<p>Mayoral challenger <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/city-hall/2026/06/03/state-comptroller-susana-mendoza-mayoral-campaign-brandon-johnson-alexi-giannoulias" >Susana Mendoza</a> vowed Thursday to use the financial acumen she gained as state comptroller to rein in city spending and have the “come to Jesus” reckoning with union leaders needed to solve Chicago’s $36 billion pension crisis.</p><p>With police and fire pension funds hovering dangerously close to insolvency — assets cover just over 23% of liabilities — Mendoza said the financial wolf is at the city’s doorstep.</p><p>Stock market gains have been driven by a handful of artificial intelligence giants. If the market takes a nosedive, retirement checks that Chicago police officers, firefighters, building tradespeople and other union employees are relying on could disappear, dragging the city under, said Mendoza, who opted to not run again for state comptroller this year.</p><p>“These continuing obligations with no ability to pay them is what drags the city into bankruptcy… It’s an absolute crisis of insolvency that we are just teetering on… When the market gets a cold, we’re not going to get pneumonia here — they will go insolvent,” she said of the four city employee pension funds.</p><p>“We have to have difficult conversations that require looking at things like consolidations and things that, in the past, have been off limits. Concessions that folks might have to give so that they still have a pension… I will have the backbone to have those conversations.”</p><p>Mendoza said she would use that same fiscal discipline to erase the city’s $1 billion shortfall without relying on one-time revenues.</p><p>She condemned Mayor Brandon Johnson for borrowing <a class="Link" href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/city-hall/2025/12/08/mayor-brandon-johnson-budget-stalemate-city-government-shutdown" >$449 million </a>to cover back pay for firefighters and police misconduct settlements, and for using a record $1 billion tax increment financing surplus to rescue Chicago Public Schools and bankroll a new teachers contract negotiated by his former boss, Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates.</p><p>“It’s literally stealing economic development potential out of the communities that need it most for the next 10, 20, 30 years.