◼ POLITICS Bloomberg Businessweek December 7, 202038
JEFF J. MITCHELL/GETTY IMAGESin his ward, 55% of respondents said they’d
lost income during the pandemic, and close to a
third said they struggled to pay their rent or mort-
gage. “Don’t give me crumbs and tell me it’s cake,”
Alderman Jeanette Taylor, a progressive, said on
the day of the vote, adding that food and medicine
are at stake for families in her ward. “Why can’t we
tax the rich?”
The enormity of the pandemic’s impact means
“our options are extremely limited,” says Alderman
Scott Waguespack, a Lightfoot ally who’s chairman
ofthecitycouncil’sfinancecommittee.“It’sthe
bestwecoulddorightnow.”
Covid-19has exacerbatedracial, economic,
and health gaps that had long been widening in
Chicago. As of Dec. 2, the city counted more than
161,000 Covid-19 cases and almost 3,500 deaths,
a disproportionate number of them in Black and
Latino communities. As the virus snaked through
neighborhoods this summer, unrest added to
the financial and emotional toll. Small corner
shopsalongwithhigh-endstoresontheiconic
MagnificentMilewerelooted.Thecity’scostsfor
services—including aid to the homeless, police over-
time, and small-business assistance—have risen.
Lightfoot says constructing the budget required
putting the good of the whole city ahead of indi-
vidual wards: “For the foreseeable future, we are
in a period of reckoning with our past.” Leaders in
Chicago not making tough choices and acting for
short-term gain has been “long-term fiscally a disas-
ter for our city,” Lightfoot says.
Moody’s Investors Service downgraded the city’s
debt to junk in 2015 partly because of its strained
pension system, which is underfunded by $31 bil-
lion. The city’s total retirement obligations for fiscal
2021 are projected to rise. (Meanwhile, its popula-
tion has fallen for several years in a row, so it has
fewer residents to foot its bills.) S&P, which rates
Chicago three levels above junk at BBB+, lowered
its outlook to negative in April because of Covid-19.
“Voters elected me because I represented
change,” Lightfoot says. “I don’t think voters
elected me to just kick the can down the road.” The
large debt refinancing has drawn criticism as an
example of just that, however, from the watchdog
Civic Federation, which said it will increase debt
costs in future years. City of Chicago Chief Financial
Officer Jennie Huang Bennett says that the step is
appropriate given the city’s challenges and that
additional federal stimulus may erase the neces-
sity for scoop and toss.
The mayor needed a simple majority of the
council’s 50 aldermen to pass budget measures.
Her budget ordinance got 29 yeas and 21 nays,THE BOTTOM LINE Chicago will raise taxes and fees and
restructure its debt to close its huge deficit, a win for the mayor
that’s earned her criticism from various quarters.while the property taxhikewon 28 to22.It was
the tightest budget vote in Chicago since the
mid-1980s, when a bloc of old-guard aldermen
faced off against Mayor Harold Washington, says
Dick Simpson, a political science professor at
the University of Illinois at Chicago and a former
city alderman. The recession caused by the pan-
demic left Lightfoot with “no magic way to solve
the entire gap,” Simpson says. A poll conducted in
late September and early October, before the bud-
get hearings, put Lightfoot’s approval among regis-
tered voters in Chicago at 61%. If she can continue
to work with the council and deliver on some pro-
gressive goals, Simpson says, lingering hard feelings
from the budget process won’t necessarily dent her
political appeal. �Shruti Singh● The country is the first in the world to offer
free, universal access to sanitary productsScotland Makes
Periods Less Painful
OnNov.24,Scotlandbecamethefirstcountry
in the world to establish through legislation
that access to period products is a right, a move
that First Minister Nicola Sturgeon described as
groundbreaking. It caps a four-year campaign
led by Monica Lennon, a member of the Scottish
Parliament, that was backed by a wide coalition of
trade unions, women’s groups, and charities.City of Chicago
Population Contributions to pension plans2.75m2.702.65
2010 2019$1.4b0.70
2010 2019
DATA: U.S. CENSUS BUREAU; CITY OF CHICAGO