OT, settlements fuel Chicago police overspending
[September 23, 2026]
By Jim Talamonti | The Center Square
(The Center Square) – According to a new report, the Chicago Police
Department has far overspent its budget in recent years, thanks mainly
to overtime and court settlements.
Analysis from the Better Government Association said CPD spent $145.8
million more than the department’s budgeted $1.9 billion in 2025.
BGA Senior Policy Analyst Geoffrey Cubbage said the main drivers were
court settlements and personal services.
“That can be a couple of different things in budget terms, but for the
purposes of police department overspend, we know that it is overtime,”
Cubbage told The Center Square.
The BGA noted that, as of August 31, Chicago Office of the Inspector
General data shows $164.9 million paid in CPD overtime so far in 2026,
roughly 80% of the $204.6 million budgeted for police overtime in the
annual appropriations ordinance.
Cubbage said CPD has far exceeded its line item for misconduct
settlements every year since 2020, when then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot
increased the appropriation to around $82.5 million.
“Pretty much everybody knows that it is not sufficient to meet the
amount the police department is going to face every year, but they've
still never changed that in the budget,” Cubbage said.
Cubbage said Mayor Brandon Johnson promised to budget more this year.
“The number he said was something like $400 million. It’s a really large
number compared to that $82.5 [million] that it's been every year, so
we'll see if they follow through on that,” Cubbage said.
The city’s overall budget for 2026 is $16.7 billion. The mayor’s office
has projected a deficit of $882.4 million for 2027.
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Cubbage said the corporate fund for most city agencies had to pick
up the slack for the police department’s overspending.
“The pot of money that they dip into for overspend is not just
police money. It's money that could go to anything the city of
Chicago does for its residents,” Cubbage said.
Cubbage’s report said the Chicago Fire Department overspent by $62.3
million, largely due to $74 million in revenue replacement initially
budgeted for CFD from American Rescue Plan COVID relief funds that
did not appear in the 2025 actuals.
“That gap left CFD over budget in its corporate fund spend despite
coming under budget in most of its actual expense categories,” the
report said.
Most city agencies operated within their budgeted means from 2022 to
2025.
“If you look back at those four years, on average, your departments
are spending about 86.5% of their budget, so they're coming in
15%-ish under budget on average,” Cubbage said.
The numbers involve local funds and come with some caveats.
“It doesn't include grants. That's sort of separate data and doesn't
get tracked the same way, but a lot of city departments are funded
entirely out of the local funds,” Cubbage said.
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