2027 City of Chicago Budget Proposal Overview

Mayor Brandon Johnson released his proposed 2027 budget for the City of Chicago on Wednesday, Oct. 21. As in previous years, BGA Policy will release a series of department-specific budget snapshots ahead of the departmental budget hearings in City Council.

The following is a preliminary summary of the overall budget and some of its major highlights. These are highlights only, based on the first few hours of analysis after data became available, and will be followed by deeper and more detailed analysis at a department by department level in the Budget Snapshots.

Sign up for our dedicated Budget Snapshots newsletter to receive detailed analyses of individual department budgets in advance of the departmental hearings in City Council!

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Highlights

Appropriations Highlights

• As in previous years, the Chicago Police Department has by far the largest of the city's proposed departmental budgets, with $2.2 billion in appropriations. As a percentage of city departments, CPD makes up 20.3% of all departmental appropriations, 30.2% of nongrant departmental appropriations, and 47.3% of corporate fund departmental appropriations. (An adjustment for the fringe pension/benefits costs budgeted under the citywide Finance General category increases CPD's share of overall departmental budgets further still - see our fringe analysis supplemental for more on calculating pension and benefit costs.)
• The Chicago Department of Transportation saw the largest year-over-year net increase in departmental appropriations, up $159.9 million from its previous year budget, followed by CPD with a $133.9 million increase. The Department of Technology and Innovation saw the largest net decrease, down -$42 million from its previous year budget, followed by the Department of Family and Support Services, down -$7.5 million.
• As in previous years, most departments' actual spend from local funds stayed within budget in 2025, the most recent full year for which actual spend data is available. CPD remained a dramatic overlier, spending $145.8 million over-budget (a sum larger than most departments' entire budgets for the year).

Positions and Vacancies Highlights

• The proposed budget would increase city headcount by a total 186 positions or FTEs, a 0.5% increase on the previous year.
• The largest departmental headcount increases are budgeted for Streets and Sanitation, Aviation, and Public Health, with the deepest cuts at the Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection, Office of Inspector General, and Civilian Office of Police Accountability.
• From Jan-Sept of 2026, the city's workforce averaged an 11.2% vacancy rate in budgeted, full-time, annual positions, the same rate as the previous year.

Revenue Highlights

• For the second year in a row, Mayor Johnson's budget proposal includes a corporate head tax, this year assuming $113.8 million in revenue. A similar proposal in last year's budget was voted down by the city council.
• This year's proposal continues a trend of steep increases in the Personal Property Lease Tax, raising the base rate from 15% to 20% (with an exemption for vehicle leases, which would remain at 15%). The budget estimates $1.6 billion in revenue from the increased levy, up from an estimate of $1.2 billion in the previous year's budget. If approved, the tax rate will have more than doubled from 9% in 2024.

Appropriations

The 2027 budget proposal contains $19.6 billion in appropriations, for a roughly $17.6 billion budget once transfers between funds and the library tax levy debt service are subtracted from the total.

(City budget data does not itemize all subtractions, although the majority can be found under appropriation account codes 9500-9599, which in this year's budget total roughly $1.7 billion. The library fund adjustment accounts for another $125.9 million subtraction.)

Overall Appropriations & Year-to-Year Budget Growth

The proposed $19.6 billion in appropriations represents a 5.1% increase from the previous year.

From 2011 (the earliest year for which detailed digital data is available) through 2025, total budgeted appropriations have grown at an average rate of 5.5% annually, driven in part by the infusion of billions of dollars in federal relief funds during the COIVD-19 pandemic.

Prior to the 2021 budget, the first budget to include pandemic relief funds, the budget increased annually at an average rate of 4.3%.

Adjusted for inflation, year-to-year growth from 2011-2025 (the last full year for which inflation data is available) averaged 3.5%, or 3% for the pre-pandemic years 2011-2020.

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Of the total appropriations proposed for 2027, $11.1 billion (56.5%) are departmental appropriations, with the remainder dedicated to the budget's non-departmental "Finance General" category. The Finance General category is typically used for citywide expenses, including the pension and benefit costs of nongrant employees.

