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Inspector General employee resigns after being caught violating city residency requirement
Inspector General Joe Ferguson has investigated scores of city employees accused of violating Chicago’s residency requirement. But an alleged residency violation recently hit close to home.
In a quarterly report released Monday, Ferguson disclosed that one of his own employees has resigned after an internal investigation disclosed the worker was living in Naperville. City employees are required to live in Chicago.
Under a memorandum of understanding with the city’s Law Department, investigations of managers in the inspector general’s office are conducted by an outside company. If the accused employee is non- management, those investigations are handled internally by an investigative unit within Ferguson’s office.
The employee accused of living in Naperville was not a manager, so the investigation was handled internally.
“At the time of hire, the employee listed a city address on the required residency affidavit. … Documents, surveillance and the employee’s own admission during an investigatory interview later revealed that the employee did not reside at the listed address but rather in suburban Naperville. During the inter- view, the employee resigned,” the quarterly report states, adding that Ferguson recommended that the employee be placed on the “ineligible for re- hire” list.
The report does not explain how long the employee was able to get away with living outside the city. No matter how long the violation went on, it’s an embarrassment for the office charged with enforcing the residency rule citywide.
Without naming names, the quarterly report also revealed:
A Water Management employee was slapped with a 14- day suspension for failing to disclose that he was the co- owner and sole employee of a repair company that reported “total gross receipts of more than $ 500,000 over the last seven years.” But in five so- called “dual employment forms” submitted to the city between 2005 and 2014, the employee “denied having a job in addition to his city employment.” Ferguson recommended discipline “up to and including termination” after the accused employee “admitted intentionally providing false information to the city,” the report states.
An Aviation Department worker was fired, effective Jan. 28, after being accused of stealing up to $ 500 from an O’Hare Airport vendor, a theft that was captured on video. The employee pleaded guilty in November and was sentenced to supervision.
A community organization managing several taxing districts known as special service areas ( SSAs) was accused of improperly using revenue from property tax increases levied by those taxing districts as collateral. The organization was further ac- cused of “co- mingling” SSA and non- SSA tax money in its deposit accounts and making “several hundred thousand dollars of unauthorized payments from its SSA deposit accounts to its own lines of credit.” Those payments were “not reflected” in budgets submitted to the city. Ferguson recommended that the organization be prohibited from doing business with the city. The Department of Procurement Services has given the organization 30 days to respond to the allegations.
The city recovered $ 130,000 from an Aviation Department prime contractor permanently debarred last fall after Ferguson accused the company of “defrauding the city out of $ 1.4 million” earmarked for companies owned by minorities and women.
In the letter that serves as a prelude to his quarterly report, Ferguson also put in another pitch for the unbridled auditing power that the City Council refused to give him when aldermen disbanded the Office of Legislative Inspector General and empowered Ferguson to investigate aldermen and their employees.
Ferguson officially assumed those limited duties on March 16.
“City Council’s action … nudges the ball forward but comes without the very audit and program review authority the council itself has recognized and touted as providing value and serving the public interest with respect to the rest of city government,” Ferguson wrote.
“This means that programs and operations that Chicago administers through its legislative body are not subject to the same scrutiny as other city services. We therefore embrace our new investigative oversight duties in the hopes of deepening the council’s understanding of our nationally recognized standards and professionalism to the point that the council extends oversight of itself to encompass the same comprehensive scope that is applied to the rest of city government.”