Financial advisory professional Jill Jaworski is the frontrunner for the chief financial officer post in Chicago Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson's administration that will take office Monday.
Jaworski, a Chicago-based managing director at the top-ranked financial advisory firm PFM Financial Advisors LLC, is the frontrunner among a shortlisted group of candidates under consideration for the post, according to a Johnson transition advisor.
Jaworski "has a stellar record in the private sector and has a good breadth of understanding of the markets, the bondholder community and has rating agency relationships," the advisor said. "But we have a number of good candidates and wherever we end up we will have a solid team."
The advisor described the announcement as "imminent" and said the administration would be prepared after the inauguration "to continue the good work of managing the city's finances."
The CFO post is being vacated by Jennie Huang Bennett who has led the city's finances since Mayor Lori Lightfoot took office four years ago. Bennett was asked to stay on — at least temporarily — but had told the incoming administration that she was ready to move on.
The incoming administration's advisors consulted with local public finance professionals for suggestions on candidates to fill the post.
Some took their names out of the running, including current or former city, sister agency, and Cook County finance chiefs. Some did not live in the city and would have had to move to Chicago, which has a residency requirement for employees.
Johnson is a Cook County board member, so he tapped those relationships in looking to fill city fiscal positions.
In addition to Jaworski, the shortlist included deputy CFO Jack Brofman — who has served as Bennett's right-hand during her tenure — and Citigroup banker Euriah Bennett.
The Lightfoot administration is handing off the city's reins amid a fiscal upswing marked by 13 rating upgrades — most notable was the one that came from Moody's Investors Service last year, lifting the city out from junk territory.
The upgrades recognized the city's progress in moving toward structural balance, shedding one-time fiscal measures, and making supplemental pension contributions.
Market participants are watching to see whether Johnson can maintain the positive momentum that has helped trim yield spreads and lured new investors to recent bond sales while navigating through persistent strains, like the city's $33.7 billion pension tab, and other pressures posed by the fragile COVID-19 pandemic recovery and lagging return of workers to downturn offices.
Some have voiced worries over Johnson's agenda — that calls for hundreds of millions of dollars in tax increases — and they wonder how the administration will manage business relationships and a potential recession, so the selection of a well-regarded veteran public finance professional would help ease some concerns on the fiscal front.
Jaworski has deep knowledge of Chicago and its sister agencies' finances and would bring a national perspective, as she is a member of her firm's national transportation team working with transit and transportation clients with a focus on the South and Mid-Atlantic regions.
"As part of her engagements, she has overseen and managed the creation" of federal loan program "financial models, long-term capital planning, the development of new credits, the implementation of springing covenants in existing indentures, creation and implementation of rating agency strategies, obtaining credit enhancement, creation of debt policies, and evaluation and implementation of derivative strategies," her PFM biography reads.
Jaworski was named to a Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board post last October.
Johnson, a Cook County board commissioner and former teacher and Chicago Teachers' Union organizer, emerged as one of the two top vote-getters in the February mayoral race along with Paul Vallas, and he beat Vallas in an April runoff.
Johnson inherits a healthier fiscal landscape than previously expected, according to an updated forecast released by the Lightfoot administration last month. It raised surplus projections and trimmed projected gaps in the coming years. But cost pressures loom.
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