Mary Dixon: Chicago City Council members have a few more weeks to consider Mayor Lori Lightfoot's massive $16 billion spending plan before they're expected to vote on it. It includes increased police spending, funding for reproductive health care money to help migrants coming from Texas and more. Alders grilled department leaders about their spending priorities and about why the city has failed to spend much of the federal COVID relief money that's already arrived at City Hall. WBEZ's Mariah Woelfel joins us now to go over some of these discussions. Good morning, Mariah. 

Mariah Woelfel: Morning, Mary. 

Mary Dixon: So the city's building out a budget that's flush with COVID relief money. What are some of the programs supported by that money? 

Mariah Woelfel: Well, so far the program with the most momentum is the guaranteed basic income program we've all heard so much about the city has fully rolled out that program and is spending $31 million on it. The most, you know they've doled out on any single program so far. Five thousand low income families are getting checks in the mail each month now for $500. No strings attached as part of this one year pilot program. But the fact that this program is up and running is an outlier, I should say. The city for the most part has been slow to distribute most of its $1.9 billion in COVID-19 relief money that it got last year, which is now rolling over into this year's budget.

Mary Dixon: How much has the city distributed?

Mariah Woelfel: The city by the end of this year will have only distributed - or spent, you know about 13% of the COVID-19 money it received last year. And this, you know became an early and often sticking point throughout this year's budget hearings. Here's Alderman Daniel La Spata. He's a Democratic socialist who voted for the budget last year, you know, largely because of these progressive programs that it paid – that this money paid for. He's reading an update on expenditures for domestic violence programs.

Daniel La Spata: Zero expended violence prevention, education and training. Zero expended dollars aren't out the door. They - they can't do the work until the dollars are out the door.

Mariah Woelfel: So, he kind of echoes this sentiment and questions that department leaders got from numerous Aldermen.

Mary Dixon: What does the Lightfoot administration say in response to this criticism?

Mariah Woelfel: Well, leaders said to Alderman one: these funds weren't all, weren't meant to be, well they were always meant to be rolled out gradually. They were not meant to be just a one time massive payment. They were supposed to help organizations over the course of the next three to five years. They also talked about the difficulty of getting this money to organizations saying they've had to handle all their other work, beef up staff to issue contract bids, signed contracts with organizations, you know, getting through the red tape of delivering these funds. 

Mary Dixon: And what else got push back, Mariah?

Mariah Woelfel: One recurring issue we heard during hearings was that Mayor Lori Lightfoot will not be making good on a campaign promise to create a Department of Environment. It came up many times.

City Council Members: We need the Department of Environment. Do you feel that we would be in better shape having a Department of Environment? I know some of my colleagues have brought up looking for a free standing Department of Environment. Please add me to the list of colleagues that would like to see that...

Mariah Woelfel: Those were city council members Maria Hadden, Andre Vasquez and Samantha Nugent. Now Lightfoot is proposing this year to create an environmental division within her office with about $650,000 a year for six positions. Some aldermen say that is just not enough to deal with pressing issues of climate change in the city's facing Alderman Vasquez who you heard from says Lightfoot if it doesn't put you know a freestanding department in her budget, you know, he could vote no on it altogether.

Mary Dixon: Okay, so a vote on the budget is scheduled for early next month. That's WBEZ politics reporter Mariah Woelfel talking about the city of Chicago budget process. Thanks Mariah.

Mariah Woelfel: Thanks, Mary.

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