”
Quinn also questioned why state lawmakers would let the city raise taxes without recouping any of the money for the state’s own budget gaps.
“I think the mayor may be utilizing a Springfield agenda to distract Chicagoans from his own shortcomings in his budget-making process,” he said.
Quinn pointed to the idea of a grocery tax and to the mayor’s proposed $300 million property tax increase, which Quinn said the council voted down within eight days.
“So the mayor is really interested in finding ways to tax people,” Quinn said.
The head tax
Quinn said the head tax stunts growth and penalizes businesses for adding workers, whether the charge is “$21 or $32 per employee.”
Tabares said the council voted down the head tax last year stating the mayor “hasn’t gotten the message.”
Before raising taxes, she said, the city should collect what residents owe in delinquent water bills and in parking ticket fines and fees.
She said former Inspector General Deborah Witzburg found at least $8.1 billion in outstanding debt owed to the city that is not being collected, according to its April 2026 report.
“Before we start taxing residents and businesses, what are we doing to have residents pay back that debt?” Tabares said.
Residents who pay on time are shortchanged because they pay more in property and other taxes, she said.
She also noted the Ernst & Young report.
“Where are those recommendations?” Tabares said. “What has been implemented, what hasn’t and why?”
Tabares said the city needs more transparency from the mayor on the deficit figure and must “right-size the budget.”
Quinn also criticized what he called the mayor’s focus on renters over homeowners.
“The mayor loves talking about renters,” he said. “I’ve never heard him talk about incentivizing homeowners. Let’s grow our housing stock through home ownership to create generational wealth.”
“The mayor, on balance when it comes to finances, gets a grade of an F,” Quinn said.
Debt override falls one vote short
Lopez, Quinn, Tabares and Curtis backed an effort to override the mayor’s veto of a measure that would have required a 60% council vote for any new city debt.
The override failed by one vote. Quinn said 33 aldermen, including himself, supported it.
“When you’re talking about the city’s debt, it’s a significant number,” Quinn said. “You take what the city’s debt is, you couple that with our pension obligation and that’s 40% of our operating expense right out of the gate.”
He said the proposed threshold matches the one used in the Illinois General Assembly.
“It’s a good thing to serve as an additional check on the current mayor, who frankly, the taxpayers don’t trust with the checkbook,” Quinn said. “So I stand by the policy,” Quinn said. “If nothing more, I elevated the recognition of the city’s finances.”
Wrongful conviction settlements
The City Council unanimously approved a settlement of more than $260 million tied to 1980s and ’90s misconduct by Detective Reynaldo Guevara resulting in a group of wrongful conviction claims, Lopez said.
Lopez opposed some past settlements.
He said he voted for this one because it was the best deal the city could reach with law firm Loevy & Loevy grouping the cases together, including some in which certificates of innocence had been questioned.
Lopez said the city could have faced nearly $800 million in court-ordered payments if the cases had gone to trial, and that the settlement cut potential damages by nearly $500 million.
“There’s still some in the pipeline, but a large chunk of them have now been taken off the docket,” Lopez said.
Quinn described the settlement as a math problem.
City lawyers told aldermen that juries award about $4 million for each year a person was wrongly imprisoned, he said, and the cases cover well over 300 years of collective incarceration, he said. Quinn said the settlement works out to about $600,000 per year.
“So, looking at this from my perspective, it’s about the city’s bottom line and their exposure here,” he said.
“No one ever wants to be paying out taxpayer dollars for settlements,” Quinn said. “For this particular settlement, it’s the right thing to do for the taxpayer, for sure. The exposure here could’ve been close to a billion dollars.”
Lopez said the city must ask how to pay settlement recipients “in a way that helps them not revert to a life of crime once they get millions from the taxpayers.” He said one past settlement recipient was later arrested.
“Then in this person’s case the issue also was, why are we giving to someone who’s also in jail as we speak and we were not informed of that,” he said.
Lopez, Quinn and Tabares were among 10 aldermen who signed an Aug. 6 letter to Corporation Counsel Mary Richardson-Lowry asking the Law Department to change how approved settlements are paid.
That letter cited a CWBChicago report that Francisco Nanez had been arrested in May 2024 in a case involving attempted criminal sexual offenses against a minor. The letter said Nanez has since pleaded guilty.
The year before his arrest, the Law Department recommended an $8 million settlement for Nanez in an unrelated case involving a 1986 arson and murder, according to the letter.
