Chicago's Own Budget Watchdog Missed 28% of Periodic Reports
Summary
An OIG audit finds the City Council Office of Financial Analysis -- an office one Council member likened to the Congressional Budget Office -- delivered only 72.3% of its legally required periodic reports, has never once completed a mandated review of a public-private partnership deal, and has no legal budget floor at all, unlike New York's much larger equivalent office.
Modeled on the CBO, funded like an afterthought
City Council created COFA after the 2008 lease of Chicago's parking meters to a private operator for a $1.157 billion upfront payment -- a deal alderpersons say they voted on without the independent analysis to know if it was a good one. One Council member told the office was meant to work like the U.S. Congressional Budget Office; the audit says its designer modeled it on legislative-analysis offices in New York, Pittsburgh, and San Diego. But the MCC does not give COFA a budget floor the way New York protects its Independent Budget Office (IBO), which is legally guaranteed at least 10% of what the city's own Office of Management and Budget gets -- and which runs on 35 staff, seven times COFA's five. San Diego's comparable office has 11. COFA's budget has moved entirely at the discretion of the Mayor and Council: $283,924 in 2015, $537,133 in 2026, with staffing that dropped as low as three people for several of those years.
View data as table
| COFA (Chicago) | 5 staff / $537,133 (2026) | No statutory budget floor |
|---|---|---|
| IBA (San Diego) | 11 staff | Modeled peer office |
| IBO (New York City) | 35 staff | Budget legally floored at 10% of city OMB appropriation |
A mandate the office met unevenly, report by report
's Figure 3 breaks the 47-report tally down by type, and the pattern is uneven rather than uniform: COFA hit 100% on its Annual Comprehensive Financial Report summaries and, since a 2019 law moved its Activity Reports from an annual to a quarterly schedule, on those too (compared with just 1 of 5 under the old annual rule). But it produced only 3 of 9 required Budget Options Reports (33.3%) and only 3 of 4 -- 75% -- Annual Budget Forecast reviews. Its analyses of the Mayor's proposed budget arrived at 77.8% (7 of 9), an average of 48 days after the Mayor's Office released the numbers, and twice only after Council had already voted on the budget those analyses were supposed to inform. The same 2019 amendment that added the online-publication requirement appears to be the turning point: before it, COFA delivered just 33.3% of periodic reports (5 of 15); after, 90.6% (29 of 32).
View data as table
| ACFR Summary and Analysis | 100% | required reports produced |
|---|---|---|
| COFA Activity Reports (post-2019) | 100% | quarterly since 2019; 1 of 5 pre-2019 |
| Mayor's Proposed Budget Analysis | 77.8% | 7 of 9, avg. 48 days late |
| Annual Budget Forecast Review | 75% | 3 of 4 |
| Budget Options Report | 33.3% | 3 of 9 |
| Bond Rating Agency Actions Report | 21% | 3 of 14 |
| Public-Private Partnership Review | 0% | 0 completed since 2013 |
Two mandates fare worse and don't even have a clean scorecard, because COFA told it can't verify how many it should have produced: 55 Fiscal Impact Statements (triggered whenever a proposed ordinance would move the budget by more than $1 million) and 18 Aldermanic Response Reports, both without a log of what was requested or required. The office did track its record on Bond Rating Agency Actions Reports -- 3 of 14 required, 21% -- and admitted it doesn't keep past versions, overwriting each report on its website when a new one is filed, which says denies Council the long-term view of how past decisions shaped the City's creditworthiness. On Public-Private Partnerships, the record isn't incomplete -- it's zero. COFA told it never identified an opportunity to review one and never contacted the Mayor's Office about any proposed deal that might require the review the MCC mandates.
