The City of Chicago Office of Inspector General (OIG) has published its Quarterly Report for the second quarter of 2025, which summarizes concluded investigations, inquiries, intakes, and other operations of OIG, from July 1, 2025, through September 30, 2025. This report has been filed with City Council, as required by § 2-56-120 of the Municipal Code of Chicago (MCC).
This quarter, OIG received 2,869 new intakes. Of OIG’s 306 active misconduct investigations at the close of the quarter, 256 are into City employees; 26 into elected officials; 19 into contractors, subcontractors, and persons seeking contracts; and five into others. The nature of allegations ranges from criminal and ethics violations to fraud, retaliation, and more. Of the 12 sustained administrative cases reported in this quarter, fully one third of them involve allegations that a subject failed to cooperate with an OIG investigation, as legally required to do by the MCC.
“Oversight is an effective bulwark against inefficiency and abuse only when it is unobstructed. As OIG has worked during this term to pursue our investigative work more aggressively than ever before, we have been vigilant in guarding our work from interference,” said Deborah Witzburg, Inspector General for the City of Chicago.
In three of the four investigations in which OIG recommended the firing of a subject who failed to cooperate in an OIG investigation, the affected City departments agreed and are pursuing termination. “I am grateful to those departments—the Chicago Police Department, the Chicago Department of Public Health, and the Office of Public Safety Administration—for underscoring the message that a failure to cooperate with OIG is inconsistent with City employment,” said Witzburg. In the fourth of those investigations, the Mayor’s Office declined to terminate—or, in fact, to discipline at all—a senior employee against whom OIG sustained failure to cooperate allegations. “I am troubled by an appearance that there are different rules for different people, depending on who they are and with whom they work.”
Additionally, OIG investigations reported this quarter found;
- an Office of Public Safety Administration lineman falsified a loan application and an Internal Revenue Service document, to fraudulently obtain $17,890 in PPP funds;
- a former Mayoral appointee to a City board or commission made comments amounting to sexual harassment to City employees while in a City office,
- a Department of Aviation director used their City position to expedite their special event permit for a business they owned outside of their City employment, and used City resources to conduct secondary business while on City time; and
- a Department of Streets and Sanitation laborer was arrested for public indecency and sexual misconduct on the public way.
“We publish our report for the third quarter of 2025 at a tremendously challenging time. The City is beginning to grapple in earnest with a yawning budget deficit, tensions with the federal government are running high, and government accountability efforts across the nation are being weakened or abandoned altogether. These circumstances cast in high relief the urgency of fostering trust and public confidence in City government, and I sincerely believe that robust, independent oversight is critical to doing so,” said Witzburg.
Read the Report
Read the full report, released on October 15, 2025.
About the Office of Inspector General
The mission of the independent and nonpartisan City of Chicago Office of Inspector General (OIG) is to promote economy, effectiveness, efficiency, and integrity by identifying corruption, waste, and mismanagement in City government. OIG is a watchdog for the taxpayers of the City and has jurisdiction to conduct inquiries into most aspects of City government.
If you see misconduct, mismanagement, ineffectiveness, or inefficiency, we need to hear from you.
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