Priorities

I’ve built my career as a leader in turning around government finances. Chicago urgently needs a turnaround. We will get our fiscal house in order.

City Hall has become too comfortable spending money we don’t have — then sticking all of us with the bill. That will end on Day 1 of a Mayor Mendoza administration.

Property taxes are crushing Chicagoans and making our city unaffordable.

Growing our city’s tax base would increase total revenue without requiring higher tax rates.

That requires leaning into pro-growth policies that attract more people, more businesses, more jobs, and more economic development.

This enables the city to fix its structural deficits, improve municipal services, and reduce the heavy tax burden currently falling on existing residents.

We’re going to reduce waste and deliver long-overdue Taxpayer Relief through Innovative Management of our city’s resources.

It’s time to TRIM the fat in City Hall.

We are going to curb the city’s addiction to spending and stop the hemorrhaging of our city’s finances.

We will find efficiencies everywhere we can and provide better service to Chicago taxpayers, at lower cost.

Why do I know we can do it under a Mayor Mendoza administration? Because I did it for Chicago as City Clerk Mendoza and for Illinois as Comptroller Mendoza. 

When I ran for Illinois Comptroller during the worst fiscal crisis in our state’s history, I promised to deliver our first credit rating upgrade. We earned 10 credit upgrades on my watch.

The credit rating agencies (and Chicago taxpayers) can rest assured knowing that I know what it takes to earn credit upgrades: fiscal discipline and smart money management.

The better our credit rating, the more money taxpayers will save on accessing capital for important infrastructure improvements.

The city’s combined pension funds are severely underfunded, requiring major strategic shifts to achieve lasting stability, including professionalizing their management structure and having difficult but necessary conversations to avoid insolvency. This doesn’t happen overnight.

As Illinois Comptroller, I championed utilizing better-than-expected revenues to pay down pension obligations. I also passed legislation to prepay pensions whenever possible, earning millions of dollars in interest. We will do that for Chicago pensions. This can happen overnight.

Chicago will never miss or delay a debt service payment on my watch, and my administration will always seek to stretch the value of every hard-earned tax dollar.

Many working-class neighborhoods are losing out because the mayor and the Chicago City Council used Tax Increment Financing (TIF) to bail out the city budget.

Over the last 10 years, almost $4 BILLION in economic development potential has been diverted from TIFs to cover operating expenses and plug budget holes due to the city’s addiction to spending.

Residents and businesses in these neighborhoods dutifully paid into these TIF funds so that money could be used to bring economic development into these neighborhoods. These funds are to help build new:

• Schools
• Housing
• Parks
• Medical Districts

They were not created to be slush funds that a mayor or council snatches to balance a budget.

I will put an end to this abuse and utilize these precious economic development dollars to grow our city.

Public safety requires trust — and trust requires leadership. As your mayor, I will earn your trust by making your safety my priority.

Real progress is when Chicagoans feel safer because they actually are safer.

We are going to work to address public safety in every neighborhood.

I won’t play favorites on which neighborhoods deserve to feel safer. They all do.

My administration will stand behind the brave men and women of the Chicago Police Department.

We will work hand in hand with Superintendent Snelling and let him do his job. He has my full support and the confidence of the people of Chicago.

We will fill police vacancies and lift their morale.

We will rebuild trust between our officers and the communities they serve and protect.

Officers will be freed from time-consuming desk work and returned to the streets by leveraging AI-assisted administrative technologies.

We will lean into innovation and bring back the ShotSpotter detection system that alerts police to gunshots, allowing officers to render aid in time to save lives.

Violence needs to be met with accountability.

That means leading our city and its policies from a moral compass that puts victims first and holds offenders accountable. No more excuses for violent crime.

I believe in investing heavily in education and programming that helps people choose a life of success – my record reflects that. I believe in 2nd chances, but not in 52nd chances.

If you choose a life of crime, you must be held accountable. It’s an issue of fairness and balance, and plain ol’ common sense.

People accused of Murder, Attempted Murder, or Predatory Sexual Assault should not be eligible for Electronic Monitoring, and worse yet, get two days off the monitoring grid.

It defies all common sense, it’s deadly dangerous, and it needs to stop.

The SAFE-T Act needs to be amended to repeal this provision.

Chicagoans deserve a safe, clean, and reliable transit system.

No one should be scared to ride public transit. No one wants to get punched in the face with the smell of weed, urine, or feces when hopping on a train, or worse yet, become the victim of violence on one.

We need police back on our trains and enforcement of existing laws to restore order to our public transit system, as well as the installation of better, more accessible gates like those in other cities, to deter fare evasion and revenue loss for the system.

Chicago has tossed mayors out of office for blizzards, corruption, and incompetence. Right now, Chicago is experiencing a Blizzard of Incompetence. Chicagoans deserve better.

I will bring a trifecta of experience to City Hall

• Legislative: 6-terms as an Illinois State Representative.
• City council: 2-terms as Chicago City Clerk.
• State financial crisis management: as your Illinois Comptroller since 2016.

Throughout my career, I’ve demonstrated the skills and achieved the kind of results Chicago desperately needs.

The stakes are higher than ever. And to restore confidence we need our next mayor to understand how to navigate Springfield and the City Council successfully and manage finances. I can do it, because I have.

My superpowers are finding great people, building great teams, and getting things done.

That’s what smart, competent leadership looks like.

We’re going to get Chicago’s official bird — the construction crane — back in the skies across our city. Those cranes in the sky represent growth. They represent jobs. Housing. Opportunity. Momentum. Mojo.

In 2019, we had 65 construction cranes flying high in our skies, second only to Seattle. Today we’re down to 5.

Our city bird will fly again, in flocks, under my administration, and you’ll see progress.

Chicago is a city of builders. Builders of businesses, of families, of futures. We are going to get back to building big things in Chicago.

We have too many grocery, pharmacy, and maternity deserts. Far too many homes have lead pipes contaminating their water supply. Our growth plan will be a big part of how we will address our most urgent needs. Growth means having the resources to make smart investments in people and to revitalize neighborhoods.

We’re going to get businesses and construction projects up and running faster.

• White Glove Service: streamline the permitting process.
• Start and Stay: Treat small businesses’ assets, and stop nickel-and-diming them with fees.
• Boomerang: For businesses that have left Chicago, let’s entice them to return.

We will hold ourselves accountable to this goal by displaying a public dashboard that compares our permitting times with those of peer cities.

We’re going to support entrepreneurs and business owners, because when businesses grow, jobs grow, wages grow, and working families grow.

We’re going to increase our supply of housing across the city. Build transit-oriented housing. Build workforce housing. Build adaptive reuse housing. Reinvest in our neighborhoods and our downtown.

We’re going to build industries of the future like Quantum.

Most importantly, we’re going to show progress to rebuild confidence in Chicago’s future…together.