When COFA did report, it sometimes leaned on a newspaper, not the City's own books
The audit also questions the quality of what COFA did produce. Despite the MCC granting COFA read-only access to the City's finance and payroll data systems, its 2024 Budget Options Report cited a Chicago Sun-Times article -- not Department of Finance records -- for its headline claim that the City had $6.4 billion in outstanding debt, and cited the commercial site bestplaces.net, rather than a primary transportation data source, for the commuter-mode figures behind a congestion-pricing recommendation. COFA told that timely, unhindered access to City data remains a persistent obstacle; 's own recommendation is that COFA formalize how it gets that access rather than default to outside sources it can't verify.
- COFA delivered 34 of 47 required periodic reports (72.3%) from 2015-2023, rising to 90.6% after a 2019 law forced online publication -- but was 33.3% before it.
- COFA has completed zero required reviews of Public-Private Partnership deals since its 2013 creation, and only 3 of 14 required Bond Rating Agency Actions Reports (21%).
- The Municipal Code sets no budget floor for COFA; New York's comparable office is legally guaranteed at least 10% of its city budget office's funding and runs 35 staff to COFA's 5.
- COFA's own 2024 Budget Options Report cited a newspaper article and a commercial website, not the City's own finance data it has read access to, for two of its headline figures.
Two required report categories -- Fiscal Impact Statements and Aldermanic Response Reports -- are excluded from the 72.3% headline figure and the compliance chart because COFA itself does not track how many it should have produced, so no delivery rate can be calculated; counted 55 and 18 delivered, respectively, with no known denominator. The 2015-2023 audit period predates COFA filling all five of its currently budgeted positions, which it reported completing as of the first quarter of 2026, after conducting staffing analyses in the fourth quarters of 2024 and 2025; whether that staffing change moves COFA's compliance rate going forward is not addressed by this audit, which reviewed the record only through 2023.
Sources(2) ▾
- City of Chicago Office of Inspector General, Audit of the City Council Office of Financial Analysis' Reporting Requirements (C2023-000000112) (2026-04-21) — Primary performance audit of the City Council Office of Financial Analysis (COFA), the city legislative branch's own budget-analysis office. Source for: the audit's conclusion that COFA has not consistently met its Municipal Code of Chicago (MCC) reporting mandate (p.3); COFA's annual budget and staffing 2014-2026, with no MCC-set budget floor (Figure 1, pp.5-6); comparison to New York City's Independent Budget Office (35 staff, budget legally floored at 10% of the city's Office of Management and Budget appropriation) and San Diego's Independent Budget Analyst (11 staff) (p.8); the nine MCC-required report types, five periodic and four ad hoc (p.7); COFA's periodic-report delivery rate, 2015-2023 -- 34 of 47 overall, split before/after the 2019 online-publication mandate, and broken out by report type (Figure 3 and surrounding text, pp.14-16); COFA's ad hoc-report record, including zero completed Public-Private Partnership reviews since 2013 and 3 of 14 Bond Rating Agency Action Reports (Figure 4 and surrounding text, p.16); findings that COFA sourced a $6.4 billion outstanding-debt figure from a Chicago Sun-Times article rather than Department of Finance data, and cited bestplaces.net rather than a primary source for commuter-mode data, in its own 2024 Budget Options Report (p.14); and COFA's April 2026 management response describing its Q1 2026 staffing status and growth plan (pp.17-18). igchicago.org · original document
- City of Chicago Office of Inspector General, OIG Second Quarter Report 2026 (April 1 - June 30, 2026) (2026-07-14) — Secondary confirmation: 's own quarterly-report summary of the COFA audit, published alongside its full-text release, describing the audit's headline conclusion and the audit's publication date and file location cited above. igchicago.org · original document
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Chicago City Council built its own budget watchdog in 2013 -- the City Council Office of Financial Analysis (COFA), meant to give alderpersons an independent read on the Mayor's numbers instead of taking City Hall's word for it. An Office of Inspector General audit of COFA's performance from 2015 through 2023 finds the office delivered just 34 of the 47 reports the Municipal Code of Chicago (MCC) requires of it -- 72.3% -- and, on one specific mandate, delivered nothing at all: COFA has never completed a single required review of a Public-Private Partnership deal since the office was created, and never even adopted a working definition of what one is.