Chicago’s chief procurement officer is out after the City Council approved a package facilitating her departure, but Mayor Brandon Johnson won’t say how much in taxpayer money the city is paying her to leave.
Johnson said the department run by Lightfoot appointee Aileen Velazquez has long been a “sore spot” for the city after all 50 aldermen backed the resignation deal Wednesday. But when pressed by reporters, Johnson declined to give the amount of her severance.
“The settlement is consistent with how all public employees are paid,” he said. “Everyone is in agreement that we have to do development better, faster and more equitable.”
The city’s legal department and a Johnson spokesperson did not immediately respond when asked Thursday how large the package was and why details had not yet been publicly shared.
Several aldermen said they did not know how much the deal they approved would cost taxpayers, but understood it was less than Velazquez would have been paid during the 14 months remaining in her four-year contract.
Velazquez has already stopped working in the role, according to a city website that listed Tiheta Hinton as acting chief procurement officer. As chief procurement officer, she oversaw the city’s purchases and reached contracts for goods and services.
Velazquez’s salary was $200,520 in 2024, making her one of the city’s highest paid employees, according to city records. She worked as a procurement director at CNA Insurance before former Mayor Lori Lightfoot appointed her to the city role in September 2021.
The legislation aldermen passed Wednesday also ended Velazquez’s four-year term, a rarity among top City Hall jobs.
Aldermen enthusiastically backed the deal before it passed, knocking Velazquez’s department for being too slow and failing to give enough city business to minorities.
Ald. Emma Mitts, 37th, chair of the council’s Contracting Oversight and Equity Committee, said the city’s contracting work has sharply stalled throughout the months-long effort to replace Velazquez. Still, she praised the mayor’s bid to replace the procurement chief.
“This should have been done,” Mitts said.
Ald. Matt O’Shea, 19th, called the procurement department’s struggles “pathetic” and added that the issues affect all of the city’s work.
“For the last year and a half, the Department of Procurement Services has failed the taxpayers of this city,” O’Shea said. “There’s a topic we like to talk about in here: equity. Underserving Black and brown communities. That’s who has lost under this leadership.”
The city’s employee database did not list Velazquez as an employee Thursday. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
jsheridan@chicagotribune.com
