Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle is pitching a good news budget for next year: no layoffs, new taxes or tax hikes.
Her proposed $9.89 billion spending plan includes investments in generative artificial intelligence to help county workers do their jobs more efficiently — not to replace them — along with replenishing a fund to help communities helping migrants or hit hard by flooding, and putting solar panels on county facilities to ultimately lower energy costs and save the county money.
And there’s a big goal: essentially having contracts in place by Dec. 31 to spend all of the $1 billion in federal pandemic relief dollars the county has received. So far, the county has committed 84% of the money. Preckwinkle and her finance team vow to hit the deadline.
Tanya Anthony, the county’s chief financial officer, said county leaders are proud of the government’s fiscal might: strong credit ratings, healthy reserves, stable pensions.
“We’re doing all of this without the need to raise taxes,” Anthony said during a briefing with reporters on Wednesday. “We’re in good shape for good reason.”
Preckwinkle is slated to present her proposed 2025 budget on Thursday to the Cook County Board of Commissioners. That kicks off a series of public hearings and negotiations with elected and appointed county leaders who run the government’s jail, courts and vast public health system called Cook County Health.
Health care and public safety typically make up the bulk of the county budget. Commissioners are set to vote on the proposed budget in November. It takes effect on Dec. 1.
Preckwinkle, who has led the county since 2010, has consistently used her budgets to try to make the region a more equitable place to live and work. That includes using pandemic relief dollars to fund programs like guaranteed income for low-income residents and erasing up to $1 billion in medical debt, both of which have attracted national attention.
While Preckwinkle said guaranteed income will live on when the federal money runs out — all of the $1 billion must be spent by 2026 — the county has been asking residents for input on which programs to keep.
Preckwinkle’s proposed 2025 budget is nearly 7% more compared to this year’s $9 billion budget. In June, she predicted a $218 million budget gap for next year. But now the county expects a boost in sales tax, and plans to use reserves to invest back into the county.
At the same time, the county plans to spend less on payroll and employee health benefits. Despite struggling to fill vacancies, Preckwinkle said she plans to cut 56 empty positions related to pandemic relief programs that either didn’t launch or didn’t need more staff.
But she said she still wants to fill some 3,600 other vacancies. Many are Cook County Health, which treats people no matter if they can pay. Preckwinkle said she knows firsthand how hard it can be for hospitals to hire nurses: her daughter is one and has worked at health systems struggling to fill empty jobs.
“The vacancies that we have are vacancies that we believe need to be filled in the system,” Preckwinkle said.
The county expects to have just over 23,000 full-time employees next year.
Among other priorities, Preckwinkle wants to infuse about $50 million into a disaster response and recovery fund the county approved last year, to get the fund back up to $100 million. Only two suburbs received money this year to help migrants, and the county shifted another chunk of the money to the city of Chicago to help provide meals for the new arrivals, but not as much as they originally anticipated to give now that fewer migrants are traveling here, Preckwinkle said.
The county also wants to add more staff to the county assessor’s office, which sets the values of homes and businesses around the region, hire trusted “navigators” to help residents safely learn how to use the internet, and invest in a program to provide legal aid to residents who could get evicted from their homes.
Tom Lynch, county bureau chief of technology, said the county is also working on how it should use artificial intelligence technology to aid county government work, and developing guidelines on its use to protect residents’ privacy.
For example, the county could use a deep learning model to see if there’s a change in someone’s property that could affect how much tax they pay. If someone builds an extension on the back of their house without getting a permit, a county employee might miss it, but AI technology might find it, Lynch said.
Residents can weigh in on the proposed 2025 budget during a public hearing Oct. 17.
Kristen Schorsch covers public health and Cook County government for WBEZ.