For Immediate Release: December 3rd, 2025
Media Contact: Julie Dworkin, [email protected], 312-933-3498
Analysis by the Institute for the Public Good finds “Alternative Budget Proposal” trades taxing large corporations for increases in regressive fees and taxes for everyday Chicago residents.
An Institute for the Public Good analysis of the alternative budget proposal made public on December 2, 2025 found that it is constructed with fraught assumptions, core contradictions, and an overall increased cost burden on working class Chicagoans. Although the analysis found some positive aspects of the proposal that should be further considered, overall it rests on a key trade–removal of the Community Safety Surcharge, a tax on corporations, for regressive fees and taxes, cuts in youth jobs, and reduced health care benefits for city workers.
“This proposal makes two things clear: (1) we cannot cut our way out of this deficit, and (2) the only alternative to the corporate head tax is to replace it with one-time fixes, and cuts to key services that work - like youth jobs, and taxes on working people. We can’t afford new garbage fees on people who are seeing increased rents and property taxes or liquor taxes on small business corner stores” says Julie Dworkin, Co-Executive Director of Institute for the Public Good.
“This proposal is a paper house – constructed with loose assumptions, and balancing operating expenses on both revenue and cost-savings that have little pathway to full realization, which if adopted at face value, will lead to a mid-year budget crisis and reset,” says Ishan Daya, Co-Executive Director of Institute for the Public Good. “There are positive steps being made in this budget that should be worked to be included – fully paying the advanced pension payment, enforcing the Environmental Benchmark Ordinance – but doing so while removing a structural revenue option that funds community safety and attempts to replace it with unproven revenue is like taking one step forward and two steps backward.”
Chicago has for too long relied on regressive property taxes, fees, and fines. This budget proposal harkens back to those same strategies. In a moment where our neighbors are struggling – we must ensure that we are protecting youth jobs, worker benefits, roles that need to be filled for critical public health services, and that we are protecting our everyday Chicagoans from increased fees like an ballooned garbage fee and our small businesses from increased liquor taxes in lieu of a corporate tax on large businesses.
Linked here is the analysis.
Institute for the Public Good is a non-partisan policy institute that strengthens the public good by releasing research and supporting legislative efforts that advance racial equity and economic justice. We define a public good as a resource, service, or benefit that is accessible to everyone in society, and is supported through public funding and operation. Expansion of the public good is necessary in creating a society that supports the basic needs of everyone within it, while creating and sustaining robust services that work effectively for all of us. |