Acting OPSA Executive Director Era Patterson, left, addresses the Committee on Police and Fire on Sept. 5, 2025. [Livestream]

On the second day of mid-year budget hearings at City Hall, alderpeople heard from several of the city’s public safety agencies. The Office of Public Safety Administration (OPSA) was among those that presented, and alderpeople got an update about an audit into the office’s medical leave division.

Acting OPSA Executive Director Era Patterson, whose appointment was approved by the Committee on Police and Fire last week and is still pending full City Council approval, told the budget committee that “since its creation … OPSA has worked to fulfill its mission by delivering measurable efficiencies and cost savings, while helping to bring public safety departments into the 21st Century through modern technology.” 

OPSA is tasked with managing the finances, grants, contracts, personnel, technology, facilities and procurement needs of the city’s public safety agencies, including their medical leave. It’s a relatively new agency, having been first created in 2020 with the intention of saving the city money, although some alderpeople have questioned if that promise has panned out. 

But at its 2025 budget hearing last fall, the office defended itself against accusations that those cost-savings were not fully being realized. 

A 2024 Better Government Association (BGA) analysis showed that after being appropriated about $30.56 million in 2020, the office’s budget grew by an average rate of 11.7 percent between 2021 and 2024, “one of the highest rates of growth for a department not receiving federal pandemic relief funds,” the BGA reported.  

In 2025, OPSA’s budget decreased from $173.4 million to $152.1 million, according to budget documents.  

As of May 31, Patterson said OPSA had spent 36 percent of its corporate fund budget and 54 percent of its overtime budget, which represented a 10 percent drop in overtime spending compared to the same time period last year and a 23 percent drop compared to that period in 2023. As of Sept. 1, the office had 82 vacancies, 22 percent of the 382 budgeted staff positions. 

“The job that you have … is tough because you have a belief out there that we have not maximized the benefit of the department,” Budget Chair Jason Ervin (28) said to Patterson Wednesday. “I think part of it was steeped in internal bureaucracy. Quite frankly, in my opinion, you're probably the last shot that this department will have.”

Patterson said her department is currently exploring cost-savings and efficiencies “that will enable us to continue to meet our mandate.” 

The director said some examples of potential efficiencies include “a thorough review of our medical division” to get firefighters and police officers back to duty more quickly, enhanced technology, examination of potential revenue opportunities and “a thorough analysis of our human resource practices to reduce redundancies and fill gaps in current service delivery.” 

Ervin said he believes the office “does need to exist,” but he hoped “the things that you're speaking of show themselves in tangible ways that we all can see and that our citizens can see.” 

Most notably, there’s an ongoing audit of the OPSA medical division to determine if there are ways to get police and fire department employees on leave back to their responsibilities quicker, even if it involves clearing employees to return to some light duties, in order to reduce burnout and overtime on the staff that have to fill in the gaps. 

“These are costs that we're absorbing at the pension level, costs that are being absorbed at the city level with overtime and inefficiency,” Ervin said. 

Patterson didn’t have a timeline for when the audit would be completed and released but did say she hoped it could begin to tackle the issue. 

“I'm hopeful that the recommendations that come out of that audit will help us figure out the path forward and help us prioritize what we need to do in order to get our medical division to a place where people feel confident that we are returning our first responders back to duty safely, but in the most efficient manner,” Patterson said. 

She did highlight a few things that contribute to delays in clearing employees to return to work, including having just one doctor on staff, not having an electronic medical record system and standards for clearing public safety personnel being often stricter than what might constitute fitness to return to work for an average office worker.