CHICAGO (CN) — Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot released her office's proposed $16.7 billion budget for 2022 on Monday, calling it the recovery budget.
“Chicago’s 2022 ‘Recovery Budget’ will allow us to not only fulfill the obligation we have to our residents, but future generations—and that is to seize this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to transform our city for the better,” Lightfoot said in a press release accompanying the proposal. “With $1.9 billion in key and enhanced investments, we will develop Chicago into a safer, stronger and more prosperous place in which people can safely raise a family, build a business, and make a better life for themselves."
The budget is notable compared to 2021's so-called pandemic budget for several reasons, foremost among them the inclusion of more than $3.5 billion in federal pandemic relief aid. The rest of the budget relies heavily on this aid, which forms the majority of the funds dedicated to covering the $733 million budget shortfall Lightfoot's office predicted in August.
The injection of federal funds is also reflected in the smaller increase to the city's property tax levy. Compared to 2021, when the property tax levy was raised by more than $94 million, the 2022 budget only raises the levy by $76.5 million.
More controversially, the proposed budget also increases the city's police funding by almost $200 million. If approved, this would bring the Chicago Police Department's total budget to nearly $1.9 billion. It would make the department the second-richest municipal police force in the country, behind only the New York City Police Department, which gets about $5.2 billion in annual funding. The sheer size of the CPD's budget was a sticking point during 2020 protests in the wake of George Floyd's murder. In the adopted 2021 budget, its $1.7 billion accounted for about 40% of the city's operating budget. It remains a source of contention for racial justice activists to this day.
"Forty percent of our budget goes to an ineffective, tortuous, murderous organization… we want that to be redistributed," Damon Williams, an activist with the DefundCPD campaign, said in an August press conference on the forthcoming budget.
The proposed police budget also includes $232 million to help settle the retroactive pay that Chicago's Fraternal Order of Police demanded in its latest, $600 million contract with the city. That $232 million will be generated by the city refinancing about $1.1 billion of its debt. An additional $22 million generated this way will be put toward paying off the $733 million shortfall.
Despite the police raises, the proposed budget also includes some additions the city's progressives have been demanding for years, to the tune of about $157 million. These additions include funding for an expansion of both the city's public legal assistance program and Chicago Connected, an initiative that grants free broadband internet to eligible low-income Chicago Public Schools students and their families.
The proposal also sets aside $52 million for expanded mental health services, including a 911-alternative program that will send counselors and social workers, not police, to those experiencing mental health crises.
The budget further allocates an unstated amount of money for a pilot program to provide direct, monthly cash assistance to 5,000 qualifying low-income households.
"This cash benefit plan for our residents, if approved, will be the largest in the history of the United States," Lightfoot said while presenting the proposed budget to the City Council on Monday.
These plans and others are part of the roughly $1.9 billion that the budget dedicates to funding social services as part of the mayor's so-called Chicago Recovery Plan, the same amount allocated for the police department. The plan earmarks $635 million for the city's affordable housing initiatives, $202 million to expand services for the city's homeless population and $144 million for parks and tourism maintenance, among other proposals.
In her presentation to the City Council, Lightfoot painted these progressive proposals, and the 2022 budget more broadly, as a chance for Chicago to reinvent itself as a kinder, gentler City of Big Shoulders.
"Let's take this moment to commit to investing in a Chicago that is truly more equitable, more inclusive, and more resilient," she urged the council members as she concluded her presentation.
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