Editorial: So is City Hall hiking property taxes or ruling them out?

Chicago Tribune

2 days ago

There's going to be a Chicago property tax increase. Fooled ya'.
Might the corporate head tax be revived instead? Yes. No.
Wait! Chicago will impose a 'progressive revenue' solution to be named later.
Say what?
Mayor Brandon Johnson and the city's chief financial officer, Jill Jaworski, really didn't seem to have their stories straight last week as they sought to prepare Chicagoans for the difficult budget debate to come in the fall.
First, Jaworski, speaking July 22 at a Bloomberg News event, said 'it was likely' the mayor's budget would include a proposed property tax increase alongside budget cuts in order to close an estimated $1.1 billion deficit for 2026. Asked about Jaworski's comments, Johnson at first didn't rule out a such an increase and, as per usual, blamed his predecessors for Chicago's budgetary woes.
But on Thursday, two days after Jaworski's remarks, the mayor was singing a different tune. 'I will not be proposing a property tax increase in my budget,' he said, seemingly categorically. Seemingly.
He said, as he has done many times in the past, that he would 'work hard to find progressive revenue' to help balance the city's books. Johnson didn't specify what progressive tax policies he would propose other than to say, 'the ultimate goal is to challenge those with means in this city, and quite frankly in this state, to pay their fair share.'
Stop us if you've heard this one before.
As Johnson prepared to take office following his surprise election win in 2023, progressive groups supporting his candidacy floated hundreds of millions in new taxes, with ideas ranging from a tax on financial trades to the reinstitution of the per-employee head tax on businesses and many others. Most of those new taxes would have needed, and would still need, state approval, and Gov. JB Pritzker along with numerous lawmakers quickly shot down the Johnson tax-bonanza agenda.
For good reason, too. A state with such lagging economic performance as Illinois can't afford to be driving away more wealthy and middle-class people and businesses.
Then Chicago voters themselves in 2024 rejected a Johnson-backed referendum to dramatically hike the tax on sales of property above $1 million, which likely would have raised apartment rents and further constricted our wheezing commercial real estate industry.
So here we are. We're well past the halfway point of Johnson's term, and he's still knocking at the 'progressive taxation' door.
We'll reserve judgment until we see precisely what the mayor has in mind. Maybe he and his team have devised some new plan not yet proposed (and rejected) that's worthy of consideration. We won't hold our breath.
But it doesn't instill confidence that the mayor himself had to walk back his top financial aide's comments on property taxes a few days after she made them. Perhaps Jaworski was just floating a trial balloon, and Johnson got an earful in the two days between her remarks and when he effectively told reporters she'd spoken out of turn.
Property tax hikes right now are a political third rail. Johnson found that out in the most humiliating way possible last year when the City Council unanimously rejected his budget, including a proposed $300 million property tax increase that broke one of Johnson's most noteworthy campaign promises. Attempts to win council support for a smaller hike went nowhere as well, and Johnson and aldermen patched together a budget at the eleventh hour with a hodgepodge of fee increases, business taxes and fines.
So is a property tax hike in what is shaping up to be a more brutal budget year than last year's high-wire act really off the table? We don't know. But forgive us if we're skeptical that Johnson's cleanup of Jaworski's property-tax bombshell will be the last word on the subject.