Chicago paid $26.5M in overtime to ineligible workers over 5 years, watchdog says

CHICAGO - The City of Chicago paid $26.5 million in overtime to more than 1,000 potentially ineligible employees over five years, according to a new report from a city watchdog.

What we know:

The city’s Office of Inspector General released its findings on Wednesday that 1,072 employees received the improper pay between Jan. 1, 2020, and Dec. 31, 2024, even though they may not have been eligible.

The employees worked for 24 city departments, the Board of Elections, the Office of the City Clerk, and the City Council, the OIG said.

The report also found that 18 employees were each paid between $250,000 and $700,000 in overtime during that period. They alone accounted for nearly a quarter of the overtime paid to ineligible workers.

Chicago’s Inspector General Deborah Witzburg said her office advised the city’s Human Resources Department and Department of Finance of her findings "in the hopes that they might inform the City’s 2026 budget process."

"Both DHR and DOF largely concurred with OIG’s determination and made thoughtful commitments to improving operations," Witzburg said in a statement. "I want to both recognize that and to underscore the scale of the problem; the City’s finances are, needless to say, in an extremely precarious place, and we can ill-afford mistakes which run well into the eight figures."

Witzburg is months away from leaving office in April after her first and only term as the city's top watchdog.

Why you should care:

The revelation comes just weeks after a long battle over how to close a more than $1 billion city budget deficit, in which elected leaders debated how to raise revenues to cover ballooning costs.

Mayor Brandon Johnson this month, who was against the ultimate spending plan that passed at the end of last year, warned of possible mid-year layoffs if city revenues come in lower than anticipated.