The City of Chicago released its 2024 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR) on June 30 with the same political strategy it always deploys: soften the blow, blame external forces, and quietly hope nobody reads past the headline.
WTTW obliged.
“Chicago Ended 2024 With $161M Deficit: Officials,” they reported, suggesting a minor stumble, maybe even a sign of resilience. But buried on page 24 of the actual audit is a sentence no headline dared to quote:
“Liabilities and deferred inflows of the City exceeded its assets and deferred outflows at the close of the fiscal year by $29,250.9 million (net deficit).”
That’s $29.25 billion in the red. Not in some future projection. Not a worst-case scenario.
That’s the number today, signed off by auditors. And yet, the story Chicagoans were fed focused on a one-time gap of $161 million—a rounding error in the face of systemic collapse.
To understand how deep the deception runs, you have to examine six voices that shaped the narrative:
The Audit. The official financials do not mince words. Unrestricted cash dropped $977 million. The General Fund was drained by $667 million. Long-term liabilities still sit above $70 billion. The unrestricted net position deficit is now $39.8 billion.
The audit doesn’t editorialize.
It just reports the brutal truth: Chicago is functionally insolvent.
WTTW. In what amounts to a communications assist to City Hall, the city’s PBS affiliate framed the story as competent management amid tough conditions.
They highlighted the budget gap, repeated officials’ talking points about “smart cuts,” and failed to mention CPD’s $207 million in overspending, CPS’s refusal to pay $175 million in pensions, or the fact that the “rainy day fund” wasn’t touched only because the city drained its last pool of unassigned cash instead.
The Mayor. Brandon Johnson’s letter in the ACFR cloaks responsibility in passive voice.
He cites “underperforming revenues, expiration of federal funding, and the continued impact from an unprecedented humanitarian crisis” as causes.
He admits a structural imbalance but fails to mention the city’s role in growing it.
“A part of the decline was due to unexpected circumstances,” he says, without naming any.
Nowhere in his statement is there acknowledgment of political spending choices, union deals, or the fiscal liability of a police force that spends like a military contractor.
Stuart Loren. The independent policy analyst put it simply: “The mayor writes passively about underperformance. He insists on needing more revenue before mentioning cost controls.”
Expect more deflection and a push for higher taxes.
Loren understood what City Hall and its media allies were doing: framing a catastrophe as a minor miscalculation.
A.J. Manaseer. These monstrous pensions that successive waves of politicians have fed to public sector unions in order to win elections are a transfer of wealth from people in the family formation stage of life to those in retirement.
When Illinois families are being taxed so highly to fund retirees in Scottsdale or Fort Myers it is going to continue to become a headwind towards family formation and the population growth we need to support the pensions.
Retirees on pensions should not be out-earning those who are actively working to pay them.
This is unsustainable.
The real story isn’t in the numbers—it’s in the way those numbers are presented to dodge accountability and avoid structural reform.
At SubXNews. We don’t bury the lede. We say it flat out:
This city is broke. The system is broken. The only path forward is radical restructuring.
Minimum cut 50% of workforce to start.
Those who can’t handle the extra work?
Fire them the next year. Make the entire Loop a tax-free zone.
Let new factories in tax-free if they hire 100% Chicago residents.
The political class calls that extreme.
But what’s extreme is asking a shrinking population to fund ballooning pensions, lawsuits, and runaway police overtime while neighborhoods go without basic services.
What’s extreme is pretending a $29 billion hole can be fixed with more video poker.
The audit told the truth.
WTTW softened it.
The mayor deflected it.
Loren decoded it.
Manaseer exposed intergenerational theft.
And SubX? We won’t stop publishing it.
Because the collapse isn’t theoretical.
It’s already here.
Sources:
Annual Comprehensice Financial Report for the Year Ended December 31, 2025 @chicago (30 June 2025) https://www.chicago.gov/content/dam/city/depts/fin/supp_info/CAFR/2024CAFR/ACFR_2024.pdf
Chicago ACFR 2024 by John Kugler
Chicago Ended 2024 With $161M Deficit @wttw (30 June 30 2025) https://news.wttw.com/2025/06/30/chicago-ended-2024-161m-deficit-officials
Retirees on pensions should not be out-earning those who are actively working to pay them @AJManaseer (27 June 2025) https://x.com/AJManaseer/status/1938578486429356494
Chicago just released its 2024 financial report. How the city conceptualizes its challenges matters @StuLoren (26 June 2025) https://x.com/StuLoren/status/1939884278315459039
Illinois pensioners earn nearly $25K more retired than those working to support them @illinoispolicy (26 June 2025) https://www.illinoispolicy.org/illinois-pensioners-earn-nearly-25k-more-retired-than-those-working-to-support-them/
Community Resilience Growth and Protection @SubxNews (8 Aug 2024)
https://subx.news/community-resilience-growth-and-protection/
