Mayor Brandon Johnson urges Aldermen to add a food tax in Chicago when a long -established state -owned grocery tax expires.
Johnson’s best financial leaders called on Aldermen to apply the tax during a meeting of the Municipal Council revenue. If he did not install the tax, she would blow up an additional hole of $ 80 million in the budget of Chicago 2026, as the city is already facing a budget difference of about $ 1 billion, said budget director Annette Guzman.
“We need to reinforce the food tax before the state’s deadline,” Guzman told the nine Eldermen available for the hearing.
Governor JB Pritzker claims that a 1% grocery tax is regressive and hits the poor families when he announced last year that he will terminate it, although the same state budget that has removed the grocery fee, added almost $ 900 million in tax increases. But Pritzker left the door open to the local authorities – who receive all tax revenue – to apply the same tax on their own.
More than 150 communities in Illinois have decided to introduce local grocery taxes, leaving many Illinois who is willing to pay the same account to a different bodyS Johnson and the City Council have so far postponed the thorny decision, but they must decide to implement it by October 1 in order to take effect when the state tax ends next year.
“If we fail to do the same, we will leave critical services to the cutting block,” Guzman said.
The deadline is closer than it seems. The legislation is still to be introduced, it is likely to be confronted with the detention of efforts by opponents and has to win a majority of the City Council by the end of September, with Aldermen plans to take their typical vacation in August.
Guzman and other speakers also supported calls during a meeting in Chicago to receive a bigger share of state income revenue and several reforms to state taxes on profit. These changes will require actions from state -owned MPs that seem very unlikely to come soon soon.
Johnson claims earlier Tuesday that the city will not “create” a grocery tax if it chooses to apply it, as there is already a state tax for exploitation.
“There is a process where the collection of a grocery tax is now raised in the responsibility of the municipalities, right?” He said at a press conference of the City Hall. “So it was a function that Illinois decided to give up and leave it to the cities to collect the tax. So we don’t create a grocery tax, we just create a process through which we can collect it.”
The progressive mayor’s attempt to avoid wearing a jacket for regressive grocery tax reflects the political difficulties that he faces between balancing the city’s budget and being seen as damages to the working-class residents with which he often promises to turn Chicago into a more accessible city.
By gluing cities like Chicago with the unpopular but necessary solution for the implementation of a grocery tax, a pritler and the General Assembly were the “budget title”, ALD. said William Hall.
“What we do is what the state did not have the courage to do,” said Hall, a close ally of Johnson and the chairman of the revenue subcommittee. “We need $ 80 million, there are no” IFS “,” Ands “or” Buts “for that … The state constantly plays Pingpong again.”
The Johnson administration also urged the state to expand the state’s sales tax to include services, an application supported on Tuesday by the President of the Civil Federation Joe Ferguson. He said the state reading of 6.25% sales tax makes Illinois a less “economically competitive” than other countries.
“Our sales tax system is built for the economy as it exists in 1960 and therefore it is stressful, regressive and does not meet the needs and services of the funding that the city and our region are currently demanding,” Ferguson said.
Guzman also called on the state’s sales tax to be expanded in order to focus on services. The extended tax would allow the total rate of sales tax to be reduced, she added.
“This will take away the focus, sustainable intercession by the Municipal Council, the administration and our partners in business and non -profit communities to turn these changes into our reality,” she said.
The call of state legislators to change the tax structure of the city seems to have come too late, at least for this year. The spring session of the General Assembly ended on Saturday, closing a critical window in which the legislation is easier to pass.
“There is a little disappointment that we are talking about some things that the state can only do after the state has already completed its conversation,” ALD. Andre Vasquez, 40th, said.
But Johnson’s Chief Financial Officer, Jill Joordsky, said he suspected that state legislators could be forced to meet before the autumn veto session in order to arrange a plan to fund transit so needed, potentially providing an additional lobbying opportunity for the city.
“We have to think, are there any ways to press some of what we think is important to us now?” she said. “Something like expanding the sales tax receives a lot of chatter.”