Tim Novak

When a top aide to former Mayor Lori Lightfoot left his job in 2023, a taxpayer-owned painting disappeared from his City Hall office. Mayor Brandon Johnson's aides say they have no idea where it is and what happened to it.

The $250 contribution to Friends of Brandon Johnson was given by Robert Blackwell Jr. in 2025 as the inspector general was investigating his technology company, EKI-Digital, and a questionable $9.6 million bill it wanted Chicago taxpayers to pay.

Johnson's comptroller Michael Belsky worked for EKI-Digital as it was pushing City Hall to pay nearly $10 million in questionable invoices. Johnson's former chief operating officer John Roberson also once worked for the company and was part of a city review of EKI amid billing concerns.

After a Sun-Times Watchdogs investigation revealed that Annette Guzman took the tax breaks for five years, Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi, her former boss, made her pay up for just three. Now, she's making good on the other two years of wrongful breaks.

Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi saved Annette Guzman more than $3,400 by giving her homeowner exemptions on a condo she hasn't lived in since 2019. After questions by the Sun-Times, Kaegi ordered Guzman to repay some of the wrongful tax breaks — but not all.

One of Scott Goodman's companies, which for years leased space in the West Loop building that houses the transit agency's nerve center, also is being hit with $11 million in fines for the late payments. Goodman has previously been late in making rent, as the Sun-Times detailed in 2024. Nonetheless,…

Because they're grandfathered in under an old law, former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan and ex-Ald. Edward Burke can collectively pocket nearly $4 million and use it for virtually anything they want, so long as they pay income taxes.

Ald. Desmon Yancy, whose ward includes the property where Allison Davis wants to build a hotel near the Obama Presidential Center, says he wouldn’t have backed the project had he known about the money Davis owes City Hall.

The amount of bills owed to the city of Chicago but unpaid now surpasses $8 billion. Johnson's administration plans to expand collection heading into another tough budget year.

Chris Getty's lawyer insists the arrangement is legal, and says it's tied to his divorce that led to sizable federal and state tax debt. But an official with the state elections board says: "You can’t spend your campaign fund for personal expenses. I would see this as a personal expenditure."