Mayor Johnson names as his new CFO a senior director from Fitch Ratings
<p>Under pressure to stabilize his finance team before an investors conference and a pre-election budget battle, Mayor Brandon Johnson has chosen a senior director at Fitch Ratings to serve as his new chief financial officer.</p><p>Ashlee Gabrysch replaces Steven Mahr, who abruptly resigned, along with his top deputy, just days before veteran Budget Director Annette Guzman followed both men out the door.</p><p>Gabrysch currently serves as senior director and mid-central region manager at Fitch Ratings. Since 2019, she has served as Fitch's lead analyst for both Chicago and Illinois.</p><p>That makes the new CFO familiar with the city’s $36 billion pension crisis and the marathon budget battle that saw a City Council majority reject Johnson’s corporate head tax and pass an alternative city budget.
Reported by 1 outlet — Chicago Sun-Times. See all sources ↓
<p>Under pressure to stabilize his finance team before an investors conference and a pre-election budget battle, Mayor Brandon Johnson has chosen a senior director at Fitch Ratings to serve as his new chief financial officer.</p><p>Ashlee Gabrysch replaces Steven Mahr, who abruptly resigned, along with his top deputy, just days before veteran Budget Director Annette Guzman followed both men out the door.</p><p>Gabrysch currently serves as senior director and mid-central region manager at Fitch Ratings. Since 2019, she has served as Fitch's lead analyst for both Chicago and Illinois.</p><p>That makes the new CFO familiar with the city’s $36 billion pension crisis and the marathon budget battle that saw a City Council majority reject Johnson’s corporate head tax and pass an alternative city budget. That spending plan, includes revenues the mayor continues to oppose — and that have fallen short of projections.</p><p>That has left the city with a $90 million mid-year shortfall. As a result, Mahr and Guzman raised the prospect of employee layoffs and pulled back on their commitment to make the second half of a $260 million advance pension payment at the center of the budget battle.</p><p>Civic Federation President Joe Ferguson said “somebody with the right credentials could make a difference,” and Gabrysch fills the bill.</p><p>“What nobody can really know is how she will handle… what is likely to be the resistance to, let’s call it more conventional, mainstream guidance on critical financing issues for the city,” Ferguson said.</p><p>As Fitch's Chicago analyst, Gabrysch knows that the full pension advance is “one of those anchors” that investors and Wall Street rating agencies “have looked at for stabilization purposes,” Ferguson said.</p><p></p><p>Ferguson predicted that there will be “direct questioning” about the pension advance at the investors conference and that Gabrysch’s responses will be “very telling.”</p><p>“She knows exactly the importance of these signals and knows exactly how they factor into rating agency considerations, and market considerations as well,” Ferguson said.</p><p>Justin Marlowe, director for the Center for Municipal Finance at the University of Chicago, called Gabrysch a “stabilizing pick” because she is a “known commodity to bond investors” with a “strong view… about the need to make the full advance pension payment.”</p><p>“Knowing Ashlee, I think it will not only be, `You need to make the second half of the payment,’ [but], `Let me help you find a path toward finding the money to do that,’“ Marlowe told the Sun-Times.</p><p>“Whether the mayor takes that advice is a separate question, of course.
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- <p>Under pressure to stabilize his finance team before an investors conference and a pre-election budget battle, Mayor Brandon Johnson has chosen a senior director at Fitch Ratings to serve as his new chief financial officer.</p><p>Ashlee Gabrysch replaces Steven Mahr, who abruptly resigned, along with his top deputy, just days before veteran Budget Director Annette Guzman followed both men out the door.</p><p>Gabrysch currently serves as senior director and mid-central region manager at Fitch Ratings. Since 2019, she has served as Fitch's lead analyst for both Chicago and Illinois.</p><p>That makes the new CFO familiar with the city’s $36 billion pension crisis and the marathon budget battle that saw a City Council majority reject Johnson’s corporate head tax and pass an alternative city budget.
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Mayor Johnson names as his new CFO a senior director from Fitch Ratings
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