Mayor Brandon Johnson speaks after a City Council meeting on Nov. 14, 2025. [Don Vincent/The Daily Line]

Mayor Brandon Johnson on Wednesday warned that city workers could be laid off later this year if revenue projections from the coalition that put together and passed the alternative 2026 budget without the mayor’s support don’t come to fruition. 

The mayor and his budget team are already on record as having doubts about the adopted 2026 budget being balanced, a budget which Johnson neither vetoed nor signed after it was passed in late December over his objections. 

At a budget committee meeting last month, Budget Director Annette Guzman and the rest of the budget team presented an analysis that showed the rival budget plan would leave the 2026 budget about $163 million short.  

Related: Annual spending ordinance approved even as mayor’s team calls alternative revenue ordinance unbalanced 

The City Council passed the budget anyways, and the leaders of the coalition continue to assert that the proposal is balanced. 

Even after technical corrections were made at the last council meeting of the year, the mayor said during a general press conference Wednesday “there are still some concerns about whether or not the budget projections that were put forth by those other alders, that those projections will actually materialize. So now I'm bracing for what could be mid-year layoffs.” 

The mayor said his administration would monitor monthly revenue reports and expects he could have to make some tough decisions. 

“Every month when the revenue comes in, we're going to have to make strategic decisions around how we salvage or address the shortfall,” Johnson said. “As far as individuals who could be laid off, I mean, we're talking about public employees. [There could be] real serious consequences to workers who are attached to community safety.” 

Some of the revenue sources that the city budget office has voiced concern with include revenue from video gaming terminal legalization, revenue from the proposed sale of municipal debt to a private buyer, additional revenue stemming from the March 1 change in the tax structure for retail alcohol sales and revenue from pilot programs to sell advertising space on city vehicles, lightpoles and bridge houses.

Ald. Samantha Nugent (39), one of the leaders of the coalition, told The Daily Line last week that the onus would be on both the administration as well as the council to do everything it could to ensure that the new taxes, fees and programs in the 2026 budget bring in the necessary revenue to avoid a shortfall.  

“At the end of the day, it’s going to require partnership from the administration and City Council to work together to ensure we effectuate within the revenue and the management ordinance because it’s the right thing to do for the city,” Nugent said. 

Related: As historic city budget goes into effect, coalition that crafted it vows to stick together 

Johnson told reporters that he was committed to working with the council to ensure that revenue shortfall didn’t come to pass.

“I’m continuously working with City Council and rolling up my sleeves to ensure that we can mitigate that type of harm,” Johnson said. “But we have to deal with the reality that there were alders who chose to create projections that, quite frankly, just were not tethered to reality.”