Both Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez and the Chicago Teachers Union are calling on Mayor Brandon Johnson to use tax increment financing dollars to fill a budget deficit for the school system.The union’s proposal, announced on Wednesday, to pull all uncommitted money and close out the development funds would appear to be politically impossible at the moment.Martinez’s nearly $1 billion plan would more than double last year’s record TIF surplus, which would be a stunning move from Johnson that could draw ire from Chicago City Council members and private developers who rely on the system to fund projects.But for the moment, the warring CTU and Martinez are pushing the same cause.TIF is a funding tool used by Chicago to subsidize development or infrastructure needs, including school construction. Under the system, geographic TIF districts are created around the city, and when property values rise, the extra tax revenue can go toward development projects.Every year, the mayor and the Budget Department decide how much of those funds to sweep into the city’s budget for operational use. That’s called declaring a TIF surplus.Last year, Johnson declared a record $434 million surplus to wipe out some of the city’s budget shortfall. A little more than half that money went to CPS. The CTU and progressives have long criticized TIFs, claiming they help wealthy developers more than they spur improvements in under-resourced neighborhoods.In an interview Wednesday, Martinez said he asked Johnson in April to give CPS $462 million in TIF surplus to solve the school system’s financial shortfall. That would have paid for new union contracts and a pension obligation that Johnson pushed onto CPS. This would likely require the mayor’s office to sweep around $888 million total.“At the end of 2023, the city had $3 billion in TIF balances in the bank,” Martinez said. “We know right now on an annual basis that TIFs are collecting $1.2 billion every single year. Fifty-two cents of every dollar would be going to CPS if TIFs didn’t exist.“So us asking for $462 million at that time, for me still feels like a very reasonable request,” he said.Martinez said the mayor’s office was open to the idea in the spring, but it wouldn’t know exactly how big of a surplus there would be until the fall. But in the meantime, he said the city “pressured” CPS to take out a $300 million loan to cover expenses while he waited for an exact number. He said a loan would harm the district’s financial health.“I am hopeful that the city will support us on this TIF request,” he said. “It will, at least for this year, put this issue to bed.”Asked about that proposal after Wednesday’s City Council meeting, Johnson said he’s the one who has “been fighting for that for years in this city.“I've always been very clear that I'm going to provide the TIF surplus,” Johnson said. “If there's one mayor that has receipts about what my vision is for the public schools — it's this one. We've always called for a TIF surplus to go back into the taxing bodies.”What about the size of Martinez’s ask?“Look, whatever is there that we can surplus — I've made a commitment,” the mayor said. “Those are my values. That's not something that anybody had to call for me to do.”A Johnson spokesman said Martinez “flatly refused” to pass a budget that included TIFs and “additional financing” to pay for the pension payment and collective bargaining agreements. The mayor has pushed CPS to take out a short-term, high-interest loan.“Had the CPS CEO worked collaboratively with the City and the Board of Education to pass a budget with the source of revenue being TIF and additional financing, as we and our [budget] team worked diligently to do, we would not be in the predicament we find ourselves in today,” the spokesman said.Ald. Jason Ervin (28th), chair of the City Council’s Budget Committee, said “without an analysis of individual TIF Districts, it is impossible” to answer whether the sizable ask could work.That large of a surplus could risk delaying or compromising some development projects in the works. But if the city moved ahead, it would be betting that whichever TIF district it taps would replenish with property taxes in time for projects to go on as planned. West Loop and downtown TIFs are dipped into often because they have high-value properties that feed quickly back into the funds.The CTU’s proposal went much further than Martinez’s, calling on Johnson to sweep all money out of the TIF districts. CTU’s leaders said that would generate $2 billion in revenue, about $1 billion of which would go to the school system.That has long been a non-starter for developers who rely on the money for their projects or for council members who protect their piggy banks to draw new construction to their wards, many of whom lack other means to entice development.The CTU argued funding schools should be a bigger priority for the city.“If the City Council has the will to prioritize all the children in Chicago instead of saying we’re going to cut ... then we’re cooking with gas,” said Jitu Brown, a CTU-endorsed candidate for next month’s school board elections.“It’s about the political will at the end of the day,” he said.Contributing: Sarah Karp, Mariah Woelfel