City of Chicago Employees Owe $19.5 Million in Fines, Half of Whom Refuse to Pay

Why are city employees allowed to dodge debts owed to Chicago?

A new report finds that 12,700 scofflaw city workers owe Chiago nearly $19.5 million in fines and debts but fewer than half have even bothered to enroll in the payment plan to pay their debts back.

Not only that, but the city has not even bothered to arrange to garnish these workers' pay to recover the money, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

Clearly city employees think they are immune from paying their debts, even as Johnson’s budget deficit is $1.2 billion, according to WTTW.

The Sun-Times notes that most of the indebted workers are employed by the CTA, the Chicago Board of Education (CBE), and the Chicago Public School (CPS) system.

The debt comes from unpaid traffic tickets, unpaid water bills, fines, and other debts.

The worst debtor is an employee of the CPS, a substitute teacher who has racked up a debt of almost $200,000 for building code violations, fines, and traffic tickets.

Members of the city's education sector and the CTA reportedly owe 80 percent of the debt, adding up to nearly $15.7 million.

The Times also found the second employee most in debt to the city is also a convicted felon hired by the CTA despite his debt or his criminal record.

CTA employee Nikita Hampton, 58, who was hired by the CTA after he spent 20 years in jail for bank robbery, owes $136,000 in fines and fees to the city. Hampton denies owing the debt and the CTA hasn't initiated any garnishment of his wages.

The city does have the ability to garnish up to 25 percent of an employee's wages to satisfy city debts.

Absurdly, few city departments admit to even having a policy that rules out new hires if they owe the city any fines or debts, so people who owe money to the city can actually get hired and be paid with public money and still refuse to settle their debts to the very municipality paying their salary!

The scofflaws go all the way to the top, naturally.

Mayor Brandon Johnson was forced to settle his own $5,000 debt with the city. He owed the money for unpaid water bills and parking and traffic tickets he incurred while running for office.

So, even as he was running for office and advocating for a slew of new, higher taxes, he was at same the time refusing to pay his own debts to the city.

Aldermen are not immune from this problem, either.

Alderwoman Emma Mitts (37th Ward) has an employee named Elizabeth Lockhart with owes the city more than $28,000 for unpaid water bills.

Mitts told the Sun-Times she was unaware her employee was a city scofflaw. She told the paper Lockhart told her she is not on a payment plan. Mitts added that she has nothing to do with hiring people.

"We have to make sure we're doing everything to collect that money," Mitts said of city debtors. "I always thought everybody had to pay their bills."

Mitts also did not say if she might fire Lockhart. Naturally, Lockhart says she hasn’t done anything wrong.

It all adds up to just another case of city agencies, employees, and elected officials imagining their privilege makes them immune from the rules the rest of us are forced to live under.

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