Despite a hiring freeze, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration still made hundreds of new hires

The city hired or promoted 490 employees in the six weeks since Mayor Brandon Johnson announced a hiring freeze, with the Chicago Police Department seeing the most new hires.

The employment data, obtained by WBEZ through an open records request, includes 268 new hires through Oct. 21. In all, the hires and promotions total roughly $31.4 million in annual salaries – a fraction of the $223 million end-of-year deficit and $982.4 million budget gap for 2025.

The mayor’s administration announced the hiring freeze Sept. 9 in an effort to close the immediate 2024 deficit spurred by underperforming revenues and a disputed CPS pension payment. Budget officials later clarified public safety positions would be exempt from the hiring freeze on a case-by-case basis.

But the city still made hires and promotions across departments – including the mayor’s office and the City Council. The Chicago Police Department saw the most new hires and promotions with 83, and of those 61 were police officers. The Chicago Fire Department saw 14 new hires, with 12 new paramedics.

Budget officials previously said 3,500 positions, including open ones, would be affected by the hiring freeze, and that they anticipate saving $100 million from the move. But Ald. Scott Waguespack, 32nd Ward, is questioning that math.

“I think the whole thing was a flop. It just shows there is no fiscal accountability,” said Waguespack, the former Finance Committee chair and a frequent critic of Johnson’s. “When I see him ignoring his own orders, and other elected officials ignoring those orders, it just shows that to me it's just a charade that they put in place in the first place.”

Justin Marlowe, director of the Center for Municipal Finance at the University of Chicago, said it’s feasible for a hiring freeze to realize hundreds of millions in savings for the city. But with the end of the fiscal year looming it will take “drastic measures” like freezing hiring more strictly and more transparency to understand how the city reached its estimates.

“The real question becomes whether or not these additions to staff and increases in staff pay are going to lessen the anticipated savings from the freeze,” said Ralph Martire, executive director of the bipartisan Center for Tax and Budget Accountability. “Only the city can tell us.”

Spokespersons for the mayor’s office and budget office did not respond to requests for comment.

The City Council’s budget committee chair, Ald. Jason Ervin, 28th Ward, did not respond to a request for comment.

The city faced swift backlash from alderpersons over concerns the police and fire departments would be impacted by the citywide freeze. The budget office clarified two days later that public safety personnel required under the consent decree are exempt, but faced renewed criticism when recruit classes were being delayed for two months.

Fiscal experts said it’s not surprising to see new hires made despite the freeze. Some offers may have been made before the policy was announced. Spokespeople for the mayor’s and budget offices did not provide details about the timing of offers. Former Mayor Lori Lightfoot similarly hired or promoted 230 employees on the city’s payroll in the eight weeks after she announced a hiring freeze in 2019.

Joe Ferguson, president of the Civic Federation, said “hiring freezes seldom actually mean 100% hiring freeze.”

“But the communications around this particular public announcement was over broad,” Ferguson said, noting that the administration initially failed to clarify that all public safety positions could be exempt. “Almost immediately they had to do something of a reset to say, ‘No, we didn't mean public safety [would face a hiring freeze].’ Well, they also probably didn't mean a number of other things.”

Personnel — from salaries to pensions and overtime — constitute the majority of the city’s expenses and “is one of the largest drivers of expense growth,” according to the 2025 budget forecast. That makes personnel an area ripe to scrutinize for trims, but fiscal experts said a hiring freeze should be paired with a more comprehensive audit of vacancies, staffing and the unique needs of different departments in order to be effective.

“Instead, what we get is what we have now, which is this very reactionary, move quickly, try to avoid exceptions but some exceptions are unavoidable, kind of scenario,” Marlowe said. “And when you do that, you're taking a solution, like a hiring freeze — which is pretty undesirable in the first place — and you're making it a lot worse by not implementing it as effectively as you could.”

Other departments that saw the most new hires and promotions include the: Department of Streets and Sanitation (57), Board of Election Commissioners (43), Chicago Department of Aviation (37) and Department of Water Management (32).

But promotions and new hires spanned city departments, with 10 in the mayor’s office and 15 in the City Council, of mostly aldermanic and legislative aides.

The highest paid promotion was Kennedy Bartley, the mayor’s chief of external affairs, to a salary of $192,000. The highest paid new hire was Nathaniel Hernandez, a chief assistant corporation counsel in the Law Department, at a salary of $162,816, according to the employment data obtained by WBEZ.

“The mayor should be holding the line on salaries for his staff and administrators as part of the team to sort of set the example,” Martire said.

Ferguson argued that a lack of transparency around the reasoning for high-profile promotions or hires could lead to undue criticism.

“If a pay raise comes about because of a promotion, and a promotion is an essential position, I think people would say, ‘Okay, I understand that,’” Ferguson said. “But you should be transparent about it, because in the absence of explaining, there's all sorts of narratives that aren't so good that people will fill in the void.”

Johnson is set to unveil his proposed 2025 budget Wednesday, which he delayed by two weeks as his administration worked to “evaluate all the options” of filling the massive budget hole.

But 10 progressive alderpersons had pushed for the administration to give City Council more time, and not less, to weigh the proposed budget. In an Oct. 3 letter obtained by WBEZ, alderpersons shared “serious concerns that the revised calendar risks impeding the deliberation and collaboration that this moment requires.” Guzman rebuffed the worries in an Oct. 9 letter in response, writing that the budget would not be ready prior to Wednesday.

While next year’s nearly $1 billion dollar budget gap was anticipated, crafting a budget that closes it and sticking to it will require “some really serious, proactive, tough work,” Marlowe said.

“When you see the hiring freeze that hasn't been executed the way some might like so far… it does raise that question of: They can make a plan, but can they stick to that plan?” Marlowe said.

Tessa Weinberg and Mariah Woelfel cover Chicago government and politics for WBEZ. Amy Qin is a data reporter for WBEZ.