Throughout last year, Mayor Brandon Johnson vowed to protect Chicago’s public health dollars from President Donald Trump.
But behind the scenes, his health commissioner voluntarily returned tens of millions of dollars in COVID-19 grants to the federal government months before expiration — funds that could have gone to disease surveillance to help prepare for an outbreak or racial equity programming to improve health outcomes across the city.
Commissioner Dr. Olusimbo Ige also terminated over two dozen Chicago Department of Public Health employees last fall despite Johnson emphatically drawing a line against layoffs and his Law Department successfully fending off threats from the White House to slash Chicago’s federal funding thus far. Her actions unfolded alongside investigations of a hostile work environment and significant turnover among her employees.
The outcome was self-inflicted, said a former CDPH epidemiologist who was let go in December and has filed pending retaliation and disability discrimination complaints against Ige.
“Sometimes I’ve lost belief in the system,” Hannah Matzke told the Tribune. “I’m so disheartened because these are people who should know better, and do know better. … I don’t know how long Dr. Ige will be the commissioner, but I am afraid that she’s making decisions that impact (CDPH) long term.”
In a statement on Friday, Ige defended her handling of the personnel cuts by saying she wanted to “coordinate” the department’s transition off multiple COVID grants, some of which did expire last year, with one restructuring that “prioritized core functions.”
“I managed a department during period of steep funding decline,” she wrote. “People were hurting and I did my best to provide information on the coming changes, but I could not save jobs.”
Asked whether the mayor’s office approved of Ige’s decisions, Johnson spokesperson Allison Novelo said the health department’s handling of the situation was responsible budgeting.
“Our administration remains committed to protecting and expanding critical public health and violence prevention services while continuing to advocate for long-term progressive revenue solutions at the local, state, and federal levels,” Novelo wrote in a Friday statement.
Last summer, Ige informed the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention the city would be sunsetting a host of COVID-19 grants early, according to a letter obtained by the Tribune via a public records request. That effectively sends the remaining money back to the Trump administration.
“CDPH has achieved the goals and objectives associated with the awards listed above. There are limited opportunities for public engagement activities, staff attrition, and an inability to initiate new partnerships,” Ige wrote on Aug. 27. “Any remaining funds will be reconciled and returned.”
Her letter requested the city’s end date for the CDC’s Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity program move up from July 31, 2026, to Dec. 31, 2025.
But two of CDPH’s biggest ELC grants still had a combined $94 million left at the time, according to an internal August spending report released in a public records request. The federal government’s grant tracker says about $81.4 million in ELC funds for the city remains unspent as of this month.
Among the uses for ELC money were supporting the city’s wastewater surveillance program via a contract with Rush University Medical Center, which runs a genomic sequencing lab known as Regional Innovative Public Health Laboratory. Wastewater surveillance is a key way to track the prevalence of disease in the city.
Research assistant III Marisol Dominguez works with positive COVID samples at the Regional Innovative Public Health Laboratory at the Rush University’s Medical Center campus in Chicago on March 3, 2025. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)
The grants also funded the city’s Healthy Chicago Equity Zones, a program that began under then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot to address racial disparities by mobilizing public health ambassadors tailored to each community’s specific needs.
Healthy Southwest Director Jessica Biggs, one of the regional leads for the program, said CDPH informed her organization last fall that the initiative was ending in December due to lack of funding.
“It just abruptly ended without any plan for anything,” Biggs, also an elected Chicago school board member, said. “Lots of folks in the funding community, mostly in philanthropy, are baffled that we would just let this go away. … It feels like a pretty big unfortunate miss.”
In response to questions about specific programs, Ige’s team on Friday provided the Tribune a copy of an October “Resilience Strategy” briefing they said they presented to department employees. The slide deck listed Healthy Chicago Zones among the initiatives that ended in December due to “grant expiration” but did not acknowledge that the ELC funds could have lasted until July of this year.
Another CDC funding source known as the Public Health Infrastructure Grant, which doesn’t conclude until next year, has $36.8 million of $42 million remaining in unspent funds, according to the federal tracker. Ige responded to questions about that remainder with, “We are working on spending down fund balances, but we are not hiring additional staff on short-term grants that will need to be laid off when grants expire.”
During the coronavirus pandemic, local governments including Chicago received federal stimulus packages to tide over them over amid the health emergency. City officials knew the $1.9 billion under the American Rescue Plan Act would sunset around this time, presenting a thorny challenge for a department like CDPH that leans mostly on outside funding.
First Deputy Mayor for Community Safety Garien Gatewood, Mayor Brandon Johnson and Commissioner of Chicago Department of Public Health Dr. Olusimbo Ige at a City Hall media availability, Aug. 12, 2025. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)
And although Johnson campaigned on a platform of restoring public health services, the city’s steep budget deficits meant agencies like CDPH were expected to eventually face reductions. City data show the department currently employs 595 people, about the same as the number of positions originally allocated in 2019.
One former employee who was terminated in the last year said Ige’s decisions further destabilized the health department.
