Chicago CFO Jill Jaworski to leave administration

Chicago Chief Financial Officer Jill Jaworski will leave the post to take a job with a nonprofit next month.

Jaworski, a former investment banker and financial advisor, will join the nonprofit that controls Navy Pier, a lakefront recreation and tourism draw in Chicago's Streeterville neighborhood, on Feb. 2, according to a news release.

Jaworski's departure follows a contentious budget battle that saw the City Council effectively override Mayor Brandon Johnson's team's budgetary priorities.

Under her leadership, the city aggressively refinanced debt through the Sales Tax Securitization Corp. credit but avoided sliding back into scoop-and-toss restructurings and preserved its advance pension payment policy (though the mayor proposed reducing this payment in the 2026 budget the City Council rejected).

Jaworski's tenure featured cheapening general obligation debt, transparency issues with the press and a series of negative rating actions: a November S&P Global Ratings outlook revision to negative; a September Moody's Ratings outlook revision to stable; a May Fitch Ratings outlook revision to negative; and in January 2025, an S&P downgrade of Chicago's GO debt to BBB and a KBRA downgrade of Chicago's GOs to A-minus.

The day-to-day operations, policy goals and fiscal strategy of the mayor's finance team are unchanged, and Jaworski's senior leadership team remains in place, Deputy CFO Noor Shaikh said in an emailed statement.

The team will continue to manage Chicago's debt portfolio, investor relations, concessionaire contracts and financial reporting without interruption while the mayor's office appoints an interim CFO, she said.

"We are grateful for Jill's leadership and for the example she has set in her commitment to equitable financial policy, expertise in municipal finance, and service as the city's CFO to the residents of Chicago," she said.

Jaworski's exit also follows recent public comments by Johnson to the effect that the 2026 budget fight is not over, noted Justin Marlowe, research professor at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy and director of the Center for Municipal Finance.

"Whoever is in the CFO role is going to be asked to help them advance that narrative, that some of the choices in the City Council's budget were untenable to start," he said.

The CFO will play a part in implementing the mayor's next policy moves, and "the CFO's job just became more difficult ? because of what he's signaling about the fight ahead," Marlowe said. In her new role, Jaworski will face a less intense level of scrutiny and pressure than she did as Chicago CFO, he added.

"It is the loss of a lot of technical acumen and expertise," said Civic Federation President Joe Ferguson. "But she had a good team working under her," and Comptroller Mike Belsky and Budget Director Annette Guzman have the same level of acumen and technical expertise.

"I don't think this is a terrible surprise to anyone," Ferguson added. "It is, however, a noteworthy event given where the budget landed and where the city is overall. Jill came into the position with a reputation for being brilliant and creative with respect to transactions."

The question, he said, was whether Jaworski would have the standing to say no and to convince the principals that certain things shouldn't be done. Ultimately, Ferguson said, Jaworski "creatively facilitated a lot of restructuring of debt ordinances" that ultimately did not serve the city, and "the rating agencies are something of a litmus test" for how well that went over with the market.

"The narrative from the rating agencies has changed over the last two to three years," he noted. Previously, "you would get Delphic pronouncements and memos that would leave you wondering what the rating agencies were truly thinking. What has changed ? is the very, very pointed commentary and analysis on the city's structural ills," saying the short-term fixes and fiscal crutches of the past are no longer sustainable.

"That has been largely ignored," Ferguson said. "It's not Jill, per se, but the administration and the financial team collectively have not moved the mayor to an understanding of just how precarious things are."

Marlowe said, "Chicagoans owe Jill a debt of gratitude" because "she has executed some very challenging transactions and managed to convey Chicago's financial story as effectively as possible to the investor community, and that has been really important in the last couple years."

"She spoke our language, and it was very helpful in terms of getting information to (investors)," said Howard Cure, partner and director of municipal bond research for Evercore Wealth Management. "People like myself, on the buy side, and a lot of other folks always like to see someone with that investment banking experience that Jill had."

Cure praised Jaworski's management of investor relations, including the annual investor conferences, for example, saying he hopes the city will continue to hold such events.

As for the contentious budget negotiations, "It's not as if she's independently coming up with ideas like raising property taxes, or a head tax, or having difficult relations with the alderpeople," Cure said. "I've worked with Jill over decades, so I can attest to her financial and market acumen."

Municipal Market Analytics Managing Director Lisa Washburn called Jaworski's departure "a potentially worrisome development," especially coming in the wake of an adversarial budget process.

"From a credit perspective, market participants will likely focus on her replacement's experience and collaborative capacity, which will be important in shaping opinions on the future of the city's fiscal trajectory," Washburn said by email.

Marlowe described the governance issue as "the central challenge in Chicago's credit story" and said the next CFO will likely preside over at least one rating downgrade.

That, in turn, "will make the borrowing for the firefighter contract and all the other borrowing that they have queued up more costly," he said.

The market will be scrutinizing the mayor's pick, Marlowe said. "A norm has been established that the CFO's office acts as an internal check on the mayor ? going back several administrations now," he said. "The market is going to watch extra closely to see whether the successor has the ability to assert their independence."

Ferguson pointed to the city's November STSC deal, in which underwriter Goldman Sachs (GS) had to take down $75 million of unsold bonds, as yet another fiscal warning signal for the city.

It was "a reflection that the more holistic picture that the market and the rating agencies are carrying is not being adequately incorporated into what we're doing with our debt," he said.

"Given the nature of going to market, and the structure of some of the bond authority, it really impels consideration of legislation requiring City Council approval of every single bond issuance," Ferguson added.

When alderpeople were debating the city's housing and economic development bond program, Alderman Bill Conway fought for some kind of threshold at which the administration would have to go back for City Council approval. That threshold was set at $5 million, though Conway had pushed for the number to be lower.

"We've taken a look at this" since the bond measure passed, Ferguson said, "and what we see is a healthy number of situations ? with line items that total $4,999,999.

"If that's where we are, that really just does further the cause of saying both on the front end, for the bond issue, and the back end, for the spend, we really may require closer scrutiny," he said.

The mayor's comments this week are further reason for the City Council to take up the mantle of accountability, Ferguson said, noting he'll be watching for first quarter legislation from City Council that provides the resources and mechanisms necessary for the more robust oversight that was written into the 2026 budget's management ordinance.

Meanwhile, "Jill's public service entitles her to whatever form of breather or reset that she would like," Ferguson said.

Looking forward, he said the mayor's choice of CFO will be consequential and the administration's recent post-budget rhetoric could complicate the task of "getting somebody good." It sends the wrong signals to the sort of person taxpayers would want as CFO, Ferguson added.

"What we would hope for is someone with the standing and the voice to say, look, when you're cliff walking, there needs to be a bit of a perspective check," he said.