Pay Your Bills

If an Officer appears on one of these lists, they are the subject of an immediate SPAR, upgradable to a CR Investigation and suspended without pay until they are enrolled in a payment program, sometimes involving direct garnishment of wages.

But if you're a teacher or a CTA worker?

• A substitute teacher owes City Hall nearly $200,000 for building code violations, fines and traffic tickets he racked up over the past 25 years, making him the single biggest debtor working for the city of Chicago or its sister agencies.

  A convicted bank robber landed an entry-level job with the CTA’s Second Chance program even though City Hall says he owes more than $136,000 in fines, mostly for drinking in public and selling individual cigarettes near Douglass Park — a likely case of mistaken identity since he was in prison when the police issued those tickets.

  The operator of a West Side religious store owed the city more than $28,000 in water bills, but it didn’t keep her from landing a job as a staff assistant to a City Council member who’s pushing Mayor Brandon Johnson to collect money from deadbeats.

  They are among 12,761 people who work for the city or its sister agencies despite collectively owing City Hall more than $19.5 million for delinquent water bills, parking violations, speeding tickets, building-code violations and other infractions, according to data the city’s finance department provided to the Chicago Sun-Times in response to a public records request.

  Nearly 80% of those scofflaws have jobs with the Chicago Board of Education or the Chicago Transit Authority, owing nearly $15.7 million to the city, records show.

We even know of someone who was delinquent on his water bill and he had the nerve to run for mayor!