Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle unveiled her $9.89 billion 2025 budget proposal Wednesday, closing a $218 million projected budget shortfall without tax or fee hikes, program cuts, or layoffs.
“I think it’s fair to say this is a good news budget,” Preckwinkle told reporters during a Wednesday afternoon briefing ahead of her official budget speech Thursday morning.
Preckwinkle was unfazed earlier this summer when describing the 2025 gap, which represented a small percentage of the county’s overall budget. This year’s cuts are limited to the elimination of 56 vacant positions, but no layoffs. Most were positions funded by federal pandemic relief, county officials said.
A boost in certain revenues and a shuffling of leftover money in the county’s general fund from the 2023 budget helped close the $218 million gap. In all, Preckwinkle’s 2024 proposal is a $628 million increase over this year’s.
Preckwinkle’s proposal includes replenishing the county’s $110 million emergency response fund, which is on track to be roughly half depleted by the end of the year. About $40 million went to helping the city of Chicago feed migrants living in shelters, while another $20 million went to suburban municipalities either hit by natural disasters or otherwise helping with the migrant response.
5% across-the-board raises for county employees helped fuel this year’s gap. Those raises were expected to cost nearly $100 million, while associated health and pension payments would rise by nearly $50 million. But vacancies, especially at Cook County Health, have persisted. County officials estimated there were 3,700 vacancies across the county.
“My daughter’s a nurse and I know in this environment, every healthcare system she’s been associated with has had real challenges around staffing, have used agency staff to help meet their needs,” Preckwinkle said, but “things have gotten better this year, both on non-healthcare and healthcare side.”
Projections in upcoming years show shortfalls remaining relatively small: the county’s projected deficit across its health and general funds for 2026 is $112.5 million, and for 2027 is $122.3 million.
The end of the year also marks Preckwinkle’s final opportunity to obligate $167 million in federal pandemic dollars or risk losing them.
Cook County received about $1 billion through the American Rescue Plan Act’s program for state and local relief. Federal authorities mandated recipients not only budget where they’ll spend their dollars, but have legal agreements in place to reflect the same before Dec. 31 of this year.
Chief Financial Officer Tanya Anthony guaranteed all the funds would be obligated by the end of the year. “No, we’re not going to lose any.”
In the more than three years since ARPA dollars landed, just $312 million has been spent so far of the roughly $800 million set aside for community programs — rather than county operations — according to the county’s ARPA dashboard.
Preckwinkle and Anthony both defended the seemingly slow pace of the county’s spending of federal dollars.
The county spent a year talking to staff, county commissioners, advocates, and constituents, and came up with a plan “before we spent a dollar” on community programs, Preckwinkle said. Other cities and counties in worse financial shape might have spent faster to supplement operations.
“It takes time to stand up 73 programs,” Anthony said. “By the end of this year we’ll have everything obligated and see a significant increase in our pace of spending. When we look at our peers across the country that have allocated money towards community programs and not just to operations, we’re all pretty much on par.”
In anticipation of the “fiscal cliff” that will come after Dec. 31, 2026, the federal “use it or lose it” deadline, the county set aside $166 million in non-ARPA dollars to continue funding or slowly phase out some of the community programs Preckwinkle launched.
“We’re planning way ahead,” Anthony said.
The city and Chicago Public schools’ budget futures are much foggier: Mayor Brandon Johnson faces a nearly $1 billion deficit in 2025, and Chicago Public Schools continues to haggle over how to pay for teacher raises and pensions. Any additional debt or spending puts pressure on future revenue sources the county could tap if they were in trouble. Asked whether their rising deficits cast shadows on the county’s relatively sunny fiscal outlook, Preckwinkle declined to comment. “I’m staying in my lane.”
