Police Department brass accused Mayor Brandon Johnson's budget office of ‘systemically' delaying paychecks

Chicago Tribune

6 days ago

Chicago Police Department brass accused Mayor Brandon Johnson's administration of deliberately slowing down paychecks for dozens of employees this summer in a fiery email that warned the city was jeopardizing its compliance with the federal consent decree.
Police Department Deputy Director Ryan Fitzsimons emailed multiple officials in Johnson's budget office June 2 to alert them of the department's overdue A-forms, paperwork required to process paychecks for new hires and promotions. After following up the next day to confirm that police recruits were not getting their first paychecks, he sent an additional message June 10 saying Johnson's budget office was purposely sitting on the forms.
'Given that we discussed at length via email and on our meeting on May 8th the need for timely approval of A-Forms, it would appear that OBM is pursuing a pattern of practice to delay the approval of A-Forms with the functional result of not paying employees on time and delaying compliance with the Consent Decree,' Fitzsimons wrote. 'What is OBM's plan to systemically approve or deny A-forms?'
The unusually contentious email noted, 'CPD is committed to paying our employees on time. It is one of our most basic requirements as an employer and is also required by law. OBM's delay to sign A-Forms is exposing the City to increased legal risk along with diminished morale and increased attrition of our recruits.'
A joint statement last week from the mayor's office, the Office of Budget Management and Chicago police acknowledged that about 60 police academy recruits saw late paychecks, along with six Chicago Fire Department employees. The response cast the snafu as an 'administrative' error that has since been rectified.
'We acknowledge that administrative delays affected recently hired and promoted employees, and we have taken corrective steps to ensure the payments were made,' the statement said. 'The City is continuing to evaluate ways to improve internal systems — such as A-form processing and hiring workflows — with a goal of reducing administrative delays and supporting public safety staffing needs.'
While the city said the lag was less than a week, Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7 President John Catanzara noted the 54 recruits who started in May only got their first paycheck last month after he spoke with WMAQ-Ch. 5 to sound the alarm. And former city Inspector General Joe Ferguson, who has authored reports on the city's complicated hiring process, argued 'you shouldn't have that situation at all.'
'It appears to be just another manifestation of the general practice in which OBM is actually closely holding their hand on the checker in order to find nickels, dimes, dollars for costs,' Ferguson, now president of the Civic Federation, said. 'It's beyond my imagination to even come up with something (that) looks like … from the perspective of liability and responsibility, a practice that takes this budgetary control mentality to a new extreme.'
Johnson is not the first mayor accused of employing budgetary tricks with A-forms in times of austerity. The budget office has traditionally leaned on slow-walking filling vacancies as one of its few tools to free up money, and the city ended 2024 with a $161 million deficit and expects a more than $1 billion gap next year.
But delaying A-forms for entire academy classes or police supervisors who have already begun their new roles is an atypical move, Catanzara said.
'We are talking about a guy who bragged about being on payment plans with utilities and not paying his own water bill for years, so I guess it shouldn't be anything new,' Catanzara said, a reference to Johnson paying off thousands in outstanding water and sewer bills during his 2023 campaign. 'There was always some little one-offs here and there, but they were literally one person had an issue, and it was dealt with. This is mass incompetence.'
Fitzsimons' email exchange also revealed that the Police Department is now under a hiring freeze until September 'to assist OBM in managing expenses,' which Catanzara said was also the union's understanding. The city and Police Department did not address questions about the pause in new recruits.
The Police Department has historically exceeded its annual spending plan thanks to runaway overtime and misconduct settlement costs.
'No, it's not acceptable,' the mayor told reporters when asked about public safety expenditures blowing past budgeted costs by $207 million last year. He blamed police overtime spending on large events and said 'some innovative element' has to happen to drive those numbers down.
In his June 2 email, Fitzsimons also asked Johnson budget officials Jonathan Ernst and Joseph Sacks for the status of A-forms for three other groups: youth employment, civilian employees and promotions.
It is unclear how Johnson's team responded. For the last category, which concerns officers being promoted to sergeants and lieutenants, Fitzsimons warned, 'These A-Forms are directly tied back to paragraphs 249 – 264. Promotions have already occurred and members have begun to grieve.'
The paragraphs he was referring to concern the federal consent decree that the Police Department has been under since 2019. The court order was meant to reform Chicago police after the murder of Laquan McDonald, but progress has lagged, including within the section on recruitment and promotions cited by Fitzsimons.
Improving the supervisor-to-officer ratio has been a goal of Johnson's and is part of ensuring compliance with the consent decree. Fitzsimons reminded Johnson's budget officials in his email that the department had to brief the judge overseeing the mandate that month on A-form approvals.
The city and CPD joint response did not answer questions on how many police supervisors saw their raises lag as a result of problems with the A-forms.
The youth employment A-forms were needed to fill two Police Department jobs, while the civilian A-forms focused on staff that would help implement the consent decree, per Fitzsimons' email. He said Johnson's 2024 budget, which civilianized about 400 sworn positions, netted $8 million in savings and the department wants to hire more consent decree staff as a result.
During the past budget cycle, Johnson landed in hot water with police reform advocates and the Illinois attorney general for proposing a spending plan that nixed 162 consent decree vacancies. He later restored them.
Figures provided by the budget office show that of the total 439 Police Department positions tied to the consent decree, 222 remain vacant. Some of the largest gaps are in the training officer and victim specialist roles, which are 57% and 50% vacant, respectively.
'CPD remains focused on filling both sworn and non-sworn vacancies while maintaining compliance with the consent decree,' the joint city-Police Department statement said. 'We are continuing to assess resource allocations and hiring procedures across departments to ensure operational continuity and to address the evolving demands of public safety and reform implementation.'
Meanwhile, Chicago Fire Fighters Union Local 2 President Pat Cleary said three ambulance commanders, 15 engineers, 44 lieutenants and 29 captains temporarily suffered incorrect paychecks too. The budget office confirmed six Fire Department employees were paid late but did not address whether supervisors did not receive updated paychecks after being promoted.
Ferguson said the promise of Johnson's first budget, which was lauded by policing and fiscal experts for converting sworn positions to civilian ones to cut spending, fell flat because of bureaucratic snags such as this recent A-form problem. He doesn't blame the freshman mayor for inheriting a sluggish hiring process that often takes several months, but Johnson's budget office isn't doing itself any favors, he said.
'There's this game going on in which OBM is managing (A-forms) purely for purposes of other budgetary needs that are not known to anybody, and for which there is no transparency,' Ferguson said. 'One hand is holding back the other hand in what is an octopus-like structure, and this does not serve any of us well.'