Ashlee Gabrysch, left, the chief financial officer for the City of Chicago, consults with Fiona A. Burke, deputy corporation counsel for the city, during a committee hearing at City Hall on Sept. 9, 2026. | Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune
By The Editorial Board | Chicago Tribune
Regular readers of ours know well our issues with Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration.
Most of those issues — not all, but most — could reasonably be classified as policy disagreements.
But what happened Friday, with the resignation of Chief Financial Officer Ashlee Gabrysch, takes the failures of this mayor to worrying new levels, a point where the city is quite likely to be locked out of the debt markets until it gets a new administration that can restore confidence in the quality — and honesty — of Chicago governance.
Just three months into the job, Gabrysch, a highly regarded municipal finance expert, became the third CFO to leave Johnson’s administration in this year alone. What she said to the Tribune, which broke the news, on her way out was damning: “To continue in this role would be to compromise my integrity and professional obligations.”
She gave more hints as to what had disturbed her so much in her statement to the Tribune: “The Chief Financial Officer’s statements about city finances are not idle chatter. … The CFO must act scrupulously to ensure they are accurate and complete.”
Implying, of course, that people in the administration had asked her to fudge or obfuscate the city’s financial condition, we hear in bond documents meant to entice more investors to lend more of their cash to this troubled metropolis.
In the business world, even when a CFO puts their name on a statement saying their sudden departure constituted no concerns about financial statements or disagreements with management, investors typically unload shares, anyway.
In this case, the CFO is leaving abruptly and implicitly saying there are questionable things, things that made a CFO worry about her integrity, going on at Johnson’s City Hall.
Scott Stantis editorial cartoon for Nov 13, 2026, on Brandon Johnson losing another CFO. |Scott Stantis/For the Chicago Tribune
In terms of destroying confidence, it really doesn’t get worse. Whether in the stock or bond markets, investors have no choice but to rely heavily on disclosures in documents. When that trust goes, so, too does the cash.
We will be shocked if the markets have anything to do with Chicago’s general-obligation bonds after this news, at least so long as Johnson is mayor. At least at a reasonable price.
Editorial continues here.
Related: “Despite an $882 million deficit, Johnson proposes $665 million spending increase”
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