“Chicago is less safe with this health commissioner,” the ex-staffer, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid retribution, said in a phone interview. “She has created a culture of fear among staff, has harmed partners and community members through these cuts — nonsensical cuts — and we are all suffering for it.”
About 200 CDPH employees have either been fired or quit since Ige began her tenure, while department leadership ranks have thinned. CDPH currently lacks a general counsel and has seen four deputy commissioners and seven assistant commissioners depart since 2024, employee records show.
Former or current employees who spoke with the Tribune expressed similar alarm over the direction of the department since Johnson fired Dr. Allison Arwady, Lightfoot’s health commissioner, and appointed Ige in 2023. They said that while local health agencies across the U.S. are buckling under the second Trump presidency, CDPH leadership has unnecessarily accelerated the gutting and harmed morale.
“Unfortunately, the timeline above is just a sample of the culture of intimidation and bigotry that Commissioner lge has cultivated,” wrote an anonymous staffer who filed a Department of Human Resources complaint in October. “(She) has exposed Chicago government to significant and avoidable legal, financial, and reputational liability during what is already a challenging time for the city.”
Tensions within CDPH reached a boiling point last fall when Ige forged ahead with a controversial reorganization that included at least 20 employees losing their jobs amid her early sunsetting of federal grants.
Another five high-ranking staffers whose jobs were funded by the city’s corporate fund were terminated amid a “restructuring” — a move at odds with the pro-labor mayor’s directives during the recent budget cycle. Johnson’s budget director, Annette Guzman, had briefed reporters in October that his 2026 proposal had no structural layoffs, notwithstanding jobs funded by expiring federal grants.
“Many staff were blindsided to receive (reduction in force) notices later that same day despite being corporate-funded and/or holding positions that appear in CDPH’s 2026 budget proposal,” read one complaint in November. “Other impacted staff are supported by grants that do not expire until mid-2026, which Commissioner Ige chose not to spend despite a budget deficit facing the city.”
Ige disputed that the job cuts were a surprise to her staff, given that employees knew for years that these COVID grants were only temporary, and said all employees were given a “notice of grant expiration” at least a year earlier.
The mayor’s spokesperson did not say whether Johnson’s team was aware of or supported her personnel cuts at the time beyond noting individual “departments were given the responsibility and flexibility to manage their budgets.”
“CDPH navigated the expiration of temporary federal pandemic-era funding as anticipated,” Novelo wrote. “As federal funding priorities continue to shift, CDPH took steps to provide advance notice and support to impacted employees throughout this process.”
Even those whose jobs and teams were spared expressed frustration at what they described as a chaotic reassignment, records of internal emails show. A CDPH director wrote in a January email thread that included Ige: “I am going to pay the price for all of this … A lot of damage has been done to my team as it pertains to trust.”
“In my twenty-four years of service, I have never seen the lay off process unfold as this one has,” another staffer wrote in email correspondence with Ige.
The disruption that ensued at one point included posters anonymously taped up to the walls in the office that read, per a photo obtained by the Tribune and verified by staffers, “You have rights!”
“If Simbo Ige or her staff have made bigoted comments about you or people like you, and you are experiencing: discipline, interference with your funding, negative changes to your work assignment, threats & intimidation,” read the flyer that went up in December. “It could be illegal retaliation — report it!”
Records from Ige’s personnel file also show that earlier last year her staff was repeatedly scrubbing graffiti phrases from the women’s bathroom such as “NO Ige!!”
“I am beginning to get my own hate mail,” Ige wrote to her close aides in an Aug. 6 email, ending with a smiley face emoji. “This is familiar territory once staff changes start.”
The kerfuffle over who was scribbling those messages resulted in another HR complaint filed against Ige. The unnamed employee noted that Ige approached them that month to ask about the bathroom scribblings, repeating that she could “fix” it, while touching their shoulder.
“I felt extremely uncomfortable being questioned in front of my colleagues and touched by someone who has insulted and threatened me repeatedly in the past,” the complainant wrote.
The staffer then alleged that since 2024, Ige has “singled out staff with disabilities” and stalled approval of their reasonable accommodation requests. Ige said, “This is where unions cannot protect you,” during a 2024 all-hands meeting in which she insinuated her staffers were abusing telework, according to records.
These accommodations are adjustments to working conditions that are required by law, but Matzke alleges Ige delayed approval of her renewal request for about half a year. She said she since filed complaints with the Illinois Department of Human Rights.
In the November complaint, the employee reported Ige for saying, “How is someone disabled only on a Wednesday?”
“Commissioner Ige has repeatedly insulted, threatened, and attempted to access and share the private medical information of disabled staff, both individually and as a group,” the staffer wrote. “Commissioner Ige’s conduct towards people with disabilities violates standards of both competence and ethics in public health.”
Asked whether she made those comments on unions and disabilities, Ige said she could “only recollect conversations about missing time,” pointing to attendance reports she said showed employees absent for at least 35 hours.
Then she blamed another department for any concerns over disability accommodations. “DHR handles all requests, including approval and denial, of reasonable accommodations,” Ige wrote.