In recent years, the Finance General section has taken up an increasingly large percentage of the city budget, as debt and pension/benefit costs crowd out day-to-day operational funding.

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Appropriation Sources

In most previous years' budgets, city funds have been categorized as either local, grant, or Community Development Block Grant. Beginning in 2026, CDBG grants were combined into the grant category.

Despite a slight net increase in grant-funded appropriations this year, grants made up a slightly lower percentage of funds than in the previous year's budget, down from 20.9% in 2026 to 20.2% in the 2027 proposal.

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The majority of city departments are primarily locally funded, with the majority of those drawing most or all of their appropriations from the city's general-purpose corporate fund.

Corporate fund dollars are the most discretionary within the city's budget - other local funds, such as the sewer and water funds, must be dedicated to directly related purposes, and grant funds are typically strictly governed by the terms of the specific grant.

Departments that are predominantly funded out of the corporate fund are therefore more discretionary and/or fungible with other departmental budgets, while departments with their own dedicated funds or a large proportion of grant funding are more siloed for budgetary purposes.

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Departmental Appropriations

As in previous years, the Chicago Police Department has by far the largest of the city's proposed departmental budgets, with $2.2 billion in appropriations.

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As a percentage of city departments, CPD makes up 20.3% of all appropriations in the 2027 proposal, 30.2% of nongrant appropriations, and 47.3% of corporate fund appropriations.

Because nongrant pension and benefit "fringe" costs are not included in departmental appropriations, however, the true cost of service for each department's personnel budget is somewhat obscured in the annual budget data.

To provide a more accurate breakdown of departmental costs, BGA Policy applied Department of Finance fringe formulae (typically used to estimate the cost of grant-funded employee benefits) to budgeted positions in the 2018-2025 budgets, then used annual growth rates of the various formulae inputs to project a rough estimate of fringe costs for the proposed 2027 nongrant positions:

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More information on our fringe calculations can be found in a summary released as part of this year's budget snapshots. Estimated fringe for previous years' budgets will also be included in each department's individual budget snapshot.

With fringe included, CPD's share of total departmental costs increases from 20.3% to 27.3%, while heavily grant-funded departments such as the transportation, aviation, and family and support services departments (which already include calculated fringe for grant-funded positions in their departmental appropriations) saw decreases in share of overall departmental funding:

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Year-over-Year Appropriations Changes

The Chicago Department of Transportation saw the largest year-over-year net increase in departmental appropriations, up $159.9 million from its previous year budget, followed by CPD with a $133.9 million increase.

The Department of Technology and Innovation saw the largest year-over-year net decrease, down -$42 million from its previous year budget, followed by the Department of Family and Support Services, down -$7.5 million.

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As a percentage of the previous year's budget, the Board of Election Commissioners saw the largest increase in the 2027 proposal, up 73.9% from its previous year budget. (BoEC funding tends to be cyclical, with increases during election cycles and decreases in off-years.) The Department of Finance saw the next-largest percentage increase, up 37.1% from its previous year budget, followed by the city treasurer's office, up 32.8%.

The Department of Technology and Innovation saw the largest percentage decrease as well as the largest net, down -54.9% from the previous year. No other departments saw anywhere near as large a budget cut, with the Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities the next-steepest cut at a -5.7% reduction.

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Local Fund Budgeted vs. Actual Spend

An annual BGA Policy analysis of actual spend from local funds found that, as in previous years, most city departments stayed within their budgets in 2025, spending on average 87.5% of their departmental budgets, comparable to previous years:

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CPD continues to be an outlier, overspending dramatically. Local fund spend from CPD exceeded budgeted appropriations by $145.8 million, a sum larger than most departments' entire budgets.

The Chicago Fire Department also exceeded its budget due to $74 million in revenue replacement initially budgeted for CFD from American Rescue Plan COVID relief funds that did not appear in the 2025 actuals, while the Chicago Commission on Human Relations overspent slightly on personnel services.

