As Chicago edges closer to a possible government shutdown, one City Council member says the budget standoff has far less to do with a shortage of revenue than with political decisions about who is required to pay their share and how existing funds are managed.
Alderman Ray Lopez of the 15th Ward joined Chicago’s Morning Answer to weigh in on the ongoing fight between Mayor Brandon Johnson and a bloc of aldermen over the city’s budget, including the mayor’s failed push to reinstate the corporate head tax. Lopez argued that both the mayor’s proposal and the alternative plan advanced by some council members miss the larger issue: Chicago already has access to hundreds of millions of dollars that it simply chooses not to collect or properly allocate.
Lopez said the city is carrying close to a billion dollars in outstanding municipal debt, made up of unpaid fines, fees, judgments, and other obligations owed by residents and non-residents alike. According to Lopez, the Johnson administration has adopted a policy of selectively enforcing collections based largely on zip code and demographic factors rather than individual ability to pay. As a result, he said, the city is aggressively pursuing only a fraction of the money it is legally owed while shifting the burden onto those who reliably pay.
The consequences of that approach, Lopez argued, are already visible. Property taxes have climbed sharply, with many homeowners seeing double-digit increases, not because city services have expanded dramatically, but because unpaid obligations elsewhere in the system are being absorbed by compliant taxpayers. Lopez said this practice amounts to a hidden tax that punishes law-abiding residents while rewarding nonpayment.
The alderman also challenged the mayor’s justification for new taxes to fund violence interruption programs. Mayor Johnson has cited the need to raise roughly $100 million to expand the use of so-called violence interrupters, but Lopez said that money could easily be found without new taxes if the city focused on basic fiscal discipline. He questioned why Chicago is moving quickly to fund third-party activist organizations while remaining more than 2,000 police officers short of authorized staffing levels.
Lopez pointed to what he described as “free-floating” money within the city’s $16.6 billion budget, including large sums allocated for positions that have been vacant for months or even years. He said thousands of unfilled jobs are still fully budgeted, allowing the administration to charge taxpayers for salaries it never intends to pay. By his estimates, eliminating those phantom positions alone could free up more than $170 million, enough to significantly reduce property taxes or fund public safety priorities without raising new revenue.
During recent budget hearings, Lopez said he raised these issues directly with the city’s budget director, only to be met with confusion or dismissal. He described an administration unwilling or unable to re-prioritize spending, preferring instead to rely on new taxes, fines, and fees while leaving structural inefficiencies untouched.
Lopez was equally skeptical of the alternative budget advanced by aldermen opposing the corporate head tax, noting that it largely mirrors the mayor’s spending framework while substituting one set of fees for another. In his view, the debate has become political theater, with little appetite on either side for the deeper reforms needed to stabilize the city’s finances.
As the budget deadline approaches, Lopez warned that Chicago’s fiscal problems will persist regardless of which plan prevails unless City Hall confronts the underlying issues of selective enforcement, unchecked spending growth, and the refusal to collect money already owed. Without that reckoning, he said, taxpayers should expect more of the same: higher bills, fewer services, and repeated crises driven not by necessity, but by choice.