Anecdotal evidence abounds to support these programs. No allegations of waste or fraud. But the city's impulse to hide from Qs like "what's your evidence for sustaining youth employment" is feeding its trust deficit w/ City Council as they strain to pass a budget by 12/31.
/END
Budget officials said they conducted a "sustainability analysis" for whether each ARPA-funded program should be preserved.
So we FOIA'd for that analysis. After more than a month of delays, they finally delivered last night, and almost every page looks like this:
A screenshot of a spreadsheet showing some cells blank under "KPI value."
A screenshot of part of a spreadsheet showing "N/A" listed under "Applicant Organization" for Chicago's emergency fund for gender-based violence survivors, one of its previously ARPA-funded programs.
Still, alders say the administration hasn't provided enough info on these programs to justify keeping them in such a tough budget.
City budget office has an ARPA "Impact Dashboard," but KPIs are spotty, and it's unclear which orgs have received many grants.
t.co/ZG487WcS3i
A block of text that reads: The programs “are yielding results,” Johnson’s chief of staff, Cristina Pacione-Zayas, said in an interview after Johnson’s Oct. 16 budget address. Spending on mental health and youth employment have shown they can provide “what Chicagoans should have as entitlement, and that is safe communities. That is access to comprehensive health care. That is young people having opportunities to explore their career pathways and passions,” Pacione-Zayas said. “All of those are reasonable investments. In fact, I would argue they’re baseline investments.”
Johnson admin argues these programs are working & deserve to stay.
Axing them would trim less than 3% of the budget deficit. And it's easier to say "cut ARPA programs" than it is to argue, say, "cut resources for domestic violence survivors."
The proposed spending includes:
💵$7M to preserve 62 employee positions, mostly for mental health emergency responders
💵 $10.6B for One Summer Chicago & other youth programing
💵 $5.5M for DV programming (incl some restored post- original proposal)
💵 $5.1M for homelessness
New from me: budget hawks have called on
@chicagosmayor.bsky.social to cut ARPA-funded programs before considering any new taxes. But it's been hard to nail down the exact price tag of federal programs the mayor wants to keep.
After six weeks of reporting, we found the number: about $33M.
Northwestern and Columbia being famous for journalism and bending over for Trump seems a little too on the nose these days
Must-read @skpineda.bsky.social on how a U-turn in federal housing policy is about to make it much harder for Chicago and other cities to fight homelessness:
Homeowners in poor neighborhoods face steep property tax hikes while downtown office building owners pay less. From @adquig.bsky.social and @alexnitkin.bsky.social
Dec. 2.
Come by to learn more about our work, and how you can support it!
illinoisanswers.org/event/how-jo...
Important story from @meredithnewman.bsky.social on a symptom of the state's eroding public health infrastructure: mentally ill defendants spiraling in jail for months while they wait for psychiatric beds — sometimes with fatal consequences
illinoisanswers.org/2025/11/11/t...
So not only does the massive transit package passed last night fill the funding gap, it *boosts* ops funding by roughly the size of the gap, eliminates parking minimums within a half mile of rail stations, and gives the new regional transit board sweeping powers to do public development
Tune into @wbez.org at 9 a.m. to hear me do my best to recap the whirlwind veto session that landed a $1.5 billion transit package on the governor's desk:
www.wbez.org
I'm not in Springfield, but I did get a full night of sleep last night!
Watch the live House committee debate, with Rep. Delgado answering questions about the bill:
ilga.gov/House/AudioV...
Read our story on the history and limitations of the RTA sales tax, which is being proposed for an increase:
illinoisanswers.org/2025/10/28/l...
A loophole lets counties spend millions in transit taxes not on transit...but on jails & courts
Now, to save Chicago transit from cuts, lawmakers want to use those funds.
The idea met a fierce backlash.
📝 @gracehauck.bsky.social & @alexnitkin.bsky.social
illinoisanswers.org/2025/10/28/l...
A screenshot of the following text in the article: Pierog, the chairperson of the Kane County Board, defended county leaders’ recent decision to shift an even greater share of the county’s RTA sales tax money away from transportation in favor of its jail and courts. “They had to take money from transportation to be able to support the needs for public safety,” Pierog said in an interview with Illinois Answers Project. “Since population has increased, the need for public safety has also increased.” “Unfortunately, we all have to take an adjustment, a fiscal adjustment, until we can find other paths,” Pierog said. As a result of the transition to spending more on public safety, the county has paused about 19 transportation-related projects, such as safety upgrades to an accident-prone intersection, Rickert said.
