Emanuel Cuts City Credit Cards to 30

Mayor Emanuel is showing some tough love to city agencies and cutting back the number of credit cards for the Park District, Chicago Housing Authority, CTA, Chicago Public Schools, City Colleges and Public Building Commission to five each. that's down from over 500 credit cards.

The move comes after a preliminary review of city credit card usage by Comptroller Amer Ahmad found expenditures in both the Park District and CHA for personal items, buying gifts and dinners at Rush Street steakhouses, paying off red light camera tickets and other non-work related expenses. The findings led to the resignations of Park District Superintendent Timothy Mitchell and CHA CEO Lewis B. Jordan.

Emanuel further tightened the purse strings and banned the use of petty cash altogether. A press release from the Mayor's office also halts the use of petty cash expenses altogether; outlines and limits permissible reimbursements; requires all reimbursements be posted online; and replaces flawed and unclear department policies that allowed unnecessary and costly charges and reimbursements, as well as mismanagement of petty cash funds.

The new policy can be found online here. That the Emanuel Administration has to set a budget constraint like this for city agencies, effectively treating the city agencies like teenagers being given secured line credit cards for emergencies, is probably a long time in coming. But Emanuel did say that everyone must share in the sacrifice if the city budget is to be balanced. Small moves like this go a long way toward that.

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By Chuck Sudo in News on July 11, 2011 10:30 AM

Comments [rss]

robert deckinga

To whom it may concern:

I used the credit card to purchase professional development books for my teachers through Amazon.com. I saved money for my school instead of purchasing from local vendors. Who is being punished?

My first purchase was for touch up spray paint, from Menards, for our playground equipment that had been tagged by local graffiti artists. I had to explain why the principal purchased spray paint in the suburbs. My engineer did not have a card nor the cash. I guess the person that asked didn't know that the city doesn't sell spray paint.

It looks like we are punishing the entire classroom when a few individuals use the cards for the wrong reasons. I thought our two previous Board of Ed. presidents used the cards improperly...purchases to go to Sweden...dinners out. Both of those are no no's!

Perhaps the new administration will

Tara Bylsma

Kudos to Mayor Emmanuel -- god knows my parents would never have tolerated that kind of behavior from me!

Rosemary_Woodhouse

I don't know why, but I didn't think the city would have had business credit cards. I worked for a Chicago museum and they were extremely tight with out of pocket expenses and petty cash - I just assumed the city worked the same way a non-profit did. Kind of amazing what people get away with at work (and especially now that I'm at a for-profit business, holy cow).