Chicago's Mid-Year Budget Transfers, As Filed

Chicago adopts a budget once a year; then, all year, it nudges the budget around. The nudges have their own file: the Office of Budget and Management’s transfer report, 125 mid-year moves of appropriation authority totaling $10,872,888 across budget years 2025 and 2026 so far, each row carrying its from-line, its to-line, and a one-line justification, as filed. Read whole, the file splits into two registers: the City Council’s department label sits on 92 of the 125 rows — 74 percent of the count, at a median of $15,000 — while the dollars concentrate elsewhere: the three biggest transfers, all seven figures, carry 38.1 percent of the money by themselves.

Budget Transfer Report Source Data (7x7d-3zgj), 125 rows read whole, retrieved September 12, 2026 · the file’s own framing: “Financial data that details appropriation transfers that occur throughout the year.” It is published “as a companion to the quarterly release of the Quarterly Transfer Report,” extracted from the city’s FMPS financial system as “a point-in-time extract” updated quarterly — so budget year 2026 is partial here by construction · a transfer moves spending authority between lines; nothing on this page says any of it was spent, and no new money appears in any row

The third budget record

This site has read Chicago’s budget from two angles already: the appropriations as adopted, and what moved between proposal and ordinance before adoption. The transfer file is the third record: what moves after adoption, inside the year, line to line. It is small — 125 rows across 38 transfer dates, 15 department labels, $10.9 million total against a budget measured in billions — and that smallness is itself the reading: these are the mid-year moves recorded in this quarterly extract, no more. Budget year 2025 accounts for 101 rows and $10,038,261, with transfer dates running from February 25, 2025 to January 30, 2026 — a budget year’s moves outliving its calendar — and budget year 2026 has filed 24 rows and $834,627 through June 18.

The Council label’s 92 small moves

No label in the file recurs like the City Council’s. The 92 rows that carry it — 74 percent of all rows — sum to $1,712,043, 16 percent of the dollars, running from $438 to $55,000 with that median of $15,000. Seventy of the 92 shuttle between the same two series: “Purposes as Specified” and “Personnel Services.” And the justifications repeat like a litany: “To meet the needs of the wage allowance account” appears 43 times, “To meet the needs of the Aldermanic expense account” 27 times, and a dozen more name Council committees — Health and Human Relations, Police and Fire, Zoning, Education, Finance — each one reading “To meet the needs of” that body. The file does not say what the needs were; the note column is one line, and this page quotes it rather than guessing past it.

Where the dollars actually moved

The three biggest transfers in the file — together $4,141,162, 38.1 percent of all transferred authority — with their justification notes verbatim.
Transfer	Amount	Justification, as filed
2026-01-13 · Finance General	$1,651,410	To support unanticipated contractual obligations
2025-12-24 · Department of Technology and Innovation	$1,489,752	To pay the remainder of telecom invoices
2025-10-31 · Finance General	$1,000,000	To support unanticipated contractual obligations

Finance General’s four moves carry $3,401,410 — the most of any label — two of them the identical seven-figure “unanticipated contractual obligations” pair above, one supporting an EY budget-analysis contract per its note, one for a communications team “within the Mayor’s Office” during “staff turnover,” as filed. The Department of Technology and Innovation’s six moves total $2,493,913 and every one of the six carries the same note: “To pay the remainder of telecom invoices.” And a pattern sits under the whole file: $9,205,845 of the $10,872,888 — 84.7 percent — moves between line items within the same appropriation series, contractual to contractual, commodities to commodities. Most of the money is not changing category; it is being rebalanced inside one.

Thirty-eight justifications, one genre

Across 125 rows the file holds just 38 distinct justification notes. The smallest transfer in the file is $242, under the Commission on Human Relations label, because “Hearing office hours exceeded projections and increased postage expenses.” The longest note runs 67 words on a greenhouse-gas inventory and includes the line “We found a respected local government membership organization, ICLEI, that offers free access to a leading GHG inventory softwared platform” — spelling as filed. Others pay for Adobe licenses, a document folding machine’s “unforseen maintenance” (also as filed), a website, and “artists in residencies to provide free healing for arts programs across CDPH’s mental health centers.” Each is the entire official explanation its transfer carries.

What the file confirms, and what it cannot tell you

Confirmed, row by row: the date, department label, fund, from-line, to-line, amount, and note of every transfer that appears in this quarterly extract — 113 of the 125 on the Corporate Fund, $8,406,796 of the total. What no row holds: whether the moved authority was then spent — spending lives in other records; why, beyond the one-line note; and what does not appear at all — a label absent from the file has no rows in this extract, nothing more, and the file calls itself “a point-in-time extract” that is “subject to updates and modifications due to the course of business.” Nothing here nets to new money: every row moves authority from one line to another, and this page draws no conclusion about any department’s judgment from the moves it filed.

Where the record lives

The transfer file itself is published, per its own description, “on the first business day of every third month” as the source data behind OBM’s Quarterly Transfer Report. Every figure on this page recomputes from the file as retrieved September 12, 2026; a future quarterly release may extend or, per the file’s own disclaimer, revise it.

The bottom line

Chicago’s mid-year budget moves, as this file records them, are two different habits sharing one ledger: a high-frequency, low-dollar rhythm of Council account moves at a median of $15,000 apiece, running both directions between the same two series, and a handful of seven-figure operational moves — facilities to contracts, software to telecom — that carry most of the money. 84.7 percent of the dollars never leave their appropriation series. And every move, from $1,651,410 down to $242 of postage, travels with a one-line explanation — the file’s own words, quoted here as filed.

Two more questions the file can answer

What is the file’s single most common justification wording? “To meet the needs of the wage allowance account,” on 43 of the 125 rows. And the least expensive paper trail? The $242 postage-and-hearings move above — the median Council transfer is 62 times its size, and it was processed, filed, and published all the same.

Source: the city’s Budget Transfer Report Source Data (7x7d-3zgj): 125 rows, the whole file, retrieved September 12, 2026 — a quarterly point-in-time extract from FMPS per its own description, covering budget years 2025 (101 rows) and 2026 to date (24 rows).
Grain: one row per transfer, carrying both its from-line and to-line, an amount (all 125 positive — the sign convention was probed), and a justification note. Department, fund and series figures sum rows as filed; medians and shares are computed from all 125 amounts.
Quotes: every justification quoted verbatim, spelling as filed; the one note that states a membership organization’s fee is quoted only up to the clause before the figure — this site does not publish what named organizations charge.
Not here: no spending claim (transfers move authority; outlays live in other files), no judgment of any move, no person named — committees, offices and departments are bodies, and the file names no individuals.

Computed by KCM Desk from OBM’s quarterly transfer file, retrieved September 12, 2026. If you spot an error, corrections come first.