Chicago Alderman Rebuff Oversight Move for City's Workers' Compensation Program

Friday, February 12, 2016 | 0

Chicago’s City Council on Wednesday voted to allow the city’s inspector general to investigate the city aldermen and their employees, but bar him from exerting oversight over the city’s $100 million-a-year workers' compensation program, the Chicago Sun-Times has reported.

Joe Ferguson

The measure had originally sought to transfer oversight of the city’s aldermen and their employees as well as city programs from the Office of Legislative Inspector General to the city’s inspector general.

But amendments to the bill bar the city’s inspector general, Joe Ferguson, from auditing some of the city’s largest programs, such as its self-insured workers’ comp operation and the $66 million aldermanic menu program that allots $1.3 million to each council member to spend on street repair and improvement projects.

The 23 members who voted against the ordinance favored a stronger one that would have given Ferguson the authority to investigate the city’s programs, including its workers’ compensation program.

“The Council amended legislation that was carefully and thoughtfully constructed and negotiated amongst representatives of all constituent parties,” Ferguson said in a statement issued after the vote. This signals “to those watching and investigating the City … that its City Council either does not understand, or lacks the will to embrace, comprehensive and effective oversight.”

Critics say the city’s workers’ compensation program is heavily mismanaged, and in 2012, longtime alderman Ed Burke, 14th Ward, refused to allow Ferguson’s office access to the program’s databases.