Chicago Budget Woes Bring High Drama and Hard Choices

Fading pandemic aid fuels battles over teachers' raises and burden on taxpayers

- HEATHER GILLERS

Dwindling pandemic aid is triggering ugly battles over how to pay for education and other public services in Chicago. At the center is Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former history teacher and organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union, whose plan to cover a widening gap in the school district budget includes borrowing tens of millions of dollars to pay for teacher raises. On Friday, his handpicked board of education voted to fire schools chief Pedro Martinez, who had refused to add to the school district’s already burdensome debt load.

Then there is a fed-up city council, where aldermen narrowly approved a cobbled-together budget last week to avert an unprecedented government shutdown.

Caught in the middle of the fight: families tired of political dysfunction and sacrificing to pay decade-old bills leftover from years of filling budget gaps with debt.

Iman Carter-Cowans lives with her children, 14 and 10, in Chatham on the city’s South Side. She said she’s tired of paying high property taxes without any perceptible payoff in better city services or economic development.

“A new grocery store hasn’t opened,” said Carter-Cowans, a wealth and insurance adviser. “We still don’t have snow removal fast. I don’t see that it’s going into our community.”

Around the U.S., cities and school districts have plugged budget holes over the past few years with hundreds of billions of dollars in Covid aid. Now that money is running out. Downtowns are struggling. Public officials face fresh costs, including from an influx of migrants.

High debt load