Johnson proposes more debt to settle police misconduct suits
(The Center Square) – As a part of the city’s budget negotiations, Chicago aldermen discussed the city’s obligation to pay for Chicago Police Department misconduct settlements, which the mayor’s budget recommends be paid for by taking on $481 million of debt.
The city’s near half-million-dollar recommended debt issuance stems from multiple police misconduct settlements, including the largest single settlement in U.S. history.
On Oct. 14, the city council approved a $260 million settlement over the misconduct of former Det. Reynaldo Guevara, who was accused of coercing false confessions, falsifying records and more.
An earlier $90 million settlement tied to 200 different misconduct suits related to former Sgt. Ronald Watts, also accused of framing suspects and other misconduct, combined with the Guevara settlement, drew scrutiny from aldermen, including Samantha Nugent.
“I just want to really emphasize this point with my colleagues. We’ve heard today from our folks in the panel that it’s pretty unprecedented to borrow for settlements. It has changed the budget gap by $200 million,” Nugent said.
There’s a dispute between how Johnson’s office and Chief Financial Officer Ashlee Gabrysch described the budget based on if they count the debt toward the full city budget’s funding gap, which greatly differs depending on if it’s counted.
Mayor Brandon Johnson said the cases being settled together could save the city upwards of $400 million and significantly cut their backlog of misconduct lawsuits, rather than taking each case to a trial.
“Between those two cases, they comprise over 72% of those legacy cases. So just put that into context, over the course of my three years, we’ve been able to resolve 72% of the lingering settlements that have dogged this city for generations,” Johnson said.
Gabrysch gave aldermen a breakdown of the borrowing and how much the city would have to pay for misconduct settlements and additional costs related to the bond issuance.
“The authority being asked for is $480 million. Only $350 million of that is what the city plans to bond out for in fiscal [year] 2027, with the remaining $130 million being bonded out for in fiscal [year] 2028 – corresponding to the second half of the Guvera settlement,” Gabrysch said.
Gabrysch was appointed in August, giving the officer a shorter-than-usual amount of time to prepare for the budgeting process.
Nonetheless, she had recommendations for how the city could improve some processes in budgeting for settlements in the future.
“I would highly suggest that we engage with an actuarial firm that can do analysis and probabilistic projections of what this looks like. Our sister agencies, Cook County, has been doing that for 15 years,” Gabrysch said. “If we want to start budgeting differently, I think we need to start analyzing the numbers differently.”
The city council will continue their nearly two-week series of meetings through Thursday, before picking back up next Wednesday.
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