What counts as “savings and efficiencies” in Mayor Brandon Johnson’s government?

In the 2026 budget the mayor presented last week, the two biggest items in that category were a $118 million reduction in how much the city planned to contribute to its woefully underfunded pension plans and a cap on how much overtime the Chicago Police Department could accrue.

That’s akin to an individual or household saying they’re tightening their belts by paying the minimum on their credit cards.

Needless to say, no reasonable person would count that step as tantamount to cutting spending, and the Johnson administration proposes precious little in the way of cost-cutting in a $16.6 billion budget that on paper plugs a 2026 budget deficit estimated at $1.2 billion.

Of course, there’s a vast array of new and increased taxes on local businesses, which we discussed on Friday. Many of them are massively counterproductive to achieving what the city of Chicago ultimately must have to balance its budgets structurally in the future — economic and population growth. The Johnson administration’s refusal to pursue anything other than minimal actions on the cost side of its ledger while continuing to pile costs on businesses — including an absurd proposal to tax those employing 100 or more $21 a month for each person they’re putting to work in the city — is like a blaring siren warning investors to steer clear of Chicago if they want to start or grow an enterprise.

So that means the City Council will demand more cost reductions and fewer tax increases before the city finalizes its 2026 budget, right?

Not so fast, we hear. While there surely will be efforts to trim those tax hikes, we’re not hearing the same rumblings of intense aldermanic revolt that upended Johnson’s budget last year.

This is worrying news to our ears. Very worrying news.

Other blue cities have shown how to get to a balanced solution to budget crunches.

What we’ve seen elsewhere are mayors putting pressure on public-sector unions to make concessions in order to help plug those deficits. In Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass initially budgeted for 1,600 layoffs of city workers to balance a budget that was $1 billion short (sound familiar?) and in June signed a final budget that included about 600 layoffs. But in the intervening months, she negotiated with unions and won concessions including furlough days with one unionized group and the conversion of overtime pay for police into paid time off to stave off the remaining layoffs.

In San Francisco, Mayor Daniel Lurie proposed to lay off 100 workers and eliminate 1,300 unfilled positions. The final budget includes 40 layoffs along with the erasure of the unfilled jobs while adding to public-safety budgets in response to San Franciscans’ backlash against more progressive approaches of the past.

There are others. But what they all have in common is a mayor willing to advocate for taxpayers and make it clear to public-sector unions that they will have to share with everyone else in the pain of budget balancing.

Needless to say, we don’t have one of those mayors in Chicago.

And so public-sector unions took the initiative a little over two weeks ago. We are told they warned aldermen, in a series of meetings led by the Chicago Federation of Labor, not to attempt to force concessions from the city workforce in the budget negotiations if they value their political futures.

Those sessions, we are told, were effective in cowing many aldermen who will be the deciding votes on Johnson’s budget from backing even threats of furloughs or layoffs — the only kind of positioning that will force organized labor to the table.

And there are substantial cost savings short of pink slips that could help the situation. In a wide-ranging report on ways the city could tackle its budget mess, for example, Ernst & Young identified between $80 million and $103 million in savings that could be achieved by renegotiating health benefits for city workers that are considerably more generous than what their peers in other cities get.

Simply requiring that workers match the employee contributions other cities ask of their workers for preferred provider organization (PPO) insurance options would save $23 million, Ernst & Young found. Consider this: 77% of the city of Chicago’s more than 30,000 workers enroll in more generous PPO plans rather than cheaper HMO plans, according to the consultant. In the private sector, the percentage of workers in PPO plans is slightly less than half. With city workers asked to contribute so little out of pocket to those PPO plans, it’s no wonder.

That’s just one example, but as we hear it, the unions won’t entertain even that sort of discussion.

The upshot is that this budget cycle isn’t shaping up as a replay of last year’s, where Johnson lost total control of the council and even some of his progressive allies abandoned him and refused to hike property taxes at all. The progressive caucus is unified this year, and the ardent opponents of this budget don’t form a majority.

So business community, if you are reading us, this is a dire moment.

Deals and investments that have been in the works in parts of the city still attractive to business are teetering, we hear. “Capital is fleeing,” one alderman tells us.

It’s a time now for high-profile corporate leaders to make clear to the mayor and council members what the stakes are. That could well mean that some household names threaten to close Chicago offices or reduce their city workforces. If that’s something these corporate leaders are contemplating behind closed doors — and we’ve little doubt it is — now’s the time to make those plans public.

We realize that business leaders typically aren’t comfortable with such heavy-handed tactics in dealing with local politicians and prefer to leave the lobbying and messaging to the civic organizations and trade groups that ordinarily represent them.

But, as that alderman said, “They’re in a fight for everything. What do they have to lose?”

The city that works, or once worked, has plenty to lose if this budget passes as is. Powerful unions appear to have aldermen cowered. Time for leading Chicagoans to stand up for our shared future and make some noise.

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