In December 2012, the City of Chicago Office of Inspector General (OIG) published an audit of processes related to the Chicago Police Department (CPD) Tuition Reimbursement Program (TRP). The purpose of the audit was to determine if CPD’s Department of Human Resources (HR) was effectively administering the $6.5 million program in accordance with the program rules, and identifying former employees who failed to meet program service requirements in order to initiate collection efforts to recover the taxpayer-funded tuition reimbursements.
Based upon the results of our audit, we recommended that CPD HR strengthen the administration of the TRP to ensure that program rules are accurately and consistently applied, reimbursement calculations are correct, and former employees who owe tuition reimbursement repayments to the City are promptly identified. At that time, CPD HR responded with a commitment to implement corrective actions.
In June 2013, we inquired with CPD HR regarding the current status of those corrective actions. CPD HR responded on July 17, 2013. The OIG’s follow-up inquiry did not observe or test implementation of new policies and procedures and thus makes no determination as to their effectiveness, which would require a new audit with full testing of the procedures.