Workers for the city of Chicago and its sister agencies owe more than $18 million in unpaid parking tickets, utility bills and other fees as Mayor Brandon Johnson has a nearly $1 billion budget gap looming next year.Among the deadbeat city workers: a tree-trimmer with about $13,000 in old parking tickets, a building inspector with more than $20,000 in administrative hearing fees and a police detective with more than $23,000 in outstanding water bills.Most of the scofflaws on public payrolls don’t work directly for City Hall. About $16.5 million of the worker debt is owed by employees of sister agencies like the Chicago Transit Authority, where roughly one in four workers is carrying an outstanding debt — by far the highest rate of any of the agencies.The numbers represent just a small slice of the $6.4 billion in delinquent payments the city has failed to collect over the past three decades.City Comptroller Chasse Rehwinkel has said City Hall is unlikely to ever recover the bulk of that debt — much of it owed by deceased debtors and dissolved companies. But more than 12,000 of those who owe are public employees, a Chicago Sun-Times investigation found.That includes about 1,500 workers on the city's payroll of roughly 32,000 — almost 5% of its workforce. It’s hard to say how that compares to Chicagoans at large because the city Department of Finance generally tracks individual debts and not necessarily the people who owe them.As of mid-July, city workers collectively owed about $1.6 million, mostly in old parking tickets that have piled up, amounting to about $775,000. Chicago Police Department employees had more than $650,000 in unpaid fines and fees owed to the city as of mid-July.Sun-Times file The police department employs the most city workers and has accrued the most city worker debt. Police employees were behind on more than $655,000 in payments, including $328,000 in delinquent water bills and $250,000 in parking tickets. More than 650 officers, detectives and other workers were late to pay — about 6% of the department.An officer making a $110,178 yearly salary was behind on $27,159 in administrative hearing debt. Another, making $106,482, owed more than $7,000 in unpaid parking tickets. There's also a detective with $23,054 in unpaid water bills, $1,210 in parking tickets and $1,746 in administrative hearing costs.Workers for the largest sister agency, the Chicago Board of Education, have about $8.6 million in unpaid fees owed by more than 6,000 employees— almost 8% of the Chicago Public Schools workforce. Among the debtors is a special education classroom assistant from whom the city is seeking nearly $36,000 for unpaid parking tickets.About $6.8 million was owed to the city by about 3,700 CTA workers — meaning almost 25% of the transit agency's staff owes money to City Hall. Related Raise haze — facing a $1 billion budget gap, Mayor Brandon Johnson hasn’t said if he’ll take a pay hike next year One bus driver owed the city nearly $53,000 in administrative hearing debt. Like many of the city government workers who owe a huge amount, he’s had his wages garnished in an effort to recover the money that's owed.Others are on payment plans with the city.One who isn’t: a bus driver who owed more than $29,000 in parking tickets and late fees.Rehwinkel has said the city Law Department’s collections unit informs department heads of delinquent debts owed by city workers, who can face disciplinary action for not paying up.Earlier this summer, two Chicago City Council members paid off delinquent water bills after the Sun-Times asked them about the outstanding debts traced to their homes. Ald. William Hall (6th) paid up on a $1,769.53 backlog. Ald. Ruth Cruz (30th) caught up on $416.85. Both said the delinquencies resulted from oversights on their parts.Earlier this year, the city collected more than $1 million in delinquent payments from concert promoters, large venues and other big companies after the Sun-Times asked why they were behind in paying. Some of the companies complained that the city is often late itself in sending them bills — a problem Rehwinkel acknowledged and says the city is fixing.The city’s longstanding tab of $6.4 billion in uncollected fees includes nearly $2.9 billion in administrative hearing debts, more than $2.3 billion in old parking, speed-camera and red-light-camera tickets and almost $723 million in unpaid water bills.Johnson — who paid off more than $3,000 in his own delinquent water bills late in his winning 2023 mayoral campaign — has instituted a partial hiring freeze as his administration faces a projected $982 million budget gap for 2025. Related Chicago City Hall is owed billions of dollars it hasn’t managed to collect Chicago’s water-bill delinquents include City Council members City Hall got $1M in fees after Sun-Times asked promoters, teams: Why haven’t you paid up? Contributing: Justin Myers