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Positions & Vacancies

Overall Positions & Year-to-Year Growth

The total number of budgeted city positions has remained relatively consistent over the years, with an average annual rate of change from 2011-2025 of -0.1%.

The mayor's 2027 recommendation proposes 186 additional positions or FTEs over last year's budget, a 0.5% increase in budgeted staffing.

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CPD would remain the largest department by far in the proposed 2027 budget, with 13,806 positions or FTEs, making up 38.3% of the city's budgeted staffing. CFD is the next-largest budgeted workforce, with 5,142 positions/FTEs, or 14.3% of the total city workforce.

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Departmental Positions and Year-to-Year Growth

The streets and sanitation, aviation, and public health departments saw the largest year-over-year net headcount increases, with the deepest cuts at the Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection, Office of Inspector General, and Civilian Office of Police Accountability.

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As a percentage of total headcount, the animal care and control and streets and sanitation departments saw the largest increase from the previous year, with the largest proportional cuts at, once again, OIG, BACP, and COPA.

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Vacancies

Beginning in February of 2025, the city began releasing monthly datasets of vacancies in budgeted annual full-time positions. From that February through December 2025, city departments averaged an 11.2% vacancy rate, with a wide range of variation: several small departments had few or no vacancies, with the Chicago Fire Department's 6.5% vacancy rate the lowest among larger departments, while at the other end of the scale the Department of Technology and Innovation averaged a 42.1% rate.

This year to date, from January through the end of September 2026, city departments have averaged the same 11.2% rate as the previous year. Of those, 7.3% are persistent vacancies, defined as vacancies within the same title, subsection, section, division, department, and fund codes that appear in every month's data.

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Outside of the city's smallest departments (budgeted headcount of 20 positions or less), the mayor's office has the lowest year-to-date vacancy rate, averaging 6.4% from Jan-Sept, while the Department of Environment has the highest at 44.6%. That department was significantly expanded in the previous year's budget, going from 14 budgeted full-time positions in 2025 to 79 in 2026, and its vacancy rate has been declining as positions fill, from 79.7% vacant in January to 22.8% vacant in September.

As of the end of September, DOTI has the highest vacancy rate among departments, with 30.6% of full-time, annual positions vacant. The Chicago Police Department has by far the largest gross number of vacancies, with 1,338 positions vacant as of September 30, of which 1,069 have been persistently vacant from Jan-Sept.

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Revenues

Beginning during the 2024 budget process, the city's budget office has made a dataset of estimated local fund revenues available in addition to the appropriations and positions datasets. The dataset does not include grants.

For the second year in a row, Mayor Johnson is proposing a corporate head tax, referred to in this year's budget materials as the Equitable Employer Tax. The previous year's budget proposal contained an estimated $100 million in revenue from a similar tax, which was ultimately rejected by the city council and replaced with a combination of other new and expanded revenue sources. This year's proposal assumes $113.8 million in revenue from the head tax.

The 2027 budget also proposes an increase in the personal property lease tax from 15% to 20%, with an exception keeping the rate for vehicle leases at 15%. The tax, which applies to digital tools as well as leased real property, has increased dramatically over the past decade, from a 5.25% rate for computer leases and 9% for all other leases in 2016 to the newly proposed 20% for 2027.

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The 2027 proposal estimates $1.6 billion in revenue from the PPLT, up from $1.2 billion at its lower rate in the 2026 proposal.

Other revenue sources that saw substantially increased estimates in this year's budget include the Sales Tax Securitization Corporation Residual (up $90.6 million), airport rates and charges ($85.3 million), and a tax on online sports wagering (up $50.7 million).

Note on Data in this Overview: All comparisons to appropriations from the 2026 budget are made using the 2026 appropriations ordinance dataset, which represents the 2026 budget as passed by the city council at the end of 2025. The 2027 recommendations dataset contains values for many appropriations different than those originally passed by city council, both in the "2026 Appropriation" and "2026 Revised Appropriation" fields. For purposes of these snapshots, comparisons are made to the 2026 budget as originally passed by the city council.

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