Municipalities struggling to collect money from scofflaws is an age-old problem.
More than a half-century ago in 1971, a court official in Chicago told the New York Times that 25% of parking tickets issued by the city each year were unpaid or uncollectible, despite a relatively new computer system meant to help.
Technological advances have simplified data processing in the years since, yet debtors and scofflaws remain a dime a dozen. City budgets — and ultimately taxpayers — pay the price.
Chicago has amassed more than $6.4 billion in unpaid fees, fines and other debts since 1990, going way back to Mayor Richard M. Daley’s first full year in office, according to an analysis by the Sun-Times’ Mitchell Armentrout and Tim Novak.
That amount is nearly 40% of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s $16.77 billion budget. It could go a long way to help both longtime Chicagoans and newly arrived migrants, as Armentrout and Novak pointed out in their Dec. 1 Watchdogs report.
Yet the city, always in need of more cash long before the Johnson administration, hasn’t been as diligent as it could have been in recouping what debtors owe. A good chunk of the oldest debt will likely never be recovered, but the city has to be serious in its efforts to recoup as sizable a portion of that money as possible.
Ald. Pat Dowell (3rd) said the Finance Committee will do its part by “aggressively” seeking out institutions, companies and organizations that have flouted the law. We’re hoping Dowell, who chairs the committee, will put her money where her mouth is.
Collecting old debt isn’t a walk in the park, as City Comptroller Chasse Rehwinkel said. And no one expects the city to go after, say, a father of four who blew off paying a parking ticket worth a few bucks in 1992.
But many of those with more recent debt from the last few years, and especially businesses and other institutions that could afford to pay, shouldn’t be let off the hook.
In fact, the biggest offenders should be called out publicly for their delinquency.
The city told Armentrout and Novak that listing all debtors would be cumbersome and cited pending litigation as its rationale for staying mum about identifying scofflaws. But shouldn’t the public, including journalists, be able to access the data?
The ball has been dropped too many times by past administrators, and the burden now falls to the Johnson administration. Now that reporters have reminded city leaders of the potential cash cow that’s been sitting untapped for far too long, City Hall must do its best to reclaim what it can.
Chicago can’t afford to ignore it.
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