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Follow-Up on Audit of Delays in Providing Notice of Sanitation Code Violations

July 29, 2021

Summary

The City of Chicago Office of Inspector General (OIG) has completed a follow-up to its September 2019 audit of the Department of Law’s (DOL) process for notifying people of sanitation code violations, such as overflowing garbage containers or uncut weeds. Based on the Department’s response, OIG concludes that DOL has not implemented corrective actions related to the audit finding.

Executive Summary

The objective of the audit was to determine the average length of time it took to notify the property owner of the alleged violation, and why, in some cases, the process took more than a year.

OIG found that for the 101,729 alleged sanitation code violations in 2016 and 2017, it took DOL an average of 289 days—more than 9 months—after the violation date to issue a notice of violation. DOL sent notice at least six months after the violation in 88,503, or 87.0%, of the cases. This included 24,189 cases—23.8% of the total—where it took DOL a year or more to send notice. Fewer than 2% of notifications were sent within one month of the violation.

Follow-Up on Audit of Delays in Providing Notice of Sanitation Code Violations - publication cover