3 Aug 2026, ABC 7: Mayor Johnson’s budget director Annette Guzman is stepping down head of crucial season
CHICAGO (WLS) -- Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office announced on Monday that his budget director, Annette Guzman, is leaving City Hall.
Guzman is the second member of the budget team to announce a departure in recent days, and it comes just ahead of the crucial budget season. She is following the city’s chief financial officer, Steven Mahr, whose last day was last Friday, out the door.
In the normal course of events, people coming and going from City Hall, perhaps, is not a big deal. But Guzman's decision to leave public service after 10 years at City Hall and before that, in senior financial roles at Cook County, means Johnson is losing another experienced money manager as the fall budget season approaches and a mayoral election looms in six months.
With the most recent announcement of the budget director leaving, here’s the list I’ve got, in chronological order:
Dec 2024, City Comptroller Chasse Rehwinkel
Jan 2026, CFO Jill Jaworski
June/July 2026 – Noor Shaikh, Deputy Chief Financial Officer
Aug 2026, Acting CFO Steven Mahr
Aug 2026, Budget Director Annette Guzman
Former CFO Jennie Huang Bennett left when Brandon Johnson came into office in May 2023, which I’m not including in the timeline. Leaving with a new administration is not necessarily a signal of anything… but all the others might be.
Looking at the exits of Rehwinkel and Jaworski, those also may mean little, as they left for other specific roles. Rehwinkel left to become CFO of Devon Bank. Jaworski left for CFAO at City Pier.
But the recent exits?
Coverage of the June - August 2026 Exits
30 July 2026, Bond Buyer: Chicago's CFO and deputy CFO are out, with city investor event looming
Acting Chief Financial Officer Steven Mahr and Deputy CFO Noor Shaikh have left the administration of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson as internal battles between the CFO’s office and the office of Budget Director Annette Guzman broke out into public view.
The city’s finance team did not respond to requests for comment by press time. Mahr, whose departure was reported by the Chicago Sun-Times, did not respond to messages seeking comment. Shaikh confirmed to The Bond Buyer her departure as of late June.
….
Jaworski stepped down at the beginning of the year to join the nonprofit that controls Navy Pier. Mahr had been acting CFO since then. He had worked for the city since 2024 after coming over from Stifel.
Debt Manager Brendan White will take over as acting CFO, Marlowe said.
….
But in addition to the long-running conflict between the City Council and the mayor, which has seen aldermen accuse the Johnson administration of slow-rolling the implementation of budget components the mayor didn’t propose, there was also conflict within the mayor’s team.
Budget Director Guzman may have had more access to the mayor and “pulled the rug out from under” Mahr, the Chicago Sun-Times reported, saying City Council Finance Committee Chair Pat Dowell questioned whether Mahr had the necessary support to succeed as CFO.
The departures also come as aldermen are pushing the Johnson administration to make the second half of Chicago’s advance pension payment, which was budgeted for in 2026 but for which the mayor’s team has thus far refused to commit to a deadline.
Jumping in here to remind people (or inform, if this is news to you): the aldermen of Chicago had to pass the budget for Chicago after an aborted attempt from Johnson last year, in which he proposed a head tax to cover additions he wanted and to prevent cuts he didn’t want.
My posts on that process, in reverse chrono order:
Feb 2026: Taxing Tuesday: Chicago Head Tax Redux
12 Dec 2025: Chicago Watch: Head Tax Hostages, Credit Ratings, and Reactions
3 Nov 2025: Chicago Head Tax: So Many More Reactions
28 Oct 2025: Chicago Head Tax (and Other Taxes) Proposal: Reactions
17 Oct 2025: Chicago Mayor: Stupid Tax Ideas as the City Stares into the Abyss
No, he didn’t get the head tax.
4 Aug 2026, CFO Dive: Chicago budget director follows acting CFO out the door
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.
3 Aug 2026, CFO Dive: Chicago’s acting CFO exits as budget battle looms
The city of Chicago’s Acting CFO Steven Mahr has stepped down from his post just months after taking the position, according to his updated LinkedIn profile, which shows he served in the role from February through July.
Mahr took the temporary role after former CFO Jill Jaworski left City Hall last winter to become the chief finance and administrative officer of Navy Pier, one of the city’s premier tourist destinations.
So, with respect to the three finance execs who left most recently, we have no subsequent jobs they left for. At least for Guzman, we have the “taking care of family” cover, but no such explanation for the other two.
Chicago’s Bond Ratings
For those who wonder, this graph is still the one that holds at the City of Chicago Office of Financial Analysis, Bond Analysis, most recent graph of bond ratings:
These don’t change that frequently…. until they do, all of a sudden.
I posted that one in a March 2026 post: Chicago Watch: Bond Downgrades and Secret Borrowing
The budget is a plan. The financials (which come much later) are what actually occurred.
