For Immediate Release: October 17th, 2025
Media Contacts: Julie Dworkin, julie@i4pg.org, (785) 331-9039
Institute for the Public Good Statement on the Mayor’s Budget Proposal
Institute for the Public Good applauds Mayor Johnson's 2026 budget released yesterday as it represents a major shift in how Chicago solves its budget problems. For decades, the city has relied on regressive taxation of working class Chicagoans, privatization, cuts in city employment and services.
At this moment when Trump is slashing corporate taxes and taking life-saving services from poor and middle class workers, the city faces a stark choice: to further burden working families by increasing fines, fees, taxes and service cuts or to push back against Trump’s corporate welfare and ask corporations to pay their fair share to protect our vital services.
This budget takes the second path by:
Taxes the largest 3% of corporations – that will receive almost a trillion dollars in tax breaks from Trump’s tax policies over the next decade – to contribute to public safety.
Pushes large social media companies to contribute to mental health services for our communities and young people – the people that fuel their profits
Protecting city workers jobs and benefits by having no layoffs
Preserving critical funding for mental health, public safety, violence prevention, housing, and homelessness
Eliminating waste and abuse in the Chicago Police Department by driving efficiencies in overtime, vacancies, and systems of accountability
Surplusing the largest amount of TIF funding in Chicago history, bringing property taxes back into our city operations and schools.
No new regressive taxes, fees, or fines for Chicago residents
We believe this budget represents a large step forward for working families and we urge members of City Council to support the proposals included and to go further by:
Responding to federal cuts of critical investments in public health, mental health services, community safety, and housing–that if remain unfilled will lead to our neighbors dying–by expanding those programs with local funding.
Do so by expanding the Community Safety Surcharge even further to be in-line with both inflation and the changes in tax structures at the federal and state levels.
Coordinate pressure at the state level in Springfield to ensure that instead of reacting to Trump’s cuts by cutting life saving services, the state is driving new revenue to make this state liveable for everyone.
If City Council members do not support the proposals in the budget, they need to name the options that would be a better choice for working families. The choice is clear: To further Trump’s agenda to take money from working families and give it to corporations or to ask corporations to pay their fair share in order to invest in our people and our neighborhoods. Let’s make the right choice by supporting this budget and more.
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.