Gary's Budget Is $10 Million in the Hole. The Final Vote Lands the Night Before Election Day.

Gary City Hall. Photo: Daniel X. O'Neil, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Gary City Hall. Photo: Daniel X. O'Neil, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Nine days. That is all the time Gary's Common Council has left to adopt a 2027 budget, and the vote on the biggest pieces of it is now scheduled for Monday, Nov. 2, the night before Election Day.

At its Oct. 20 meeting the council passed spending plans for the Gary Public Transportation Corporation and the Gary Redevelopment Commission, then set aside the general city budget, salaries, and the budget for the Gary/Chicago International Airport, the Post-Tribune reported. A Ways and Means Committee session is set for 5:30 p.m. Nov. 2, followed by a special meeting to vote. That same day is the Indiana Department of Local Government Finance deadline for every taxing unit to adopt its 2027 budget, tax rates and levies.

A $10 million gap and no posted fix

City documents cited by the Post-Tribune show Gary's revenue has dropped by about $10 million, leaving the budget nearly $10 million in the red. City Controller Chenika Beck told a Sept. 29 Ways and Means meeting that the city is making cuts where it can. Earlier this month, Capital B Gary described the proposed 2027 budget as roughly $98 million.

The Aug. 11 derecho made a thin cushion thinner. Council Vice President Darren Washington, D-at large, put the storm bill bluntly: “We were already told by the administration that we have over $8 million in costs (due to storm damage) that we’re trying to get back from (the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency) that might not come back in the next couple of years.” The Times separately reported an $8 million loss tied to the storm.

Then there is the bill Indianapolis handed Gary. Under a 2025 state law, the city must pay more than $12 million to East Chicago and Michigan City to correct a state comptroller mistake connected to the move of the Majestic Star casinos, with the money withheld from state comptroller distributions over 10 years, according to the Post-Tribune. Washington has also raised concerns about how 2025's Senate Enrolled Act 1, the property tax overhaul, will hit the city's numbers.

Whose hand is on the airport money?

The airport budget is where Tuesday's meeting got tense. Washington told The Times he voted to table it because of a provision that would send tax-increment financing revenue from the district around the airport straight to the airport, instead of into the city's general fund, where the Common Council decides how it is spent.

That is not a technicality. TIF dollars routed around the general fund are dollars elected council members never get to vote on line by line, in a year when the general fund is the part of the budget that is short.

Washington also objected to the airport's 2023 purchase of the Griffith-Merrillville Airport, which The Times said has drawn growing criticism from residents online and during public comment. “Outside of storing some planes, what is the benefit of having the Griffith airport?” he said, adding that “a study showed the airport was not profitable to those towns.”

Councilman Kenneth Whisenton, D-at large, moved to send the airport budget back to Ways and Means, and Washington seconded. The Times reported the move appeared to catch Council President Linda Barnes-Caldwell and City Attorney Rinzey Williams III off guard. After a two-minute recess, the council voted to return it to committee.

The one item that couldn't wait

While the budget waited, one spending measure moved in a single night. The council suspended its rules to introduce and pass an ordinance granting $750,000 to two storm-hit health providers, $250,000 for Edgewater Health and $500,000 for Community HealthNet, on a 6-1 vote. The Times reported the money comes through the city's federally funded Community Development Block Grant program, so it does not plug the general fund hole, but it also skipped the committee review every other dollar on Tuesday's agenda is getting.

The providers made a real case. Dr. Danita Johnson Woods, Edgewater's president and CEO, said the organization was closed for about two weeks after the storm and kept paying employees, leaving a “serious cash flow problem.” Dr. Janet Seabrook, CEO of Community HealthNet, said her organization was in the same position.

Washington cast the lone no vote, and his reason was about process, not need. “I didn’t support it because it was last minute,” he told the Post-Tribune. “That should have gone through committee … and (Johnson Woods and Seabrook) should’ve come to the council and the public to provide some very specific details on their request.”

He was also the only no on the Redevelopment Commission budget, which passed 6-1. Executive Director Christopher Harris said that budget matches 2026; Washington said he could not justify Harris' proposed salary of just under $92,370. The transit budget, about $18.3 million and mostly federal grants, passed unanimously. Councilwoman Lori Latham, D-1st, was absent.

What Gary residents should watch on Nov. 2

Three questions are still open with the deadline nine days out: where the cuts to close a roughly $10 million gap actually fall, whether the airport's TIF money stays under the council's control, and whether members get the detailed numbers Washington says they should have had all along. Residents who want those answers before the gavel falls have one night to show up for them.

Written by Hoosiers, for Hoosiers.