An employee tax aimed at online giant Amazon and other big retailers is among the proposals progressive aldermen brought forward Monday to balance Chicago’s 2021 budget.
With Mayor Lori Lightfoot fighting behind the scenes to get the 26 votes she needs to pass her spending plan, different City Council groups are bringing forward their own plans to try to put their imprint on the final version.
Progressive aldermen also introduced ordinances to the City Council on Monday to fund a program within the city Public Health Department to have mental health teams respond without police officers to mental health crises; to defund the Chicago Police Department’s Homan Square facility on the West Side; and to sunset a handful of special taxing districts in order to return more property tax funds to the city and other taxing bodies.
These ordinances face uphill battles to make it into the budget. But the mayor is counting on an unpopular $94 million property tax increase, a 3-cent gas tax hike and lots of borrowing, among other things, to help close a $1.2 billion deficit next year, so she might need to compromise with aldermen in other areas to pull her package across the finish line. The City Council is set to vote on the budget at the end of the month.
The proposed $16-per-employee-per-month tax would apply only to logistics operations with more than 50 employees.
That would hit Target, Walmart and the recently opened Amazon delivery warehouse in the Far South Side’s Pullman neighborhood, according to Kennedy Bartley, legislative director for the United Working Families community coalition that helped design the ordinances.
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The tax could bring in around $5.8 million annually, Bartley said. “This meets the need to make big corporations pay their fair share before turning to working-class citizens to balance the books,” she said.
Lightfoot has opposed the idea of imposing employee head taxes, saying they’re a disincentive to businesses adding jobs.
But Southwest Side Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, 25th, said that with Walmart, Target and Amazon reporting big profits during the COVID-19 pandemic while small businesses struggle mightily, he’s hopeful his colleagues on the council will endorse the plan.
“We have to look at more progressive sources of revenue, look to these big businesses that are doing so well right now rather than relying on residents and small businesses to shoulder the burden,” he said.
The mayor also has put forth her own mental health co-responder pilot program that would have police and mental health teams on the scene together. Lightfoot has said she’s worried health workers could get hurt if the situations escalated and officers aren’t there.
Northwest Side Ald. Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez, 33rd, said she’s been talking with the administration about also incorporating a model without police like those in other cities. She hasn’t gotten a definitive response, so she’s introducing her own plan.
“This lays out what we want, and it’s a top priority for me,” Rodriguez Sanchez said. “I’ll be looking at the entire budget holistically. I won’t be trading my vote for this single issue, but it is important.”
Activists have been trying to shut down the Police Department’s Homan Square facility since 2015, when reports surfaced about mistreatment of detainees there.
Damon Williams of the #LetUsBreathe Collective said the public conversation around defunding the Police Department has finally gotten to the point where he hopes the Homan Square issue gets some traction.
“Mayor Lightfoot talked about how horrible it was what Minneapolis police did to George Floyd, but the Chicago police have been uniquely harmful in this city,” Williams said. “So by uplifting Homan Square, we hope to make that more tangible, to remind people what police have done here, particularly on the West Side.”
Twitter @_johnbyrne
