Chicago officials project smaller gap in city budget

CHICAGO - We are less than 30 days away from the changing of the helm in Chicago.

On Tuesday, Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced her parting gift for Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson — a smaller-than-anticipated budget gap.

Lightfoot’s financial team says the administration is leaving a projected budget gap of just $85 million.

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Officials say if Johnson continues following Lightfoot’s policies, the gap could hit a historic low in just three years.

"We said the first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna look inward first. Meaning we are going to figure out how we can make city government run efficiently, run more effectively without going to the taxpayers and reflexively saying pay us more. That was critically important for everything that we did," Lightfoot said.

The Johnson transition team has not commented on the revised deficit projections.

Johnson and the new City Council will be sworn in on May 15.