Department of Planning and Development – BGA Policy 2027 Budget Snapshot

Rahm Emanuel replaced the then-Department of Housing with the Department of Planning and Development in the 2014 budget, at a lower rate of funding than its predecessor. (Housing had $191.7m in appropriations in the 2013 budget; DPD began its existence in the 2014 budget with $153.8m.)

The Department of Housing returned to city budgets in the 2019 budget and resumed operating as an independent office under Lori Lightfoot's administration. In the 2019 budget, DPD's budget dropped from $189.2m the previous year to $35.1m, while the newly-returned DoH received $148.4m.

DPD then saw significant budget increases in the pandemic-era budgets, more than doubling its post-split appropriation. That increased funding dropped off dramatically with 2025's -34.5% cut in DPD's budget from the previous year.

The current 2027 proposal would raise DPD's budget by 5.4% from the previous year.

Estimated Fringe Costs

City budgets do not break out "fringe" pension and benefit costs for non-grant positions by department, instead grouping them together as citywide expenses under the Finance General section of the budget. To better reflect the real cost of service for departmental operations, BGA Policy has included an estimate of pension and benefit costs for the years 2018-2026, using Department of Finance fringe memos from each relevant year. An estimated fringe cost for the 2027 proposal uses the average annual rate of increase for each of the inputs into the fringe formulae.

Based on the city's fringe formulae, the DPD fringe cost for nongrant employees averaged 7.2% from 2018-2026, compared to a citywide average of 26.8%.

Local Fund Actual Spend

DPD is a dramatic outlier in terms of actual fund spend: where most city departments typically spend 80-90% of their local fund budgets, DPD has spent an average of 23.8% of its local fund budget over the past four years for which detailed local fund actuals/encumbrances data is available.

That underspend is driven by rehabilitation loan and grant appropriation lines in the Neighborhoods Opportunity, Local Impact, and Citywide Adopt-a-Landmark Funds. Approval and payments for projects funded out of those loans and grants can be multi-year, meaning full project costs rarely break down neatly into a single year's budget.

Budgeted Positions & Vacancies

Staffing levels at DPD underwent a sharp reduction when the Department of Housing was split off into its own standalone department. Since that split, DPD's budgeted headcount grew at an average annual rate of 2.3% from 2019-2026, compared to a citywide average annual change of -0.3% for the same years. The current proposal would decrease budgeted headcount by -0.5% from the previous year.

From January through September of 2026, the months for which full-time position vacancy data is currently available, DPD averaged a 14.0% vacancy rate, compared to the citywide average of 11.2%.

15 of the department's budgeted full-time positions were persistent vacancies (defined as the number of positions within the same combination of title, subsection, section, division, department, and fund codes that remained vacant in all nine months of available data):