Chicago City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin wants to abolish a $57 million community investment fund created nearly a decade ago to spur development on the South and West Sides, and instead use the money to help stave off mid-year layoffs of police officers and firefighters. Conyears-Ervin said the city faces an over $90 million deficit, and she has identified preventing cuts to police, fire and other essential-worker jobs as the greater need.
The proposal, first reported by Illinois Playbook and detailed by the Chicago Sun-Times, would dissolve the Chicago Community Catalyst Fund and redirect its remaining $57 million toward the general budget. Conyears-Ervin said she is still determining who would introduce the ordinance, though she plans to have it drafted internally. Under Municipal Code Section 2-32-622, the fund was formally established as a pooled investment vehicle intended to increase available capital across the city's 77 community areas, according to a filing from Marquette Associates.
The fund traces back to 2017, when then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel included a $100 million Catalyst Fund in that year's budget under then-Treasurer Kurt Summers. The idea, per the Sun-Times report, was to bridge the funding gap between downtown and other Chicago neighborhoods, with private managers selected by a seven-member Catalyst Fund board required to invest the money in low-income neighborhoods and Community Reinvestment Act census tracts. Summers said at the time that the $100 million in seed money would be matched by three times that amount in outside capital, but the fund never attracted private investment and, per the Sun-Times, had not even launched or appointed board members a year after its creation.
A Pandemic Lifeline, Then Years of Dormancy
The fund's most notable use came in March 2020, when the Catalyst Fund Board committed up to $50 million of its capital to help seed the $100 million Chicago Small Business Resiliency Fund, combining city dollars with $25 million in grants and private capital from Goldman Sachs and Fifth Third, according to a City of Chicago announcement. That effort provided low-interest stopgap loans that the Sun-Times reports helped 762 small businesses keep their doors open during the pandemic, kept employees working in their communities, and were repaid in full. Conyears-Ervin has said the Catalyst Fund was revived through that partnership, which Lori Lightfoot forged with her during the pandemic. Separately, Summers had also proposed using $57 million in excess portfolio earnings to combat street violence in Chicago, though that figure is the same amount now targeted for the layoff-prevention plan. Summers could not be reached for comment on the new proposal, the Sun-Times reported, and Mayor Brandon Johnson's office had no immediate comment.
Why the Timing Matters for City Hall
The proposal lands as Chicago grapples with overlapping fiscal crises. Mayor Johnson warned last month that the city faced an immediate shortfall of at least $130 million for the second half of 2026 after revenue measures baked into the spending plan failed to materialize, according to WTTW News, which reported that Johnson blamed council members for rejecting proposed head taxes on large corporations. Beyond that immediate gap, city budget officials projected in August 2025 that Chicago's Corporate Fund deficit for 2026 would reach $1.15 billion, driven by $4.16 billion in personnel costs and more than $900 million in required pension payments, per CBS News.
Other city-linked bodies are turning to similar one-time fixes. The Chicago Board of Education passed a budget last month relying on $285 million in city Tax Increment Financing surplus funds to reverse planned school layoffs, while warning that mid-year cuts remained possible if state funds fell short, Chalkbeat reported. Johnson has separately noted that repeatedly tapping city TIF funds to bail out school operations is unsustainable, per the same outlet's coverage.
A Family Tie at the Center of the Vote
Any move to dissolve the Catalyst Fund would require formal City Council approval, since the fund's seven-member board — made up of four mayoral appointees confirmed by the council and three ex-officio city financial officials — was created by council ordinance in the first place. That puts unusual weight on Ald. Jason Ervin of the 28th Ward, who chairs the council's Budget and Government Operations Committee and is also Conyears-Ervin's husband. The Sun-Times notes that Jason Ervin is considered one of Mayor Johnson's most powerful allies, and The Daily Line has reported that he has frequently clashed with Johnson over tax proposals and alternative spending plans, including his public opposition last month to the mayor's push to sell Chicago's parking meter contract, a deal that stalled in committee amid widespread aldermanic opposition.
Conyears-Ervin's push also arrives while she remains under continued scrutiny over past conduct in office. The Chicago Board of Ethics fined her a total of $70,000 in April and May 2024 for violating the Governmental Ethics Ordinance by misusing city resources and retaliating against staff who reported political campaign violations, according to Grokipedia, penalties that followed a 2022 wrongful termination settlement of $100,000 the city paid to two former treasurer employees. Hoodline has previously reported on further misconduct claims against the treasurer, as well as the office's whistleblower settlement.
As of February 2025, the Treasurer's Office oversaw nearly $14 billion in trading volume while managing the city's main investment portfolio and escrow accounts, according to the Chicago Business Journal, in addition to serving as banker and investor for the city's four municipal pension funds. Conyears-Ervin has framed the Catalyst Fund's dissolution as a matter of community priorities, arguing that South and West Side residents do not want police officers laid off in their own neighborhoods. Whether the ordinance moves forward now largely depends on the council — and on the budget chair who shares her last name.
