Lightfoot says budget shortfall more 'dire' than she thought, but how much more?

The transition from one Chicago mayor to the next normally follows a familiar script.

Paint the worst possible picture of the budget shortfall you inherited. Blame your predecessor for leaving behind a bigger mess than you anticipated. And make the painful choices on taxes and budget cuts early in your first term in hopes that Chicago voters forget about it before the next election.

That script came to mind when Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot came away from a meeting with Mayor Rahm Emanuel's financial team claiming the already-daunting shortfall she's facing is infinitely worse than she anticipated.

Lightfoot didn't put a number on it. She simply described it as "dire."

That's saying something, considering that what we knew was plenty bad enough, as outlined in a recent Civic Federation report.

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