Cook County, with a hefty $9 billion budget this year, is staring down the barrel of a $218 million financial shortfall for 2025. The Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, seems unworried, however, having seen and managed worse deficits in the past, and insisted no government employee layoffs or tax increases would be deployed to bridge the gap. Instead, attention turns to an expected $367 million surplus by the year's end, as reported by the Chicago Sun-Times. The surplus is accredited in part to higher-than-anticipated sales tax and investment revenue streams, alongside payroll savings from an approximate 4,000 county job vacancies.
The long-term approach to the budget is to thoroughly avoid using one-time revenues to perpetually plug recurring costs. This is to prevent future structural deficits—a financial prudence strategy Cook County has adhered to for a decade. Despite this plan, next year's gap is driven by a 5% cost-of-living adjustment for employees and increasing pension contributions, revealed by county budget director Kanako Ishida Musselwhite in an interview obtained by the Chicago Tribune. These costs are significant enough to create the biggest gap Cook County has faced since 2021, but it appears manageable when placed against this year's multi-billion-dollar budget.
Adding to the sense of security are the higher and better reimbursements from insurance companies to Cook County Health for services rendered. This efficiency is part of a systemic overhaul to ensure adequate documentation of services and enrollment of qualifying patients in insurance plans, ensuring the county gets paid for its services. In this current fiscal atmosphere, Cook County Health is not forecasting any cost overruns for the next year—a remarkable turnaround for a once financially troubled system.
However, looming is the question of sustainability for the over 70 community programs initiated with the aid of $1 billion from the American Rescue Plan Act. With December 2026 marking the end of federal funding, Cook County must decide quickly but wisely which initiatives will continue—surely no easy task. Preckwinkle acknowledged this "fiscal cliff" but noted that a $166 million reserve fund has been established to extend funding for select programs, as per statements in the Chicago Sun-Times.
Facing this challenge, the county hopes to engage the public's voice through a survey this summer, hoping to gauge which pandemic-relief programs hold the highest value for residents. This inclusionary step precedes a public hearing scheduled for July 17, inviting community feedback on the county's financial trajectory and the fate of the pandemic-funded programs. Our citizens' participation, like the county's finances themselves, are a tapestry of commitments—to health, to equity, to the solidity of communal welfare in an unfixed world..
