The newly appointed chief of Chicago’s $166.8 million-a-year Office of Public Safety Administration tried Wednesday to seize what a powerful mayoral ally called her “last chance” to justify the existence of a department that has not lived up to its cost-cutting promise.

Era Patterson did her best, but the news she delivered to the City Council during mid-year budget hearings was not what skeptical alderpersons wanted to hear.

The Office of Public Safety Administration is still struggling to reduce the medical rolls needed to reduce soaring police and fire overtime, in part because there is only one city doctor assigned to decide who is and isn’t qualified to return to work.

EY Consulting, formerly known as the accounting firm of Ernst & Young, is now finalizing an audit of the medical d

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