Chicago’s water-bill delinquents include City Council members
Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration doesn't have to look far to find some homeowners with delinquent water bills owed to City Hall. Two of them are Chicago City Council members, a Chicago Sun-Times investigation found.
Two more of their colleagues paid up only after Sun-Times reporters asked about their overdue bills.
One water-bill deadbeat is the brother of Alfonzo “Randy” Conner, who heads the city Department of Water Management.
Altogether, City Hall has more than $770 million on its books in water and sewer customers’ unpaid bills owed by tens of thousands of people and companies, with the longest-unpaid bills dating to 1992 and unlikely to ever be paid, the Sun-Times found.
Also among those who haven’t paid up are:
• Diane Gottlieb, who has made a fortune as a public housing landlord, has nearly $1.5 million in past-due bills owed for dozens of properties. Gottlieb has collected millions of dollars in government subsidies from the Chicago Housing Authority to pay all or part of the rent for her low-income tenants.
• An office worker who says she shouldn’t have to pay because she walked away years ago from a South Shore house that has seen penalties balloon her delinquent water bill to nearly $600,000.
• An investment company that’s run up a tab of more than $428,000 in utility bills on a long-closed Bronzeville hotel over the past six years.
City Comptroller Chasse Rehwinkel won’t talk about any particular debtor.
It’s up to the city finance department that Rehwinkel oversees to track down money owed to City Hall — a figure that the Sun-Times has reported has reached $6.4 billion, some of that going back as long as three decades but not written off even though it’s unlikely to ever be recovered. That tally includes not just delinquent water and sewer bills but all debts the city is due — red-light-camera tickets, administrative fees and every other unpaid tab.
Rehwinkel says his office is “actively reviewing” how it handles collections, including rooting out those who exploit city debt-relief and payment-plan programs that were established to help low-income residents. Former Mayor Lori Lightfoot ended water shutoffs days after taking office in 2019.
“That's an area where we're focusing on now,” Rehwinkel says, “to see if we can tighten those so that ultimately those individuals are not taking advantage of a system that's meant for people that are struggling.”
The city has stepped up collection efforts in recent years, referring more than $171 million in water debt to collection agencies in 2023 — more than double the amount it put out for bounty the previous year. Only about one-quarter of that money has been collected.
The longer a debt goes unpaid, the less likely it is that it ever will be collected, according to Rehwinkel, who says many of the city’s unpaid bills are owed by people who have died or companies that no longer exist.
Of the city’s $770 million in delinquent water debt, about $464 million is owed on active accounts. Nearly one-quarter of that is bills that are more than 10 years old, meaning it’s a long shot the city will ever get that money.
Council members among the delinquent
More recent delinquents include City Council members, the Sun-Times found by matching past-due bills by address to recipients of property tax bills.
Ald. William Hall (6th) was one of them. His Chatham home had a utility bill backlog of $1,769.53 dating to June 2023. Then, earlier this month, he paid the past-due tab shortly after Sun-Times reporters asked about it. That included $112 in late-payment penalties.
Hall says he had his account set to auto-pay with a debit card that got hacked and that he forgot to update his payment information after canceling the card.
“It wasn’t duck-and-dodge,” Hall says. “It was an error, and it was fixed. Under no circumstance was there a lack of fiscal management on my part.”
Hall says he plans to push for the city to improve its notification system for water customers to prevent situations like his.
Hall, who is an ally of Johnson, chairs the council’s new subcommittee on revenue, which is looking for ways to boost tax revenue and is considering expanding digital advertising downtown, dumping Chicago’s ban on video-slot machines and pushing for a tax on professional services.
Ald. Ruth Cruz (30th) also recently paid a past-due bill. A week ago, after being asked about that by a reporter, she made $416.85 in delinquent water payments for her Belmont Cragin home dating to December.
Cruz says her husband handles their bills, got busy and lost track and that they didn’t realize this until hearing from a reporter.
