On the city’s finances, Lightfoot is straightforward. She doesn’t promise pie-in-the-sky tax relief or miraculous eradication of Chicago’s monstrous debt. What she does promise is an exercise in cost-cutting and case-building before turning to tax hikes. She says one of her first acts as mayor would be to hire a professional risk manager to reduce what the city spends on legal settlements, attorney fees and liability judgments. On police misconduct lawsuits alone, the city spent more than $113 million in 2018 and more than a half-billion total since 2011, according to a recent analysis from The Chicago Reporter. Reducing those costs is an “urgent” concern, Lightfoot says, along with speeding the transfer of the city’s workers’ compensation and disability program from the City Council’s Finance Committee to professionals at City Hall. She expects millions of dollars in cost savings there, too.