“We find it reprehensible that such a criminal would be receiving any taxpayer settlement,” the letter said. Settlements should not be given “for the purposes of continuing a life of crime, perversion and abuse,” they wrote.
The letter made two requests: pay settlements in quarterly installments instead of lump sums and suspend a recipient’s settlement immediately after an arrest for felony criminal activity and void it if the person is found guilty.
A settlement the council rejected
Tabares said the city should reexamine how much it budgets for settlements. She cited a case the city had agreed to settle for $8.5 million before Lopez questioned it.
Dominga Flores Gomez was killed when three people in a stolen car led police on a high-speed chase from Back of the Yards to Bryant Park, resulting in a crash. Her family sought $8.5 million. The council’s Finance Committee voted against the settlement and the case went to trial. A jury faulted the driver who refused to stop for police.
“We continue to make payments,” Tabares said. “We’re not really doing anything to fight these settlements. No one has really fought in court for a settlement that was passed in the council.”
Domestic violence task force
The council unanimously passed a resolution sponsored by Tabares launching phase two of the Chicago-Cook County Domestic Violence Against Women Task Force, Lopez said.
“We did another resolution to introduce phase two of the task force, which will require implementing the recommendations that we passed in phase one,” task force co-chair Tabares said. “We have to put those recommendations to work. We will make sure that we’re doing domestic relations reform, ensuring orders of protection are being served and that we have more transparency and a public dashboard.”
Tabares said the task force has been survivor-led from the beginning.
A CBS investigation found only about 25% of orders of protection were being served, according to a May, 2026 report from Cook County Chief Judge Charlies Beach’s office.
No public data shows how they are served, she said.
She also raised concerns about electronic monitoring.
In May, there were 3,000 people are on monitoring with about 249 of them in AWOL status and wanted on a warrant, Tabares said.Â
The statistics are confirmed by a May 2026 report issued by Chief Justice Charles Beach’s office that has responsibility for tracking EM participants.
“Meaning we don’t know where they’re at,” she said. “We have seen instances on the CTA where a worker was stabbed and killed recently by a man on EM, so you do need legislative changes. We need transparency. The public needs answers. How are we fixing it?”
CTA crime and policing
During public comment at a council meeting, speakers pressed for action on crime on the CTA.
Lopez, a former member of the Amalgamated Transit Union, said he understands the push to protect frontline workers but questioned why unions backing the mayor have not criticized him on public safety.
“Why are they not holding their chosen candidate accountable for what he did?” he said.
Quinn said the mayor “faiiled miserably” on CTA crime.
“What I heard loud and clear from the members of the ATU Local 241 is that they find the chair of the CTA is woefully incompetent,” he said. “Well, guess what? That’s the mayor’s appointment.”
Quinn sponsored an ordinance putting a question about restarting gunshot detection technology on the November ballot and is urging 13th Ward voters to vote “yes,” he said.
He said the mayor has still not partnered with ward leaders on their push for a new police district.
Tabares said she is circulating a petition in her ward urging the next police superintendent to support a new district on the Southwest Side.
The Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability has also been interviewing candidates and is expected to send recommendations to the mayor, she said.
“When the new police superintendent comes before the city council for a vote, I’m going to tell the next superintendent, ‘You need to support our police district here on the Southwest Side,'” Tabares said.
Tax break clawbacks
The Committee on Economic, Capital and Technology advanced a substitute ordinance from Lopez that would let the city take back property tax incentives from owners or occupants who violate the terms of the city’s economic development tax incentive program.
The ordinance amends city code section 2-45-165 and is scheduled for a full council hearing Oct. 14, as part of the Committee on Economic, Capital and Technology Development report.
“We’ve never had a way to claw them back when developers fail to meet their obligations; to meet our expectations,” Lopez said.
On the ballot
Chicago voters will see three advisory referendum questions on the November ballot. Advisory questions are not binding and gauge public opinion. They are:
1) “Should the City of Chicago restart the use of gunshot detection technology that informs first responders when gunshots are detected?”
2) “Should Chicago develop a permanent festival and outdoor event space for large-scale events?”
3) “Shall the City of Chicago pursue all lawful means to recover financial compensation from the federal government for the costs and economic harm caused by the Donald Trump administration’s violent, militarized ICE operations, including the Midway Blitz operation led by Greg Bovino, to recover lost tax revenue, public safety response costs, and services provided to residents and families affected by those operations?”
