As city leaders scramble to close a $1.2 billion budget gap, Mayor Brandon Johnson wants to preserve multiple city programs that were created by or expanded through federal pandemic rescue money, arguing they’re effective and have contributed to the city’s sharp drop in crime.

Much of the City Council is not convinced.

While some alderpeople praised initiatives like emergency mental health services and resources for survivors of domestic violence, others say they need to see more compelling arguments before they vote to spend millions of dollars to retain the programs. Axing them would save less than 3% of the 2026 budget deficit.

And alderpeople say the mayor’s administration suffers from the same problem it had last budget season — a lack of trust — since they struggle to get basic answers on how many previously federally funded city jobs and services Johnson wants to keep.

An Illinois Answers Project review of published data, memos and records requests found that Johnson’s budget proposes to shift 62 full-time employees previously backed by ARPA — mostly mental health outreach workers — onto the city’s ledger at a cost of $7 million. 

The mayor also wants to carry over $26 million in grants for programming related to youth employment, homelessness services, domestic violence programs and support for victims of violent crimes, according to city budget officials. About $10 million of that sum would be shifted to the Corporate Fund, the city’s core operating budget, with about another $13 million diverted to a new Community Safety Fund and the rest moved into a fund backed by cannabis taxes.

“As we’ve said consistently, the city is approaching the wind-down of federal pandemic aid from a position of strength: we planned early, communicated transparently and ensured that high-impact programs — and the staff needed to administer them — transition onto stable, non-Corporate Fund revenue sources,” budget office spokesperson LaKesha Gage-Woodard wrote in a statement. “This means the city is protecting both the investments ARPA enabled and the long-term health of the Corporate Fund, where our structural deficit resides.”

The council’s Committee on Finance voted 25-10 last month to reject the mayor’s revenue plan, which would have included a per-employee head tax on large companies and a tax on social media companies to bankroll the new fund for public safety spending.

Chicago has steadily tapered its spending of the $1.9 billion it received from the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act, with most of it used to replace lost tax revenue during the pandemic, city records show. 

‘Yielding results’

In 2025, Chicago budgeted for 320 full-time employee positions whose salaries were paid by federal pandemic relief, according to city budget data. The number would drop to 72 under Johnson’s 2026 proposal. The city has until the end of 2026 to spend the last of its ARPA funds. 

The programs “are yielding results,” Johnson’s chief of staff, Cristina Pacione-Zayas, said in an interview after Johnson’s Oct. 16 budget address.

Spending on mental health and youth employment have shown they can provide “what Chicagoans should have as entitlement, and that is safe communities. That is access to comprehensive health care. That is young people having opportunities to explore their career pathways and passions,” Pacione-Zayas said. “All of those are reasonable investments. In fact, I would argue they’re baseline investments.”

Some council members say they aren’t convinced the jobs and programs are worth saving.

“My opinion on those is, if they were created for COVID, they generally can go away after COVID,” said Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd). “If you want to sustain them, then I think you have to make sure that you have the federal funding.”

However, it was always the plan for some programs financed by ARPA to be integrated into the city’s spending plans, Chicago Budget Director Annette Guzman said. She said her department analyzed which programs should survive to 2026 and beyond.

“ARPA was never just about COVID-19,” Guzman said in October. “ARPA was about looking at communities that suffered overwhelmingly health outcomes … This was all about, how do you transform neighborhoods? How do you make them more resilient … to withstand future pandemics and future economic downturns?”

The Office of Budget and Management initially declined to provide a copy of the analysis when Illinois Answers requested it nearly a month ago. The office finally provided a copy of the 109-page document on Tuesday, but the scores and evaluation criteria for each program were fully redacted.

City budget officials pointed to their COVID-19 Impact Dashboard, saying it provides much of the information alderpeople claim to be missing. While most of the programs reported “key performance indicators” including the number of people served and the results of participant surveys, few included an analysis of their impact. Its list of outside groups that received ARPA-backed city contracts is incomplete, with multiple entire programs — including some Johnson is pushing to sustain — listing “N/A” under “Applicant Organization.”

The programs the mayor wants to keep reflect “important policy objectives,” said Joe Ferguson, president of the nonprofit Civic Federation. But Johnson’s administration has more work ahead to make the case for why they should become permanent fixtures of city spending — otherwise, they risk losing legitimacy, even if they work, he said.

“There hasn’t been real engagement and real process through legislative oversight … with the managers of those programs to actually have a meaningful conversation,” Ferguson said, “not only about whether they are bringing positive outcomes in how they were implemented, but what would be needed additionally to achieve the broader program objectives.”

