Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle unveiled her $9.89 billion 2025 budget proposal Wednesday, closing a $218 million projected budget shortfall without tax or fee hikes, program cuts or layoffs.

“I think it’s fair to say this is a good-news budget,” Preckwinkle told reporters during a Wednesday afternoon briefing ahead of her official budget speech Thursday morning.

Preckwinkle was unfazed earlier this summer when describing the 2025 gap, which represented a small percentage of the county’s overall budget. This year’s cuts are limited to the elimination of 56 vacant positions, but no layoffs. Most of those were positions funded by federal pandemic relief, county officials said.

A boost in certain revenues and a shuffling of leftover money in the county’s general fund from the 2023 budget helped close the $218 million gap. In all, the county’s general and health funds are expected to end this year with a surplus of nearly $450 million.

Preckwinkle’s 2025 proposal is a $628 million increase over this year’s.

In her Thursday budget speech to the County Board, Preckwinkle highlighted the “positive impact of responsible budgeting” in recent years: bond rating upgrades three times in the last three years, a pathway to fully funded pensions, and chipping away at multibillion-dollar challenges thanks to federal pandemic relief funding.

That budgetary wiggle room and federal pandemic relief dollars helped pay for upgrades of the village of Dixmoor’s aging water pipes and mains, replace 106 lead service lines connected to child care facilities across the suburbs, and kick off large-scale infrastructure projects like the bridge replacement on Old Orchard Road over the Edens Expressway, she said.

“Shouldn’t government aim to give everyone the best possible life? The answer should always be absolutely,” Preckwinkle said.

Her proposal includes replenishing the county’s $110 million emergency response fund, which is on track to be roughly half depleted by the end of the year. About $40 million went to helping the city of Chicago feed migrants living in shelters, while another $20 million went to suburban municipalities either hit by natural disasters or otherwise helping with the migrant response.

To respond to the “new normal” of “sheer volume of severe and volatile weather events coming our way,” Preckwinkle announced during her speech that the county’s Department of Environment and Sustainability has committed $14 million to a new program to plan for climate resiliency, and will allocate $15 million to the county’s clean energy plan to switch county buildings to 100% renewable energy by 2030.

“Now more than ever, we’re feeling the effect of climate change on our region,” she said. “2023 was the most expensive year ever for Cook County and the state of Illinois for climate disasters.

Excluding the recent hurricanes in the southeast, last year’s flooding made Illinois rank No. 1 for the costliest disaster in the nation.”

Five percent across-the-board raises for county employees helped fuel this year’s gap. Those raises were expected to cost nearly $100 million, while associated health and pension payments would rise by nearly $50 million. But vacancies, especially at Cook County Health, have persisted. County officials estimated there were 3,700 vacancies across the county.

“My daughter’s a nurse and I know in this environment, every health care system she’s been associated with has had real challenges around staffing, have used agency staff to help meet their needs,” Preckwinkle said, but “things have gotten better this year, both on non-health care and health care side.”

Projections in upcoming years show shortfalls remaining relatively small: The county’s projected deficit across its health and general funds for 2026 is $112.5 million, and for 2027 it’s $122.3 million.

Preckwinkle’s 2025 proposal does not raise the county’s base property tax rate.

At a meeting with members of the Tribune Editorial Board, however, Preckwinkle said she supports granting beleaguered taxpayers some form of relief.

County Commissioner Bridget Gainer had floated the idea of using excess revenues from late property tax fees to fund an income-based relief program. Preckwinkle threw cold water on the funding source.

“These are people who are struggling to pay their property tax bill,” she said. “So it doesn’t make sense to take that money and use it to give other people relief. We are going to use other resources to try to figure out how to do this” during this year’s budget process.

The end of the year marks Preckwinkle’s final opportunity to obligate $167 million in federal pandemic dollars or risk losing them.

Cook County received about $1 billion through the American Rescue Plan Act’s program for state and local relief. Federal authorities mandated recipients not only budget where they’ll spend their dollars, but also have legal agreements in place to reflect the same before Dec. 31 of this year.

Chief Financial Officer Tanya Anthony guaranteed all the funds would be obligated by the end of the year. “No, we’re not going to lose any.”

In the more than three years since ARPA dollars landed, just $312 million has been spent so far of the roughly $800 million set aside for community programs — rather than county operations — according to the county’s ARPA dashboard.

Preckwinkle and Anthony both defended the seemingly slow pace of the county’s spending of federal dollars.

The county spent a year talking to staff members, county commissioners, advocates and constituents, and came up with a plan “before we spent a dollar” on community programs, Preckwinkle said. Other cities and counties in worse financial shape might have spent faster to supplement operations.

“It takes time to stand up 73 programs,” Anthony said. “By the end of this year we’ll have everything obligated and see a significant increase in our pace of spending. When we look at our peers across the country that have allocated money towards community programs and not just to operations, we’re all pretty much on par.”

In anticipation of the “fiscal cliff” that will come after Dec. 31, 2026, the federal “use it or lose it” deadline, the county set aside $166 million in non-ARPA dollars to continue funding or slowly phase out some of the community programs Preckwinkle launched.

“We’re planning way ahead,” Anthony said.

The president has pledged to permanently fund a guaranteed income program after federal funds run out. The county’s first run gave out $500 a month to $3,250 low-to-moderate income families across the county.

Departmental hearings will kick off on Monday, Oct. 28.

The city and Chicago Public Schools’ budget futures are much foggier: Mayor Brandon Johnson faces a nearly $1 billion deficit in 2025, and Chicago Public Schools continues to haggle over how to pay for teacher raises and pensions. Any additional debt or spending puts pressure on future revenue sources the county could tap if they were in trouble.

Asked whether their rising deficits cast shadows on the county’s relatively sunny fiscal outlook, Preckwinkle declined to comment. “I’m staying in my lane.”

Preckwinkle similarly declined to talk about her own political future with the editorial board. She has served as county board president since 2010 and would be up for reelection in 2026.

“I’ve got to decide early next year,” she said. Asked to share her current thinking, she said, “I think we’re here to talk about the budget.”