CHICAGO — Mayor Brandon Johnson held a South Side town hall Tuesday evening to again hammer the city budget, the latest score-settling between him and the City Council bloc that passed its own plan in December after rejecting key parts of his proposal.

The fiery meeting at the South Shore Cultural Center began with local Ald. Desmon Yancy, a progressive who voted with mayoral opponents, questioning why Johnson was still attacking the budget for allegedly being short $163 million.

The mayor and his team then broke down their issues with the final spending package, a sign that last fall’s grueling fight shows no signs of simmering down over a month into 2026, even as both sides say the budget could still require midyear changes to make it work.

“If it wasn’t balanced, why wasn’t the veto power used to send it back to the council?,” Yancy said. “Pardon the pun. Something isn’t quite adding up.”

The $16.6 billion budget passed in late December in a historic rebuke of the mayor, averting a government shutdown. Just as unprecedented is the Johnson administration continuing to sound the alarm on a spate of issues it sees with the revenue projections, while his council opposition has complained those arguments are misleading.

All these forces converge to signal continued instability at City Hall in the wake of the political realignment spurred by the council rebellion against Johnson. That could present warning signs to credit rating agencies, portend a just-as-rocky budget cycle for 2027 and — per the mayor’s warnings — lead to layoffs that could hit the Police and Fire departments if fixes don’t come.

“There are forces, make no mistake about it, in this city, who would much rather work against the interests of working people,” Johnson said after Yancy’s remarks. “This budget does have projections from sources that the public has never seen or heard of before. That does bring some alarm.”

The next front of the revived 2026 budget battle could be back in City Council, where an aldermanic majority has cried foul over Johnson splitting in half an advance payment to the city’s woefully underfunded public pensions — a major sticking point in last year’s negotiations. A Finance Committee hearing into the matter is scheduled for later this month.

The mayor, for his part, has blamed “cash flow challenges” from Cook County’s side. Property tax bills were months late last year, delaying revenue payments that are necessary for pension payments, his budget director Annette Guzman told reporters in January. But that hasn’t placated Johnson critics who are looking to capitalize on openings to check the mayor’s budget team.

Regarding the $163 million shortfall estimated by Johnson’s team in the alternate budget, Guzman on Tuesday pointed out several reasons there could be gaps. First was a delay in establishing legal video gambling terminals due to state licensing timelines, plus losing $4 million from the Bally’s casino payment, she said.

There could also be a drop in revenue from the shopping bag tax hike because the increase could change consumer behavior, while the budget’s liquor tax changes actually dwindle the effective rate, Guzman said. A measure to license and tax augmented reality ads is not feasible to implement, while revenue projections for advertisements on public property such as light poles and bridges were inflated, she said.

On the controversial measure to raise $89.6 million by selling debt owed to the city, Guzman said “we are working closely with departments right now to put forth the sale” despite “a lot of difficulties in getting that debt sold.”

The mayor, meanwhile, revved up his tax-the-rich rhetoric — a sign that he will throw his weight behind trying to relaunch his stalled progressive revenue agenda ahead of next year’s budget, the final one to be passed before his seat and that of all 50 aldermen are on the ballot.

“Look, I know that there’s an element of the city of Chicago that believe that we can tighten our belt and to be leaner … but you’re not going to cut your way to success,” he said. “We have to take our fight to Springfield y’all. That’s where the big check is.”

It was a sharply different reception than the rosy welcome Johnson got last month at another 2026 budget appearance with a supporter, Ald. Anthony Quezada, in Avondale.

This town hall saw union supporters of both Johnson and Yancy, once allies in the city’s leftist movement, come to cheer them on. A former organizer with Service Employees International Union, the second biggest labor backer of Johnson’s 2023 election, Yancy went on the offensive against the mayor during the last budget fight.

And Tuesday night — which featured Yancy’s team distributing a printout of questions challenging the mayor’s handling of the budget — shows the rift between the two progressives growing.

Also in attendance were some of the council leaders of the group that passed the alternative budget, as well as other progressive critics on council, who said they were there to support Yancy.

“The mayor has said repeatedly that aldermen who didn’t support his budget were wicked and immoral, but is it really immoral to stand up for crime victims and high school students?” Yancy said, pointing out two youth mentoring programs that saw funding cuts Johnson had proposed restored under the final budget.

And the bad feelings seem unlikely to abate anytime soon.

Hours earlier, some of Yancy’s ward constituents got a text blast with a flier of Johnson and Yancy’s faces captioned, “DON’T BE FOOLED. … Mayor Johnson has not been honest about the City Council’s Alternative Budget.”

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—Tribune reporter Jake Sheridan contributed.

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