Lightfoot offers two more concessions to round up budget votes

Mayor Lori Lightfoot is making some key concessions to win support for her 2021 budget. | Sun-Times file

Mayor Lori Lightfoot has offered to delay her $94 million property tax increase until January 2022 — and eliminate “carve-outs” in the Welcoming City ordinance without tying it to her pandemic budget — to ease City Council opposition to her $12.8 billion spending plan.

The two additional concessions came after Lightfoot canceled plans to lay off 350 city employees in favor of borrowing against future marijuana revenues.

The property tax delay — until coronavirus vaccines are expected to be widely-distributed — would give Chicago’s pandemic-ravaged economy time to fully re-open and recover.

Lightfoot personally communicated the property tax offer Sunday during a conference call with members of the City Council’s Latino Caucus, according to Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th).

She did not say how she planned to make up the $94 million in lost revenue.

The second concession calls for the mayor to honor her campaign promise to eliminate exceptions in Chicago’s Welcoming City Ordinance in December separately — without tying it to the 2021 budget.

Currently, Chicago police officers are permitted to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement if targeted individuals: are in the city’s gang database; have pending felony prosecutions or prior felony convictions; or are the subject of an outstanding criminal warrant.

Immigrant activists, the Black Youth Project, Hispanic aldermen and the ACLU have long demanded removal of all of those exemptions, a campaign promise Lightfoot has, so far, failed to deliver.

Last week, Lightfoot defended her decision to tie elimination of the carve-outs to the budget, just as she linked her first budget to an increase in Chicago’s minimum wage.

“I ask for aldermen to support it. If you don’t support it and you don’t think that our immigrant and refugee community deserves protection, you’ll be on record as casting your vote against that,” she said.

But late Sunday, top mayoral aides told Hispanic aldermen Lightfoot would eliminate the carve-outs in December by introducing a separate ordinance that has nothing to do with the budget.

“Undocumented immigrants … and their allies worked on this issue for five years because it’s the right thing to do. We didn’t work on it so that it could become a budget sweetener. We didn’t work on this issue so that it could be used, twisted to try and gain votes for a budget that will harm working-class Chicagoans,” Ramirez-Rosa said Monday.

Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa said it was wrong for Lightfoot take the worthy goal of improving the Welcoming City Ordinance and allow it to be “twisted” to round up votes “for a budget that will harm working-class Chicagoans.”

“The immigration groups … also felt like they were being used. … They felt that it deserved a stand-alone bill.”

Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd) questioned how the mayor could delay the $94 million property tax increase without adding to the city’s mountain of debt.

The budget already includes a $1.7 billion debt restructuring and refinancing with nearly $949 million of the savings claimed in the first two years.

“I can’t imagine we would raise property taxes by government action now and not collect the revenue at a time we need it most. I’m assuming we’re going to borrow against this, much like she’s talking about with the cannabis tax. That’s a bad habit to form,” he said.

“You’re spending paychecks you hope to earn next year on groceries that you need today. That’s a terrible way to run a household and it’s a terrible way to run a government. It’s like gambling. If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s [that] unforeseen, devastating circumstances can happen at any time and lay waste to your plans. So to start spending money we expect to get in the future — it’s a dangerous game.”

Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd) opposes Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s planned $94 million property tax increase.

Hopkins said he represents “one of the highest property-tax-paying wards in the city” and remains dead-set against the $94 million property tax increase under any circumstances.

“My residents are taxed to the max,” he said.

Ramirez-Rosa, who chairs the City Council’s Socialist Caucus, said he, too, remains opposed to the property tax increase.

Instead, he favors the $16-a-month employee head tax on Amazon and other “logistics” operators with more than 50 employees. That proposal was introduced Monday by Progressive aldermen and sent to the Rules Committee, where legislation opposed by the mayor usually goes to die.

“To turn to folks that are devastated during this pandemic and ask them to pay more property taxes when they have been paying more and more every single year, to me is totally unacceptable. It’s going to cause more harm in our communities,” he said.

“Avoiding that property tax increase and either drawing upon our rainy day fund and looking to replenish that over the next several years or looking to other revenue sources like the ones that have been introduced by myself and others is going to be critical.”

Ald. Gilbert Villegas (36th), the mayor’s floor leader, denounced the logistics tax as a job-killing “tax on employment.”

After meeting Monday and holding a public hearing on the budget, the City Council canceled a meeting scheduled for Friday and adjourned until Monday.

Given the required 48 hours’ notice, it appears that Wednesday, Nov. 25 is the earliest aldermen could take a final vote on the budget. But a spokesperson for the city’s Law Department insisted that the final vote would not be delayed and that “sufficient time remains” for the required public notice.