U.S. News

Chicago Inspector General Busts O’Hare Workers for On-Duty Drinking

By Mike Harper · April 23, 2026

Chicago city workers assigned to O’Hare International Airport were leaving their shifts, heading to nearby bars, drinking — and then returning to complete their workday. Their supervisors and colleagues knew. Nobody said anything.

That is one of the findings in the Chicago Office of Inspector General’s first quarterly report of 2026, released in mid-April by Inspector General Deborah Witzburg in what she described as one of her final acts before her term expires later this month. The report covers investigations completed between January 1 and March 31 and documents a pattern of misconduct across multiple city departments that she said “undermines public trust in government.”

“These are people who are supposed to be on the clock, working at the airports, and instead they are drinking at bars nearby,” Witzburg said.

The O’Hare finding involves eight Chicago Department of Aviation employees who attended an off-duty party thrown by a colleague, then drank beer, cocktails, and shots of liquor before returning to the airport to complete their shifts. Multiple supervisors were aware of the drinking and did nothing. One employee could face a fine of up to $20,000 if the city’s Board of Ethics agrees with the inspector general’s misconduct finding. Mayor Brandon Johnson attributed that particular employee to a prior administration.

The airport drinking case was not the report’s most serious finding. That distinction belongs to a set of ten sustained investigations into Paycheck Protection Program fraud — nine involving current or former Chicago Police Department members and one involving a City Council employee.

The nine CPD officers fraudulently obtained federal PPP loans — loans intended to help small businesses survive the pandemic — by lying on applications and claiming income from businesses that either did not exist or grossly overstated their revenues. Individual loan amounts ranged from $20,000 to more than $41,000. One officer fraudulently obtained two separate loans totaling $41,666, then filed false paperwork to secure loan forgiveness — and lied about it again during a background interview when joining the department.

CPD agreed with OIG’s recommendation to discharge all nine officers and place them on the city’s do-not-hire list.

The City Council employee’s case was similarly brazen: the staffer fraudulently obtained $20,833 in PPP funds, then filed a false police report claiming someone had stolen their identity and used it to submit the application. OIG recommended the employee be fired. The alderman supervising that worker received the recommendation, acknowledged it, and said “appropriate steps are being taken” — without indicating what those steps were or whether the employee had actually been dismissed.

Witzburg, who announced she would step down when her term ends this month, used the report to document what she called “real challenges with cooperation” from the Johnson administration throughout her tenure.

“I believe we have seen a pattern from the Johnson administration, and particularly the Law Department, in blocking OIG’s access to the information we need to do our work,” she said.

Johnson pushed back, saying Witzburg’s characterization of his administration’s cooperation was not accurate.

The quarterly report received 3,397 new intake complaints during the first three months of the year and had 268 active misconduct investigations open at the close of the quarter — 226 into city employees, 16 into elected officials, and 21 into contractors.