City employee reimbursement data now online

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Updated: February 11, 2012 1:30PM

City employee reimbursements can now be found online, a step the Mayor Rahm Emanuel says is aimed at increasing “transparency” and “accountability.”

More than 3,000 individual reimbursements to the city made to employees in the last 13 months can be found online at data.cityofchicago.org, the mayor’s office said Saturday.

The reimbursement policy came about after Emanuel called on City Comptroller Amer Ahmad to conduct a thorough review of past reimbursement and travel practices to increase accountability and efficiency and to protect taxpayer money.

In his report to the mayor, Ahmad found several problems including limited support for reimbursements, unclear monitoring and audit controls, as well as questionable or inconsistent usage of other local transportation modes, the mayor’s office said.

That review led to the city cutting the number of city credit cards from 500 to about eight, and the elimination of petty cash.

Along with the reimbursement information, the city website also provides all city employee salaries, “unfiltered” crime statistics and more than 90,000 contracts dating back to 1993.