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player ready...The top human resources official at the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services approved $1.4 million in extra pay for employees that state rules did not allow, including nearly $52,000 for herself, according to a newly released investigation from the state Office of the Executive Inspector General.
The official, Kimberly Bates, resigned after the investigation. In a phone interview Monday, she said she had simply continued a practice that existed at the department before she was hired, and that the payments were not hidden.
Bates, then deputy director of the department’s Office of Employee Services, received some of the extra pay while she was on leave, the report said. Bates said that was a period when she was recovering from “brain surgery.” She has also filed a complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against DCFS, she said.
About 30% of the $1.4 million went to employees in Bates’ own office, according to the report, which reviewed records from fiscal year 2020 through fiscal year 2026.
Under the arrangement, which DCFS called “Extra Duty Pay,” employees received a percentage of their salaries on top of their regular pay, in some cases for working on specific projects. Employees in Bates’ department “were frequently awarded amounts in excess of 5%, and at times up to 25%, of their salary,” the report said.
Some collected extra pay for months or years. But the work was not at a higher level or otherwise outside the scope of the employees’ regular job duties, the report said.
Bates also “routinely approved Extra Duty Pay” for employees who performed tasks belonging to other positions, according to the report. And some employees kept receiving the extra pay past the end date in the original request, with no paperwork documenting an extension.
The state allows pay adjustments up to 5% under limited circumstances, but the “Extra Duty Pay” system was removed from the state’s “Pay Plan” decades ago, according to the inspector general’s report. Special pay typically requires approval from the state Department of Central Management Services, “which Ms. Bates admitted that DCFS did not obtain for any employee receiving Extra Duty Pay,” the report said.
“Not only was this internal extra pay system not permitted, it also left DCFS vulnerable to error, inequity, and abuse,” the report said. It noted that the pay increases weren’t properly recorded.
The report comes as DCFS, the state’s child welfare agency, has been under scrutiny for decades for issues ranging from leadership turnover to placing children in improper settings to falling short of fully implementing changes mandated in response to a neglect-related death.
Bates held “the highest-level HR position at DCFS” at the time, according to the report. She resigned after the inspector general’s office recommended discipline, according to a letter dated in May from DCFS Director Heidi Mueller and attached to the report.
In the letter, Mueller said the department “promptly took corrective action” after learning that some employees had received extra pay “that had not been approved through the appropriate channels.” The department’s chief operating officer must now review all requests for extra duty pay, the letter said.
Neither DCFS nor the inspector general’s office responded to questions about whether anyone was referred for criminal prosecution, which the inspector general’s office is authorized to do.
Bates on Monday said she felt “targeted” for discipline when other people were involved in the pay process. She said the inspector general’s office wasn’t thorough in choosing whom to interview and misrepresented what she said during hours of interviews. She also disputed the department’s letter in response to the report.
“This is devastating for me,” Bates said. “They destroyed my life.”
Bates also said she was led to believe the report would never be made public if she resigned.
“I’m trying not to cry, but that’s what they told me,” she said.
The report also said that Bates’ “lack of oversight” on pay issues allowed another employee to work a schedule in which the employee took nearly every Friday off for months at a time. Investigators concluded that the employee abused state time, citing examples in which it appeared the employee dealt with personal matters while working. The employee was suspended for 15 days.