The Chicago Financial Future Task Force, appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson early this year to give him ideas — and political cover — for closing a projected $1.15 billion budget gap, has issued its first report.
It’s a smorgasbord of ideas, many of them already familiar, that comes just weeks before Johnson’s scheduled Oct. 16 budget address.
The estimable 24 people on the task force have done a great service by listing the ideas and rationale for passage of 89 potential measures to address the yawning hole in Chicago’s budget for 2026. The group led by Loop Capital founder Jim Reynolds and Chicago Urban League President Karen Freeman-Wilson has even done the math on each proposal, in detail, which is a service in itself — since too often we don’t get that level of detail on big policy proposals.
The task force’s projected $1.7 billion in increased revenue alone would be more than enough to fill next year’s projected deficit. And the task force said its cost-saving ideas, if all adopted, could reduce spending by $456 million to boot.
