Politics

As Hearings Start on How to Fill Chicago’s Projected $1.2B 2026 Budget Gap, Officials Won’t Say How Much City Spent on Overtime in 2024

As Chicago officials warned that the city is facing one of the “most difficult budget years in recent memory,” Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration has yet to detail how much the city spent on employee overtime in 2024.

Nor has the city detailed how much it spent on overtime during the first three months of 2025, records show.

In addition, Johnson’s finance team, led by Chief Financial Officer Jill Jaworski and Budget Director Annette Guzman, has yet to account for a $175 million pension payment the city made for Chicago Public Schools employees who are not teachers in the city’s 2024 spending plan. The Chicago Board of Education refused to reimburse the city for that payment, despite the mayor’s repeated requests.

Despite those missing pieces of the city’s financial condition, which could add up to $700 million, officials held the first of four “budget engagement roundtables” designed to gather feedback about the city’s 2026 budget on Saturday in Uptown.

In a video posted to the mayor’s social media channels, Guzman urged Chicagoans to attend one of the forums and help officials craft ways to bridge the likely deficit of nearly $1.2 billion in Chicago’s 2026 spending plan, according to the city’s most recent budget forecast.

“2026 will be one of the most difficult budget years we have faced in recent memory,” Guzman said, as upbeat music played. “Tough decisions are ahead of us, but we’re tougher.”

Representatives of Johnson, Guzman and Jaworski did not respond to detailed questions from WTTW News about why the city has yet to disclose how much it spent on overtime in 2024 or how it covered the pension payment for CPS employees, even though 2025 is half over.

“My budget will reflect the values of my administration and the values of the residents of our city,” Johnson said in the video. “But it is going to take all of us to ensure that we maintain historic investments in affordable housing, behavioral and mental health and youth employment.”

The remaining roundtables will take place at 6 p.m. Monday at Malcolm X College, 1900 W. Jackson Blvd., and 6 p.m. Tuesday at Kennedy-King College, 6301 S. Halsted St. A final roundtable for Chicagoans age 13-24 will take place at 5:30 p.m. July 9 at the Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State St.

During the first six months of 2024, the city spent $129 million on overtime for members of the Chicago Police Department — nearly 30% more than the total amount set aside by the Chicago City Council as part of the city’s 2024 budget, according to records obtained by WTTW News.

That put the city on pace to spend at least $258 million on police overtime by the end of 2024, even as officials imposed limits on overtime for all city departments, except for police and the Chicago Fire Department, amid a massive budget crunch.

In 2023, the Chicago Police Department spent $293 million on overtime, 40% more than in 2022, records show.

A detailed accounting of the $524 million Chicago spent on overtime for employees in all departments in 2023 was available to the public by mid-March 2024, records show.

That means the city is more than three months behind schedule in providing that data for 2024 to the public, without explanation.

In October, Johnson told WTTW News that he had been unable to reign in overtime spending.

“This is still very much a frustration I have,” Johnson said. “I’ve been in conversations with the superintendent, with our budget director to come up with better systems.”

Chicago must publish its audited annual financial report for 2024 this week, which will detail how much the Chicago Police Department actually spent last year, but will not detail overtime spending.

CPD’s budget accounts for approximately 46% of the city’s discretionary spending.

In 2023, CPD spent a total of $1.86 billion, approximately $154 million more than the City Council budgeted, according to that year’s audited annual financial report.

In all, CPD spent $1.67 billion on personnel costs, exceeding its budget by $88.2 million, even though the department has approximately 1,000 vacant positions, according to the 2023 audit.

CPD spent $150.8 million to resolve lawsuits alleging misconduct or wrongdoing, exceeding its budget by $68.3 million, according to the 2023 audit.

During the fraught negotiations over the 2025 budget, several alderpeople proposed eliminating vacant positions within CPD to avoid a property tax hike by saving approximately $170 million. That proposal was dropped when it became clear it would make it impossible for CPD to cover its massive overtime bill and cover the rising costs of police misconduct settlements.

Halfway through 2025, Chicago taxpayers have spent at least $189.3 million to resolve nearly two and a half dozen lawsuits, exceeding the city’s budget to resolve lawsuits alleging police misconduct by more than $100 million, city records show.

As part of the deal that ensured passage of the 2025 budget, the city’s budget director is required to give the City Council a midyear report on city finances, begin department budget hearings earlier and offer better access to finance data for alderpeople.

Officials must also notify the City Council regularly if money set aside by the City Council for one purpose is used in another way.

Ald. Andre Vasquez (40th Ward), who authored those requirements, said he had no idea how much the city spent in 2024 on overtime, or how it accounted for the $175 million pension payment officials expected CPS to cover.

“We can do better than this,” Vasquez said. “There needs to be more transparency.”

How Will Chicago Do ‘More With Less’?

Chicago’s finances have long been out of whack, pinched by soaring pension costs, spiraling personnel costs and a massive amount of debt. The city’s fiscal stability is also threatened by the crises facing the Chicago Transit Authority and the Chicago Public Schools. Both agencies survived the COVID-19 pandemic with federal financial assistance and must now stand alone after the ravages of the pandemic.

If the economy worsens significantly, the projected $1.2 billion gap for 2026 could swell to $1.6 billion, according to the forecast.

Assuming a robust economy, that shortfall could shrink to $634 million in 2026, according to the forecast that no one at City Hall believes is likely.

The city’s financial position is set to worsen once again in 2027, with a likely deficit of $1.3 billion, according to the budget forecast. If the economy worsens significantly, that gap could swell to $1.93 billion, according to the forecast.

Under the rosiest scenario, the city’s 2027 gap could be as small as $703 million.

That dire financial outlook is complicated by President Donald Trump’s attempts to revoke all federal funding from Chicago because officials have refused to stop protecting undocumented immigrants from deportation.

Trump’s efforts amount to “terrorism,” Johnson said.

In an effort to avoid repeating the mistakes that plagued the 2025 budget negotiations, Johnson formed a working group in April, and charged members with crafting solutions to the city’s fiscal crisis.

The working group’s recommendations are due to the mayor by Aug. 31, typically when the process of crafting the city’s budget for the next year begins in earnest after the publication of the department’s budget forecast.

A spokesperson for the mayor did not respond to a request from WTTW News for an update about the efforts of the working group, which is led by Loop Capital’s Jim Reynolds and includes representatives of Chicago’s business community, nonprofit organizations, civic organizations, labor groups and the City Council.

But even if the working group recommends that the City Council hikes taxes, it is far from assured that alderpeople will approve a spending plan that forces their constituents to dig deeper into their wallets.

But if the 2026 spending plan relies, as the city’s 2025 budget did, on one-time fixes to fill the gap, Chicago could suffer another downgrade in its credit rating, making it much more expensive for the city to borrow money.

The first test of Johnson’s ability to push his fiscal proposals through the City Council is already on tap, even though the City Council has six months to craft and pass a 2026 spending plan.

After state lawmakers ended the state’s 1% grocery tax at Gov. JB Pritzker’s request, it gave municipalities the option of levying — and collecting — the tax on its own.

To avoid blowing an additional $80 million hole in the city’s 2026 budget, Johnson asked the City Council to vote to keep the tax in place before an Oct. 1 deadline.

More than 150 cities and villages have done just that, ensuring that shoppers’ grocery bills won’t change on Jan. 1, 2026, keeping tax dollars flowing to local governments.

Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]

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