Chicago doled out $26.5 million in overtime in recent years to government employees who should not have gotten it, according to a report released Wednesday by the city’s Inspector General.
Over 1,000 likely ineligible employees received the extra pay from 2020 to 2024, according to the report by Inspector General Deborah Witzburg. The payouts were not “nefarious or stealing,” but mistakes akin to “a series of spreadsheet errors,” Witzburg told the Tribune.
“It’s no secret that the city is in pretty desperate financial straits,” she said. “This is just sloppy financial management, to the tune of $10,000,000’s, when the city can ill afford that.”
Witzburg’s report noted that many of the employees worked in management positions and without collective bargaining agreements, making them ineligible for the extra pay. The most-involved departments included the Fire and Police departments, libraries, Water Management and Office of Emergency Management and Communications.
Nearly a quarter of the extra pay went to just 18 employees, the report said. Topping that group were three Fire Department deputy district chiefs who each raked in around $600,000 during the five-year period.
“This isn’t nickels in the couch cushions… this is big money,” Witzburg said. “No one can afford to dismiss the significance of an eight-figure mistake.”
The city’s Office of the Inspector General alerted former Mayor Rahm Emanuel to its overpay concerns in 2013, the report said.
Sandra Blakemore, appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson to lead the city’s Department of Human Resources, told the inspector general it would respond to her report by auditing pay statuses and meeting with the most-involved departments to implement any needed changes, according to a letter shared with the report.
Blakemore’s response also noted that some employees involved had changed jobs and had been previously eligible for overtime, meaning the $26.5 million sum could be in part an overcount.
Witzburg praised the responses as “productive and thoughtful.” Johnson took office in 2023, meaning the majority of the period Witzburg analyzed occurred under the leadership of former Mayor Lori Lightfoot.
Johnson has publicly challenged the city’s biggest area of overtime spending: rank-and-file police. The Police Department typically blasts through its proposed overtime budget. In 2024, the city budgeted $100 million for CPD overtime, but spent $238 million.
The mayor attempted to add restrictions in the city’s 2026 budget requiring his approval for more spending when the police overtime budget is exceeded, but aldermen removed the measure in the alternative budget they passed against his will. Johnson issued an executive order in late December in an effort to maintain the restrictions.
Throughout the budget debate, the mayor framed reigning in the department’s overspending as a critical part of delivering a budget that avoids tax hikes.
Witzburg echoed those terms to back up the importance of her Wednesday report, pointing to the City Council’s “hand-wringing” over the final budget’s makeup.
“You have to imagine that everybody who is out in Chicago today paying extra for their grocery bags might have wished the city would have fixed this when they said they would,” she said.