Nearly 100 days into his second term, Mayor Harold Washington faces the tough choice of delaying some of the important programs outlined in his second-term agenda or seeking the tax increase that almost certainly will be needed to pay for them.
During his re-election campaign, Washington issued an Action Agenda for Chicago`s Future, a 16-page, make-no-small-plans blueprint for the next four years.
There weren`t many dollar signs in the booklet, but it included plenty of proposals to expand the city`s role in every direction from housing to health care to new streets and sewers.
The election is over, but copies of the booklet are still around. And now the dollar signs are appearing.
”When the department heads go into the mayor`s office with their budget requests, you can bet they`re going to have the Action Agenda in their pockets,” said one city budget official. ”The problem is, where`s the money going to come from?”
City budgetmakers were required to file their 1988 money requests with the Budget Office Friday. Possibly echoing in Washington`s mind as he studies those budgets will be his campaign slogan, ”Promises Made, Promises Kept.”
The city`s preliminary budget for 1988, released last week, calls for $2.4 billion in spending, including $1.34 billion in the corporate fund, which finances most of the basic city services. Proposed corporate-fund spending for next year is just 1.5 percent more than the city expects to spend this year, even after a round of budget cutbacks.
The preliminary budget already anticipates reaping $56.6 million more in property taxes next year from expected increases in property assessments and from new tax-generating developments. But even with new revenue, the tentative budget has a $19.6 million hole that city officials are wondering how to fill. The whispers of ”property-tax increase” grow louder each day.
And the preliminary budget doesn`t yet take into account the expected round of salary increases the city will have to give to keep peace with 50 employee bargaining units whose contracts expire Dec. 31. Each 1 percent salary increase will cost an estimated $10 million, and union leaders say they want at least a 4 percent increase next year for their members.
That doesn`t leave spare cash for new initiatives.
”There`s a very fundamental decision the mayor`s going to have to make,” said City Comptroller Ron Picur. ”These are new programs in a budget that is balanced only with cutbacks.”
This is the start of a ticklish season in City Hall, when departments ask for money and try not to make waves until the mayor makes his recommendations and the Chicago City Council approves the budget.
Many department officials don`t even want to talk publicly about how much they are requesting, for fear that uttering a dollar figure may trip an alarm that sends a sword slashing their bottom line.
But it`s clear from their private comments and a view of the preliminary budget that something has to give between the city`s revenues and the mayor`s agenda for progress.
The Action Agenda, for instance, promises new efforts to reduce infant mortality in the city and combat the rise of AIDS through ”major health education efforts.”
The city Department of Health plans to take the mayor at his word. Its 1988 budget request seeks about $500,000 more for infant-mortality programs in 1988 above the $5 million that was appropriated this year.
The department also will request a significant increase in funds for AIDS education, although the exact amount hasn`t been decided.
But the preliminary budget forecasts that the health department will have $37.4 million to spend in 1988, only $1.5 million more than it will spend this year–and that`s after it made budget cuts this year. The 4.2 percent increase probably won`t cover inflation, much less finance new programs.
In the department, officials will just send in their wish list and wait.
”There are so many things that are needed,” a department official said. ”We`re going to put in for the initiatives. It`s up to the budget office to determine if there are funds for them.”
The Action Agenda wasn`t meant to be implemented in one year. It was a four-year plan, and some of its goals can be achieved by changes in management priorities and direction, said Hal Baron, the mayor`s chief policy adviser and an author of the agenda. When it was issued, Washington stressed that it was
”affordable.”
But clearly, its most specific proposals will cost money.
”Of course, we`d be damn fools not to be concerned” about the budget`s impact, Baron said. ”But these are the mayor`s commitments.
”If we`re really going to deliver, we might need some more funds,”
Baron said. ”We have to sell it to the citizens. The budget process is designed to to tell him (Washington) how committed the citizens are to paying for those things.”
Most aldermen believe Washington can push a tax increase through the city council if he wants it. In April, the mayor survived a re-election campaign less than a year after he sought a record $79.9 million property-tax increase. The city almost certainly will have to seek a tax increase to pay for the salary increases. So if the mayor already has his hand in the pockets of property owners, some City Hall observers said, he will probably pull out a little more cash so ”promises made, promises kept,” retains some substance. Even as property owners were receiving the tax bills reflecting last year`s increase, louder grumbling was heard from civic leaders who believe the first 100 days of the mayor`s second term have been marked by few initiatives or accomplishments.
”A lot of people are expecting things,” said one mayoral supporter.
”The best time to raise taxes is right after an election. That`s always been the political axiom.”
