Comptroller's auditors report 83 hotline complaints in 2025; 14 investigated, 3 substantiated

The Finance and Personnel Committee received a summary from the Office of the Comptroller's Internal Audit team on the city's fraud, waste and abuse hotline for the year ending Dec. 31, 2025.

Internal Audit managers Adriana Molina and auditor Liz Amaehi told the committee the hotline received 83 complaints in 2025 (compared with 79 in 2024). Of those, 14 complaints fell within the hotline's investigative scope; auditors investigated those and substantiated three complaints (two in the Department of Public Works and one in the Milwaukee Health Department). "Abuse remains the common type of actionable complaint," an auditor said, noting that abuse includes improper personal use of city property or employee conduct issues.

The auditors explained what the hotline does and does not handle: it investigates fraud, waste and abuse of city resources; it does not serve as a service-request channel (sanitation, snow removal) or as a substitute for other agencies, and many incoming reports are referred out because they concern non-city entities or contain insufficient contact information to pursue.

Audit staff walked members through multi-year trends and said a spike in 2023 coincided with the hotline link being added to the city's Click for Action page (the link was later removed when many service requests overwhelmed hotline staff). The auditor advised residents how to find hotline contact details (Google "City of Milwaukee fraud hotline," the comptroller's website and the city's website "Find It Fast" page). Committee members asked whether the Inspector General's reporting was integrated into the hotline dataset; Internal Audit said there is conversation but no direct data sharing at this time. The committee voted to receive and place the communication on file.