Finances

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
• Retail

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.