Chicago Employee Reimbursements: $10.7M, Nearly Half Of It Tuition

Chicago paid its own employees back $10,733,689.07 between January 2, 2025 and September 9, 2026, and nearly half of it is tuition: $5.16 million, 48.1 percent, on payments whose description says so. The second-largest share is labeled only by code: 837 payments worth $3.34 million, 31.1 percent, describe themselves as 2026-BATCH-01 and the like, and every one of them is a Police Department payment.

Employee Reimbursements (g5h3-jkgt), 5,787 payments totaling $10,733,689.07, payment dates January 2, 2025 through September 9, 2026, retrieved September 16, 2026 and read whole · a rolling file: the city describes it as payments to employees “from January 1 of the previous calendar year to the present,” so 2025 is complete here and 2026 runs to September 9 · payee names were never pulled · the description field is the file’s own optional free text, so the categories below are ours · department names as filed · one of two reimbursement streams: the city also pays employees back through its payroll system, recorded in a separate file that is not included in any figure here · no employee, department or payment is judged

Small payments, and a few very large ones

Half the payments are $744.95 or less, and a quarter are $200 or less; 759 of the 5,787, 13.1 percent, are under $100, the smallest a single cent. At the other end sits $100,695.21, paid by the Fire Department on August 7, 2026 under a license-renewal description; what a payment that size covers, the four columns read here do not say. The description field is optional, and what it holds varies: 1,641 distinct descriptions across 5,787 payments, 1,525 of them used exactly once. For scale, reimbursement is a small line beside the city’s pay: a separate city file this desk read puts 2025 overtime alone at $467.7 million.

Nearly half the money is tuition

Every payment falls in exactly one group; the groups are ours, read from the file’s optional description text.
What the description says (our grouping)	Payments	Amount	Share of dollars
Tuition	1,450	$5,163,802	48.1%
A batch code only	837	$3,342,002	31.1%
Travel	953	$848,528	7.9%
Something else	1,196	$725,597	6.8%
Dues, licenses or renewals	131	$270,931	2.5%
Boots or safety shoes	1,154	$248,682	2.3%
A refund	12	$48,833	0.5%
Training	35	$48,258	0.4%
Equipment or supplies	10	$33,752	0.3%
Uniform or clothing	9	$3,305	under 0.1%

Tuition payments appear in four departments. All 1,450 of them: 1,001 filed by Police, totaling $4.04 million; 442 by Fire, totaling $1.11 million; six by Public Safety Administration, $5,584.50; and one by the Department of Revenue, $4,725.00. The single most repeated label in the file is “CPD Tuition Reimbursement,” on 976 payments worth $3.95 million; “CFD Tuition Reimbursement” appears 443 times, one more than the Fire Department’s 442 tuition payments, because the 443rd is filed under the Department of Revenue. A label names a department; the department column is what the file counts by. What the tuition bought — a degree, a course, a certification — the file does not say.

The second-largest category is a batch code

837 payments carry only batch-code text. Their descriptions read 2026-BATCH-01, 2025-BATCH-07 and the like — a code this page cannot open — and they carry $3,342,001.66, 31.1 percent of the file’s dollars. Every one is a Police Department payment, and the largest batch label alone, 2026-BATCH-01, covers 274 payments worth $1.15 million. The file’s own note calls the description “an optional field that indicates the reason payment was made,” so a batch code is what the city filed, not something withheld from this page. Together, tuition and batch codes account for 79.2 percent of the money.

Two departments account for 92 cents of every dollar

All 25 departments that appear in the file, ten by name and the rest combined.
Department, as filed	Payments	Amount	Share of dollars
Police	3,214	$8,441,744	78.6%
Fire	629	$1,428,361	13.3%
Aviation	237	$185,887	1.7%
Water Management	375	$144,395	1.3%
Public Safety Administration	109	$123,327	1.1%
Public Health	200	$99,373	0.9%
Transportation	372	$91,342	0.9%
Streets and Sanitation	452	$85,883	0.8%
Emergency Management and Communications	4	$82,275	0.8%
Public Library	51	$15,874	0.1%
The other 15 departments	144	$35,227	0.3%

Police and fire together account for $9,870,105.18 of the $10,733,689.07 — 92.0 percent — while the fifteen departments outside the ten named rows share $35,226.99 between them — less than the file’s single largest payment. One department stands out for how rarely it files at all: Emergency Management and Communications appears four times in twenty months, for $82,275.36 — and three of those four payments were made on the same day, February 11, 2025.