Ferguson praised Cook County — whose budget Guzman oversaw before she switched to city government in 2023 — for creating a working group three years ago to evaluate ARPA-funded programs and determine which should be sustained after 2026. The county also set aside more than $166 million for an “ARPA Sustainability Reserve” that would set a longer runway for new programs to be weaned off federal sources.

“Chicago didn’t do that,” Ferguson said. “There are no ramps. There are just these sharp discontinuities.”

Protection from federal clawbacks

The Chicago Department of Public Health in 2021 launched the Crisis Assistance Response & Engagement (CARE) program to assemble a team of mental health professionals who could accompany police when responding to certain 911 calls and eventually replace them.

City leaders and some community groups have hailed the program, which operates out of seven police districts but may answer calls all over the city. Johnson called out the crisis response teams during his budget address, saying his proposal would move them “off of the federal ARPA funding stream … so that they can form a permanent part of our yearly budget process.” 

His proposal would use a budget transfer maneuver to continue using ARPA for the CARE teams in 2026 before tapping a new tax on social media companies to fund them starting in 2027, budget officials said.

“That is how we protect these funds from federal clawbacks and grant terminations,” Johnson said.

The expansion of mental health outreach, including both roving emergency responders and brick-and-mortar clinics, is paramount to the “Treatment Not Trauma” plank of the mayor’s agenda, said Ald. Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez (33rd). Rodriguez-Sanchez is Johnson’s hand-picked chairperson of the City Council Committee on Health and Human Relations.

“CARE is a shift in culture from going to … a narrative … that police is what keeps us safe, and start shifting into a mentality that … the more you care for people, the less you have to police them,” Rodriguez-Sanchez said. “And that takes time.”

Johnson’s proposed budget shifts 45 ARPA-funded city employees who administer the CARE program into Chicago’s Corporate Fund. They include 20 medical technicians who earn salaries of about $50,000 each and 18 mental health clinicians whose salaries start at $81,000, not including benefits.

Rodriguez-Sanchez has gradually seen constituents and city officials become more comfortable with the outreach teams, many of whom were resistant to the idea of an alternative to police responding to emergencies, she said. The Northwest Side alderwoman credited the expansion of rapid-response mental health services, plus the reopening of two mental health clinics, for contributing to the city’s sharp decline in violent crime this year.

Ishan Daya, co-lead for the advocacy group Collaborative for Community Wellness, called non-police mental health responders an “empirically proven model” that has been demanded by residents and has proven its effectiveness in Chicago and other cities, such as Denver and Durham.

A December 2024 analysis of the CARE pilot by the University of Chicago Urban Labs described practitioners encountering multiple logistical issues but researchers credited them for building a public health service from scratch and creating a new bridge between the city’s law enforcement agencies and public health officials. Researchers said the pilot was too small to draw conclusions about its effectiveness at reducing crime.

Sustaining the CARE program is “fiscally the right thing to do,” Daya said. “This is morally the right thing to do. And if we are looking to the long-term health needs of our people, this is a thing we need to continue to do to decrease mental health crises across the city — especially in a moment where the federal government has reduced funding.” 

During a budget hearing for the Chicago Department of Public Health earlier this month, department commissioner Dr. Olusimbo Ige described multiple incidents when CARE teams deescalated dangerous situations and supported people experiencing mental health crises without calling police, and she outlined plans to expand outreach.

But the department has offered little data to support the program’s value and did not respond to questions.

In an interview, Ald. Matt O’Shea (19th) called for a deeper examination of the ARPA-funded programs and said the mayor’s team has not proposed enough spending cuts — especially when it comes to new, untested programs.

However, O’Shea, whose Far Southwest Side ward is home to many police officers, defended the CARE teams, whose preservation he called “extremely important.”

“[For] people who are in crisis, people who have personal issues they need help with, it’s the right thing to do: proactively reach out and try to help people,” O’Shea said.

Youth intervention

The Chicago Department of Family and Support Services this year budgeted for 25 employees whose salaries are paid through pandemic relief dollars, budget records show. The number would next year decline to three under Johnson’s proposed budget, with 12 set to be shifted into recurring sections of the budget  — including eight “youth programming” workers, according to a budget memo sent to City Council members. Their annual salaries range from $89,000 to about $143,000, plus benefits.

The budget also proposes to peel about $10.6 million in grant funds previously bankrolled by ARPA and locate it in the new Community Safety Fund, which Johnson proposed to fund with a $21-per-person tax on large businesses. The money would sustain the One Summer Chicago youth employment program and My Chi, My Future, which sponsors tutoring and teen-driven community events..