But sometimes you see how the process comes undone between the two. I think we’ll be getting an update on various interested parties’ opinions to the extent Chicago budgets depart from likely outcomes.
Brandon Johnson Holds a Press Conference on City Leadership Turnover
ALL IS WELL.
4 Aug 2026, CBS News: Amid finance team shakeup, Mayor Brandon Johnson insists City Hall is stable heading into budget season
After losing two of his top three financial advisers in the past week, Mayor Brandon Johnson on Tuesday sought to assure Chicago residents “they have stability” headed into what will likely be another tough budget season at City Hall.
Johnson’s budget director, Annette Guzman, abruptly resigned on Monday, less than two months before the mayor is set to release his 2027 budget plan.
Guzman had served as Johnson’s budget director since he took office in 2023, but is now the latest of many high-profile exits.
Johnson’s acting chief financial officer, Steven Mahr, resigned last week, along with his deputy Noor Shaikh. Mahr had replaced chief financial officer Jill Jaworski, who left in January to become chief finance and administrative officer at Navy Pier.
….
At a City Hall press conference on Tuesday, Johnson insisted city government is stable.
“Transitions happen all the time in administrations, but what’s most constant is my presence,” Johnson said.
For Chicago residents concerned about stability at the top at City Hall, Johnson insisted “they have stability.”
“They have stability in me. Again, one person does not run the operation around here. It’ a collection,” he said.
There’s also a collection of concern for a city facing a likely $1 billion dollar budget shortfall next year, with Johnson losing some of his top budget team members just weeks before he’s set to present his 2027 spending plan to the City Council.
….
Johnson was asked Tuesday how he is bracing for this year’s budget battle at City Hall compared to last year, now that two of his top three financial advisers have left in the past week.
“We do have continuity. I’m the continuity, right? Again, it’s not just one person in one particular position,” he said.
That’s nice. It’s not like he’s known for his budgeting prowess.
Via Alice Yin on X, the following statement came from some aldermen:
(No, I did not include the HR Commissioner as part of the finance execs.)
But now I’m going to jump over to the Chicago Public Schools budget, which is separate from the city’s budget (no comment).
Chicago Public Schools Budget: Wishing on Variances
3 Aug 2026, WTTW: CPS Board Members Talk $10B Approved Budget, State Funding Assumption
A divided Chicago Board of Education at a meeting last week approved a nearly $10 billion budget that relies on an additional $150 million in state funding.
The spending plan comes after weeks of debate among Chicago Public Schools officials, board members and labor unions over how the district should close a $732 million budget gap.
CPS CEO Macquline King had hoped board members would approve a plan that avoided furlough days by increasing the district’s Tax Increment Financing (TIF) assumption from $200 million to $285 million, but still included more than 1,600 layoffs to teachers, service personnel and assistant principals to balance the budget.
But her proposal caught the ire of the Chicago Teachers Union and CTU-aligned board members, who amended King’s budget to assume more state funding and avoid around 1,000 layoffs.
It’s nice to want things.
They’re probably thinking: what’s another $150 million to top up a $10 billion budget?
It’s less of an ask, percentage-wise, than when one of my sisters asked for $20 so she’d have an even $200 for after-Christmas spending when we were kids. That reasoning didn’t work with me, my other sister, or even our mother (who had brought only enough money to buy a new bra).
Maybe Chicago Public Schools (or, rather, the CTU folks who don’t want members to be laid off due to NOT ENOUGH MONEY) will be more successful than her.
Illinois is as stone-broke as Chicago (okay, maybe a little less broke than Chicago… because Chicago is one of the biggest reasons it’s broke.)
Having one spendthrift bankrupt try to get another to cough up cash may be good entertainment for others from several states away, until our own states get inspired to follow the bad behavior.
Budgets Based in Unreality are a BAD IDEA
The situation is developing, as the on-the-spot journalists like to say.
But the main problem for many bad-behaving political operators is formulating budgets that are based on lies at worst and wishful thinking at best.
Ultimately, actual spending will come through, reported in the financials, even if it takes decades to uncover (the decades part is for spending such as pensions).
Many of the unreal decisions being made above, though, aren’t about pensions but some very short-term spending which will be realized fairly rapidly, meaning that either extra short-term borrowing will be the result or “emergency” unplanned cuts in the middle of a fiscal year. Or both. That’s not stable.
Some people think it’s all about power politics, so that who has the power gets to play with the money.
But even back in the age of absolute monarchs, bad finance was enough to undermine power. That was what cut down kings time and again — it didn’t matter that they were winning wars as long as they were overspending not only on those wars but also on extravagant courts. Maybe the initial extravagant monarch (say, Louis XIV) wasn’t the one who got toppled, but the grandson (Louis XVI), when the power and money were long gone.
The Daleys are long gone, eh?