Mayor Brandon Johnson on Monday issued a hiring freeze on city government positions, including police, as his administration faces a nearly $1 billion budget shortfall next year.
A statement sent out by his budget office said “Effective today, we are enacting a series of budgetary restrictions, including a citywide hiring freeze, and stringent limitations on non-essential travel and overtime expenditures outside of public safety operations.” The statement did not say how many vacant positions or how much the city expects to save.
The statement did not elaborate on whether rank-and-file Police Department and Fire Department positions would be affected, and representatives from Johnson’s office did not immediately provide further details. But a copy of a memo sent out to commissioners and department heads said that all city government departments and positions will be included in the freeze.
CPD’s current academy class was already on city payroll when the hiring freeze went into effect. A Police Department spokesperson referred all questions about future academy classes to the mayor’s office.
The move comes as Johnson prepares for his second budget plan that he previewed last month as one that will entail “sacrifices” to close the fiscal shortfall, along with a new projection of a $223 million budget gap at the end of the current year. But his administration will need to come up with more solutions to raise revenue or cut costs in order to plug the hole.
Johnson’s budget team has not publicly elaborated on what those sacrifices could entail — including whether raising property taxes is on the table. Monday’s memo will likely be the first of many belt-tightening moves to close the gap. Budget Director Annette Guzman has said departments will also be asked to reduce “other discretionary spending” through the end of 2024.
Factors contributing to the yawning budget holes this time include declines in revenue, rising labor costs and a $175 million pension payment for non-teaching staff at Chicago Public Schools that the school district is declining to take on.
The mayor is expected to recommend a budget to the City Council in October. He will then have until the end of the year to convince at least 26 of 50 aldermen to support the plan or make changes to get the majority he needs.
It’s not clear how long the hiring freeze will last.
In 2019, former Mayor Lori Lightfoot also implemented a citywide hiring freeze ahead of her first budget plan that too faced a looming deficit. At that time, the Police Department was staffed with about 13,400 total officers, the largest roster since the 2000s. That number has dwindled to 11,700 as of this July, however, following considerable police attrition starting around the COVID-19 pandemic.
Johnson ran for mayor as a progressive who at first challenged the amount of police spending in Chicago but later during the runoff vowed to not cut the Police Department budget by “one penny.” His budget plan for 2024 follows just that edict, slightly raising the police budget to about $2 billion this year.
Whatever he chooses with public safety spending this year will surely be a contested debate among a City Council that runs the gamut from “defund the police” and staunchly pro-law enforcement aldermen. However, the short staffing could also undermine the ongoing challenge to reign in the Police Department’s massive overtime costs.
Over the summer, the city saw an incremental decrease in homicides for the third consecutive summer, though killings and nonfatal shootings between June and August still outpaced pre-pandemic levels, according to a Tribune review of city violence data.
Aldermen present at City Hall Monday when the hiring freeze announcement came said they were unsurprised by the news, though some were skeptical of applying it to Police and Fire departments.
“Some of us have been waiting for this. We have known for some time that we had a very significant budget gap,” said Ald. Matt O’Shea, 19th. But including police and fire personnel was “unacceptable,” he said.
Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, 25th, a close Johnson ally, responded to questions about the hiring freeze by speaking broadly on the need to cut costs.
“I think it is important that the city looks for every resource to ensure that we balance the budget without sacrificing important services for the city, especially not burdening working-class families across the city that are already struggling to make ends meet,” he said.
Ald. Derrick Curtis, 18th, said there is “no reason” the city should enact a hiring freeze that affects first responders.
“We are already 2,000 members short at the Chicago Police Department,” Curtis said. “We don’t need any more cuts.”
Chicago Tribune’s Sam Charles contributed.
Source Agencies
