The city of Joliet is prepared to pay $2 million to settle a lawsuit over 5,500 tickets issued for overweight trucks.

The settlement involves a past practice in which Joliet would force truckers to have their cases heard at City Hall hearings before administrative judges paid by the city.

Truckers argued that they should have had the option to take their cases to a circuit court judge at the Will County Courthouse, a position supported by both a state appellate court and the Illinois Supreme Court.

The Joliet City Council on Tuesday agreed to add $2 million to the 2026 budget to pay for the settlement.

Interim City Attorney Todd Lenzie told the council that $2 million is “a ballpark figure for what we’re talking about settling for.”

Lenzie said “the ink’s not dry on the settlement,” and the case is still “pending litigation” so he limited his comments.

But he did say that the class-action lawsuit involved “approximately 5,500 tickets issued at $750 a pop.”

That suggests the Joliet would have collected more than $4 million while processing the cases through an administrative judge working for the city.

Lenzie on Wednesday did not confirm how much the city collected in fines handled through an administrative court.

Lenzie said the lawsuit covers cases handled from November 2018 through 2023. The practice occurred before then, but a five-year statute of limitations applied to the lawsuit, he said.

City officials at that time pointed to trucker fines as an example of ways Joliet was generating new revenue.

Former Mayor Bob O’Dekirk in a presentation to the City Council in 2019 noted increased revenue from truck fines as the city stepped up truck enforcement. O’Dekirk said the city collected nearly $1.5 million in truck fines in 2018 compared to $29,000 in 2014.

Municipalities have a financial stake in imposing their own fines, which then go solely to the city. Court-imposed fines on trucking violations are distributed among various governmental entities.

The lawsuit challenging the city practice was initially filed by Joliet attorney Frank Andreano on behalf of four truckers from Illinois, Missouri, California and Ontario, Canada.

It evolved into a class-action lawsuit that pointed to Joliet’s location at the crossroads of Interstates 80 and 55 as “one of the most heavily-trafficked areas for commercial trucks in all of the U.S.”

The City Council on Tuesday approved an amendment to its 2026 budget to pay for the settlement.

City spokeswoman Sydney Thompson in an email said the $2 million settlement would first come out of any surplus that is available from the 2026 budget.

Whatever is not available from a 2026 surplus would come out of the city reserve funds, Thompson said.

Joliet reserve funds are nearly $100 million, she said.