“One City, 50 Wards: Does the City That Works Really Work?“, a joint series from Crain’s Chicago Business and the University of Chicago Center for Effective Government, explores the connections between how Chicago’s city government is designed, how it functions, and how it performs. You can learn more and read other articles from the series here.
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By Justin Marlowe
Legendary journalist Mike Royko once said, “One of the hallmarks of Chicago is that we do so many things in an original manner. What other city has made a river flow backwards? What other city makes traffic flow backwards?” Crain’s recent reporting described an original but unfortunate feature of the city’s budgeting: a conspicuous lack of City Council participation. When legislators are engaged, local government budgeting is a powerful tool to help identify our shared values and priorities. But when they’re not, it’s a tremendous missed opportunity.
Fortunately, there’s momentum for change. Both mayoral candidates have pledged to meaningfully engage the City Council in future decisions on property taxes, public safety spending and other hot-button financial issues. The City Council should seize that opportunity and shed its reputation for arms-length budgeting. How, exactly? An essential first step is to reinvest in its competent but under-resourced budget shop — the City Council Office of Financial Analysis, or COFA. An expanded and reoriented COFA should focus on three “C's”: credibility, consensus and choice.
Chicago’s budget process, as with other big cities, is designed to translate the mayor’s policy priorities into a citywide tax and spending plan. Aldermen, however, see budgeting from a different vantage. They want to know if the mayor is using budgeted resources as expected, if city services are delivering results in their wards and how tax burdens are distributed among their constituents. Our current budget framework and calendar allow the mayor’s budget staff and department heads to sidestep those questions.
COFA 2.0 could be a credible source for council-focused budget analysis. It could compare the previous year’s budgeted spending to actual spending, reveal spending patterns by neighborhood, and estimate the costs to improve key performance indicators, such as crime clearance rates and street pavement condition. This information is readily available and many other cities present it in their budget documents.
But new information alone won’t do the trick. Aldermen run for office to make a difference in their communities, not to pore over another round of revenue forecasts and spending estimates.
That’s why an expanded COFA should also focus on council budget consensus. Legislative budget staff in other cities spend much of their time on a budget resolution that lays out the council’s shared budget priorities and telegraphs to the mayor what to include in the next proposed budget. For instance, San Diego’s Office of the Independent Budget Analyst recently wrapped up its budget resolution for fiscal year 2024. That resolution highlights six operating and six capital spending areas — including public safety, homelessness, streets, stormwater management and others — and enumerates the council’s three to five highest priorities within each category. Council members began that process with hundreds of potential priorities, but narrowed it to just a few through robust, weeks-long debate.
This resolution process helps engage the City Council for several reasons. It affords council members the chance to talk about the budget in their native language — programs, projects and community-level outcomes — rather than the foreign language of appropriations and interfund transfers. It connects the budget to other strategic goals, an especially enticing opportunity given the recent adoption of “We Will Chicago,” the city’s first comprehensive strategic plan in decades. The resolution debate is also a key point of access for community groups to offer input on the budget. And perhaps most important, when it comes time to vote, it broadens the focus from “Does the Mayor’s budget reflect my ward’s priorities?” to “Does the Mayor’s budget reflect our shared priorities?” Continued progress on pensions, debt, infrastructure maintenance, and other citywide financial challenges will require that type of council discipline and focus.
A third essential ingredient is choice. Chicago’s next few budgets are more likely to include painful cuts than popular investments. Aldermen have strong incentives to stand back and let the mayor own those politically difficult choices. At the same time, many aldermen also recognize that this cycle of disengagement and blame is not sustainable.
Here again, a strong, forward-looking City Council budget office can lead the way. One of the New York City Independent Budget Office’s signature publications is its “Budget Options” document, an analysis of 100 ideas — such as “Consolidate Building, Fire Environmental Protection, and Housing Inspections,” “Establish a Retail Storefront Vacancy Tax Surcharge,” and so forth — to reduce costs or generate new revenue. Similar documents in Portland, Ore., and Denver are also instructive. COFA can and should develop these types of off-the-shelf, tangible suggestions to frame and broaden our budget choices.
It's time for Chicago’s City Council to finally get in the budget game. A reinvigorated COFA focused on credibility, consensus and choice is a great place to start.