With the city facing a nearly $1 billion deficit next year, we can expect to hear a lot of talk from City Hall about “belt tightening” and “shared sacrifices” as Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration tries to make up the shortfall.
A good place to start would be getting 12,000 municipal workers to pay up on the delinquent fees and fines they owe the city — an amount totaling $18 million, the Sun-Times Watchdogs Mitchell Armentrout and Tim Novak reported last week.
The arrearage includes parking tickets, city utility bills and administrative hearing fees.
On a worker-by-worker basis, the amounts of some of the debt are surprising.
A public health department building inspector owed $20,000 in administrative fees. A police detective was $23,000 behind on a water bill, while a tree trimmer had rung up $13,000 in old parking tickets.
The majority of the scofflaw debt — $16.5 million — was accumulated by employees who don’t work for City Hall but are employed by the Chicago Transit Authority and other sister agencies.
The Watchdogs found one-fourth of all CTA workers had some kind of outstanding city debt, an amount that was the highest of all agencies.
Employees of the city’s largest sister agency, the Chicago Board of Education, carried about $8.6 million in unpaid fees from more than 6,000 employees. For example, the city is trying to get a special education classroom assistant to fork over nearly $36,000 for unpaid parking tickets.
Meanwhile, Chicago Police Department employees in total owed the city more than $655,000. That amount included $328,000 in unpaid water bills and $250,000 in overdue parking tickets.
Previous mayoral administrations have also been faced with city worker scofflaws. And for its part, the city Law Department has a collections unit that informs department bosses of delinquent debt, and workers can be disciplined for not squaring up the arrearages.
The city also has the ability to garnish wages and place workers on payment plans. These efforts need to be stepped up.
The $18 million employees owe the city pales when compared to the expected $1 billion deficit. But for taxpayers to shoulder the burden of making up the budget gap while covering the financial responsibilities of scofflaw city workers — well, that’s just plain wrong.
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