The most common description is boots

By count rather than dollars, footwear leads: 1,154 payments describe boots or safety shoes, 19.9 percent of all payments in the file, and they total $248,682.46, 2.3 percent of the money. The median is exactly $200, the smallest $6.78 and the largest $4,940. The labels vary by spelling and carry a year of their own — WORKBOOT REIMBURSEMENT on 352 payments, WORK BOOT REIMBURSEMENT on 79, and a SAFETY SHOE REIMBURSEMENT label whose year is part of the text rather than the payment date: 171 read 2025, 95 read 2024 and 51 read 2026, every one of them paid inside the file’s own window.

The two biggest months are both Marches

Every month in the file. September 2026 stops at the ninth, the latest payment date.
Month	Payments	Amount
January 2025	342	$679,964
February 2025	212	$245,691
March 2025	1,003	$1,314,111
April 2025	126	$84,863
May 2025	265	$668,157
June 2025	294	$842,378
July 2025	179	$187,672
August 2025	320	$852,701
September 2025	101	$99,343
October 2025	225	$607,995
November 2025	202	$336,130
December 2025	89	$68,454
January 2026	181	$244,371
February 2026	308	$308,726
March 2026	518	$1,283,072
April 2026	171	$144,832
May 2026	189	$334,283
June 2026	264	$297,176
July 2026	444	$1,271,743
August 2026	290	$821,133
September 2026	64	$40,895

The money arrives in waves rather than evenly: $1.31 million in March 2025 and $1.28 million in March 2026, with July 2026 close behind at $1.27 million, against $68,454.15 in December 2025, the quietest full month in the file. Complete-year 2025 totals $5.99 million against $4.75 million for 2026 through September 9 — a partial year, and not a comparison the file can settle.

What the file confirms, and what it cannot tell you

Confirmed, as filed: each payment’s amount, date, department and description. What no column read here holds: who was paid — the payee column was never selected — what a batch code covers, what any tuition payment paid for, why a payment is large or small, and whether a reimbursement was owed, approved or repaid under any policy. A rolling window also means the file drops older payments as it advances, so a total read today is not the total another reader will see. One more limit is a matter of plumbing rather than columns: the city reimburses employees two ways, and this is the voucher file. The other, the payroll-system file, turns out to be mileage and nothing else — 95,612 payments worth $23,966,486.16 since July 2005 — and none of it is counted on this page.

Where the record lives

The reimbursements file sits on the city’s data portal and moves with its rolling window. Every figure here was computed from the file as it stood on September 16, 2026; because the window advances and older payments drop out, a later pull will not reproduce these totals. The aggregates behind this page are kept with the desk’s files.

The bottom line

Asked what Chicago pays its employees back for, the file answers tuition first — 48.1 percent of $10.73 million — and a batch code second, 31.1 percent described by code alone, all of it at the Police Department. Police and fire account for 92.0 percent of the dollars, footwear is the most common description by count, and half of all payments are under $745. What any single payment bought is not in the file.

Two more questions the file can answer

What sits at the small end? Mostly descriptions no keyword catches: of the 759 payments under $100, 608 land in our catch-all group and 77 describe boots or shoes — four in five of the file’s smallest payments carry text no keyword of ours recognizes. And how much did travel account for? $848,527.72 across 953 payments, 7.9 percent of the dollars, against 31.1 percent for payments whose only description is a batch code.

Source: the city’s Employee Reimbursements file (g5h3-jkgt): 5,787 payments, dates January 2, 2025 through September 9, 2026, retrieved September 16, 2026 and read whole.
Columns read: amount, payment date, department and description. The payee column was never selected, so no name appears here, and no description text is quoted that could carry one.
Our grouping: each payment goes to the first rule its description matches, case ignored, so a description holding two of these words takes the earlier one. A description that is only a batch code (four digits, BATCH, a number) is filed as batch code only; then, in order, tuition (TUITION); boots or shoes (BOOT, SHOE); uniform or clothing (UNIFORM, CLOTHING, VEST); travel (TRAVEL, CONFERENCE, MILEAGE, LODGING, HOTEL, AIRFARE, PER DIEM); training (TRAINING, COURSE, SCHOOL, CERTIFICAT, SEMINAR, ACADEMY); refund (REFUND); dues, licenses or renewals (MEMBERSHIP, DUES, LICENSE, RENEWAL, SUBSCRIPTION, SOFTWARE); equipment or supplies (EQUIPMENT, SUPPLIES, TOOL, GEAR); anything left is other, and a blank description would be its own group, of which the file has none.
The window: the file is rolling, covering January 1 of the previous calendar year to the present, so 2025 is complete here and 2026 runs through September 9.
Not here: no payee, no judgment of any payment or department, and no reason the file does not give.

Computed by KCM Desk from the city’s employee reimbursements file, retrieved September 16, 2026. Updated the same day to state that this is the voucher file and that a second city file records reimbursements paid through the payroll system. Human-guided and edited — about this desk. If you spot an error, corrections come first.