Budget Gap Is Halfway There, Chicago Still Living On A Prayer

By Samantha Abernethy in News on Jul 30, 2012 10:20PM

AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato

Mayor Rahm Emanuel said today that his administration has succeeded at closing half of the city's projected budget gap. That means the city has just a $350 million hole left to patch up. The Tribune writes:

“Without jumping ahead, it will show that what could have been a deficit . . . north of $700 million, we cut in half from a structural standpoint,” Emanuel said at an unrelated news conference.

“That's through (the) hard decisions we made and tough decisions to reinvent, rethink how we as a government operate,” he added. “But our work is not done. . . . We're only one year into a process of changing it.”

Should we be comforted that we're still just halfway there? Well tomorrow the mayor's office will present its preliminary estimates to start discussions with aldermen on how to close that gap. The mayor's office will propose the 2013 budget in October.

(Eds. Note: Sorry, I just couldn't help myself with the Jon Bon Jovi headline.)