A screenshot of the following text in the article: Also testifying was Maya Wade, a student at Elgin Community College in Kane County. Wade had to quit the job she loved as an optician at a small, family-owned business in Wheaton because there were “no feasible” public transit options, and she was spending half of her monthly budget on Ubers – upwards of $80 a day. “From my perspective and experience, there’s not enough accessibility and transportation for students,” Wade, 31, told the committee. Stories like Wade’s abounded during committee hearings held in the collar counties last year, according to Wennink of the Metropolitan Planning Council. “We listened to hours of them, and literally everyone says they want more transit,” Wennink said. “But meanwhile, the money that is given to the counties for transit is not being used on transit. So there’s a disconnect there.”
At a series of meetings last year, residents in the collar counties begged for better transit. Still, some leaders are opting to take even more money out of transportation in favor of law enforcement.
These counties use some of the money to fund dial-a-ride transit services that have made life possible for people who in the suburbs who don't drive.
illinoisanswers.org/2025/10/28/c...
The programs have shown a path forward for suburban transit. But they have big shortcomings:
A screenshot of the following text in the article: DuPage is the only county that spends its entire share of the tax on law enforcement. It taps other revenues to fund about $1.8 million annually for paratransit and $1.25 million in yearly spending on projects related to transit like sidewalk construction, county officials said. “In every resident survey we do, we hear loud and clear residents’ No. 1 priority is public safety,” Conroy said. “If the state takes its revenue from us, there will be massive layoffs in the public safety sector, including the sheriff’s office, state’s attorney’s office, public defender and probation.” During negotiations earlier this year about how to pull Chicago-area transit agencies from the brink of a fiscal cliff, a proposal emerged that would have redirected the collar counties’ shares of the RTA sales tax toward a sweeping new agency, dubbed the Northeast Illinois Transit Authority.
A proposal emerged this spring that would have clawed back the RTA tax dollars for use by a new regional transportation authority.
County leaders fought back, saying it would deprive them of money they need for street resurfacing, cops and courts.
A screenshot of the following text in the article: The law raised the existing RTA sales tax to 1% in Cook County and 0.75% in the collar counties, in part to fund Pace’s administration of a regional paratransit system — but it allowed the collars to keep one-third of the revenues — as long as they spent the money on “public transportation services or facilities or to fund operating, capital, right-of-way, construction, and maintenance costs of other transportation purposes.” The bill lacked the votes it needed to pass, according to Conroy — until three Republican legislators from DuPage County offered their support if three words were added before the spending limitations: “public safety and.” One of those legislators was State Sen. Kirk Dillard, who is now chairman of the RTA. “It probably was a political decision made by legislative leaders — not by me, I was just a rank-and-file member at the time,” Dillard said in an interview. “The counties had pressures, budgetary pressures."
The funding mismatch is allowed thanks to a 2008 state law that was negotiated, in part, by a DuPage County state legislator named Kirk Dillard.
We talked to Dillard, who now chairs the RTA. He disavowed his role in the loophole being added.
The collars last year collected a combined $193M in
@rtachicago.bsky.social sales taxes. They spent less than 2% of it on a loose web of fledgling transit services. The rest went to roadway engineering and — thanks to a legal loophole — law enforcement.
datawrapper.dwcdn.net/RLcPS/7/
As transit funding hangs in the balance in veto session this week, @gracehauck.bsky.social and I have a pair of stories looking at the stakes for a part of the state that's gotten relatively little attention: the collar counties.
t.co/oswatwJcdQ
And here’s @blockclubchi.bsky.social’s great coverage of what happened yesterday:
blockclubchicago.org/2025/10/21/i...
Huynh released this video of the encounter:
IL State Rep. Hoan Huynh says CBP agents surrounded his car and drew a gun on him on the Northwest Side of Chicago this morning
Johnson's budget address touts the city's effort to seize and resell properties from derelict landlord Suzie B. Wilson.
ICYMI, @ctoner and @mina_bloom_ found the city has fallen far behind its goals here:
illinoisanswers.org/2025/10/15/h...
Alders are eagerly awaiting a breakdown of how much money is being drawn from each TIF.
(The rest of us are, too)
Johnson Admin is proposing an unprecedented $1B surplus from TIF districts. About 52% of that will go to
CPS and 24% will go to the City, per property tax allocations.
City TIFs generated $1.36B in 2023.
City employee headcount continues to decline under mayor's proposal, with 443 fewer full-time equivalent employees in '26 than '25.
ARP funds, which must be spent by 12/31/26, to back eight city positions next year.
(Reminder: City has not provided a list of ARP-funded employees)
.@chicagosmayor.bsky.social is proposing to use the revived business head tax (coined the Community Safety Surcharge) to bankroll a new Community Safety Fund.
Lot of these programs were started, expanded and/or sustained through ARPA— looks like this is how the admin is looking to keep them going
In summary, a reality check: get ready for a long and painful budget season, because all the easy levers have already been pulled. There are not enough "cuts and efficiencies" that can close a $1.2B budget hole on their own without impairing/reducing city services.
