Emanuel Cuts City Credit Cards to 30

By Chuck Sudo in News on Jul 11, 2011 3:30PM

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.