Chicago budget director follows acting CFO out the door

Dive Brief:

• Chicago’s budget director Annette Guzman has stepped down from her post, according to a social meeting post from Mayor Brandon Johnson’s press office. The departure comes on the heels of the city’s acting CFO Steven Mahr last week.
• Guzman is stepping down from the role to “focus on caring for her family,” the statement posted on X Monday night said, wishing her well and expressing gratitude for the work she has done for the city. 
• Johnson told reporters Tuesday that she had left to take care of an aging parent and asserted that the city remained stable, according to ABC Eyewitness News. “Even after others…have transitioned out it has not stopped us from building the safest, most affordable big city in America,” Johnson said. “The work speaks for itself and as long as the vision and mission I have put forth is carried out and executed by the team around me, the city of Chicago will remain stable under my leadership.”

Dive Insight:

The abrupt exits come just ahead of the cash-strapped city’s looming budget season and less than a year ahead of the next mayoral election.  

The defections of the financial leaders also comes as big fund managers that buy municipal bonds issued by the city are scheduled to come to Chicago to meet with city officials this month in which they were expected to give a sense of what is ahead for the city in what is expected to be “a fairly tumultuous budget season,” Joe Ferguson, president of the Civic Federation. 

“It’s not a place where new issuances are proposed but in the setting where they can get the context of basically how the revenue will look this year and the degree to which the investment community should be expecting for there to be new borrowing or borrowing rounds,” Ferguson said in a Monday interview before the news of the budget director’s exit. “It’s not a good look at a very difficult moment.” 

In addition to Mahr and Guzman, Deputy CFO Noor Shaikh also exited earlier this summer.