Johnson has highlighted an expansion of the One Summer Chicago program as a centerpiece of his agenda.

Officials pointed to an October 2025 impact report showing that more than 90% of the nearly 5,600 youth participants in One Summer Chicago this year reported boosts in their professional knowledge and confidence.

“Research verifies that when youth participate in programs like these, it reduces their chances of engaging in or becoming victims of violence or crime,” Department of Family and Support Services spokesperson Linsey Maughan wrote in an email. “Young people experience boosted self-esteem, a strengthened sense of purpose and inspiration for their futures by participating in our programs.” 

More than 12,600 youths participated in summer employment programs funded by pandemic relief dollars, and more than 43,000 people attended My Chi, My Future events, according to the city’s ARPA Impact Dashboard.

Ald. Jessie Fuentes (26th), a longtime backer of youth employment programs, said they’ve more than proven their value — not just in reducing neighborhood violence, but by lifting families out of poverty by driving young people into high-earning trade jobs.

“We have young people working for [the Chicago Department of] Streets and Sanitation. For hospitals. For schools. For police districts,” Fuentes said. “These are going to be employment opportunities and experiences that are going to transform young people’s lives.”

Fuentes defended Johnson’s proposal to move money for the programs into the new proposed Community Safety Fund, which the mayor proposed to back with the controversial head tax.

“When ARPA dollars dry up, we can’t just tell those young people, ‘We can’t do nothing else for you,’” Fuentes said. “We have to double down on our efforts, because we know it makes our city safer.”

Not all of Fuentes’ colleagues agree.

Ald. Ronnie Mosley (21st) said he has seen some positive results from the youth intervention programs in his Far South Side ward. But preserving them may not be the council’s top priority amid the budget crunch.

“Youth employment is a great thing — we surely have seen a huge amount of participation from the 21st Ward,” Mosley said. “But I also want to make sure those parents are working. Youth employment is supplemental income to the household income, but if youth are only working in the summer … we don’t see those same gains.”

Domestic violence funding restored

Johnson is calling to preserve a suite of programs funded by ARPA designed to prevent and respond to domestic violence, which has recorded a steady increase even as other categories of crime have declined in recent years. They include a “rapid re-housing” program that offers cash assistance to help victims escape dangerous homes, a legal assistance program and an education program to let people know what resources are available.

Calls to the Illinois Domestic Violence Hotline have steadily increased in recent years, according to a report published last month by the Network Advocating Against Domestic Violence.

Johnson’s original budget proposal would have diverted $3.5 million in gender-based violence grants to the new public safety fund. The programs are also supported by a fee on homeshares like AirBnB. 

That would have represented a sharp decline in city funding for the programs compared to this year, alarming advocates and some alderpeople.

The programs since 2022 have helped nearly 200 survivors of domestic abuse find new housing and enrolled nearly 5,000 people in education and training programs, according to the ARPA Impact Dashboard.

Following a backlash from advocates, Johnson’s administration filed an amendment to maintain current funding levels by spending an additional $9.1 million from the Corporate Fund, budget officials said.

Still, skeptics remain among some alderpeople. South Side Ald. Raymond Lopez (15th) questioned whether the millions Chicago taxpayers send to local nonprofits are reaping returns.

“What problem are we actually solving with these programs that have limited funds for the past four years, and are they worth sustaining?” Lopez said. Based on spiking domestic violence numbers, “I guess they’re not doing a good job with what they had.”

Lopez is one of many alderpeople who say their ability to pass a budget is being hampered by limited information coming from Johnson’s administration — particularly from the Department of Public Health, which in 2025 was allocated more pandemic relief funds than any other department by far but has shared little information on how the money has been spent.

A spokesperson for the Department of Public Health declined to comment, deferring inquiries to the budget office. Officials did not provide details on the Community Safety Coordination Center or the Victim Support Funding Program, two previously ARPA-funded health department initiatives that are set to add a combined nearly $3 million to the budget. 

Finally, the mayor proposed to shift about $5.1 million into the Corporate Fund for the Department of Family and Support Services’ Rapid Re-Housing Program, which helps find shelter for people experiencing homelessness. Voters last year rejected Johnson’s proposed “Bring Chicago Home” initiative to raise the city’s real estate transfer tax to boost funding for programs like Rapid Re-Housing.

If city finance officials want alderpeople to vote to sustain ARPA-funded programs, “they have to be transparent about it,” Waguespack said.

“They have to be upfront, and they have to show us, looking back to when this money started flowing in … how well is it running?” the alderperson said. “[Johnson] can sit there and talk in terms of platitudes or press releases or slogans, but they really haven’t shown it.”