“We had a tough conversation about it,” Cruz says, “and he was very apologetic. We’re taking great care to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Ald. Walter Burnett (27th) and his wife have been past due since last September on $2,935.46 in city bills on a rental property they own in East Garfield Park. Burnett says they started getting unusually high water bills after having a new meter installed last year and that he’s asked the city water department to check on that.
“I wanted to pay it right away, but they said, ‘Hold off, let us take a look at it,’ ” Burnett says. “We’re not trying to get away with anything. Give us the right bill, and we’ll take it. We’ll pay what we owe.”
As of mid-June, Ald. Derrick Curtis (18th) owed $532.04 on his Ashburn home’s utility bills that were delinquent dating to last September, city records show. He didn’t respond to messages seeking comment.
The mayor also has been among those who have been late in paying city water bills, paying more than $3,000 in delinquent water bills late in his 2023 campaign. His West Side home remains in good standing with the city.
“I know what it’s like to grow up in a household where the ends don’t always meet, and one unexpected bill can be devastating,” Johnson said earlier this year when he announced a new relief program for people with high water bills due to leaky pipes. “I also know what it’s like to have high water bills hanging over your head.”
Commissioner’s brother owes almost $7,000
Since February 2021, Terrence Conner — a supervisor in the city’s transportation department whose brother Randy Conner was reappointed as city water commissioner by Johnson last December — has racked up nearly $7,000 in bills and penalties for water and sewer service at his home in West Pullman, where he lives across the street from his brother.
“I’m on a payment plan with them, so I have no interest in talking with you,” Terrence Conner says.
According to Burnett, the city administration periodically checks in with council members to “make us pay everything we owe all the time, parking tickets, whatever.”
Rehwinkel says the law department’s collections unit informs department heads of any delinquent debts owed by city workers, who can face disciplinary action for not paying up.
“The intent there is for those employees to get on a payment plan or to pay outright what they owe, and, if not, there can be individual consequences, depending on the department head,” Rehwinkel says.
Biggest unpaid residential bill? $591,000
Gottlieb, a Streeterville high-rise resident who has made millions by cashing in on CHA rent subsidies, owns 56 properties — most of them in low-income areas on the South Side and the West Side — that together account for nearly $1.5 million in delinquent water bills and penalties, some of that owed for more than a decade.
The tab for one of Gottlieb’s buildings in North Lawndale has grown to $415,000 since 2008. Another Gottlieb building, across the street, has late bills that come to more than $113,000.
“I’m not aware of that,” Gottlieb says. “I’m working with the attorneys on that. I’ll call you back.”
She didn’t.
The biggest outstanding residential water and sewer debt owed to the city of Chicago is that of Temetrice Rhea, who’s on the city’s books as being responsible for nearly $591,000 in bills and penalties since 2017 for a house in South Shore.
Rhea’s name remains on the deed. But she says she doesn’t owe the past-due tab for water and sewer service because she walked away from the house when she “stopped paying the mortgage,” and it went into foreclosure in 2012.
“I don’t owe the city any money,” Rhea says. “I don’t own that property anymore. I gave it back to the bank when we stopped paying the mortgage.”
But City Hall’s lawyers are still pursuing her for the delinquent debt, registering an administrative hearing judgment earlier this year with the courts for more than $207,000.
A Bronzeville hotel has seen its water tab rise to $428,393 since 2018 though it’s been closed since the following year.
Building owner Hemlata Vyas disputes that, calling it “harassment by the city.”
“My building has been closed since 2019,” says Vyas, who lives in California. “It’s empty. How did they come up with $400,000? They can say what they want. They’re just trying to get the property.”
3 suburbs among water debtors
Millions more are owed by three south suburbs that have struggled for years to keep up with payments for getting Lake Michigan water for their residents from the city of Chicago:
• Robbins is $10.8 million behind on its water payments, going back a decade.
• Harvey owes at least $4.8 million. That’s down from more than $20 million, a past-due tab that prompted a court-ordered payment plan in 2015.
• Riverdale’s late tab is about $635,000. That dates to last summer.
Mayors for those cities didn’t respond to requests for comment.