Rarely does Chicago get cited as an example of best practices. When the chance arises, it’s best not to miss it.
So here goes: The city of Chicago may have the most powerful inspector general of any government in Illinois.
That’s right. The office held by Joe Ferguson operates without interference from the mayor’s office and the City Council. It is robustly funded — to the tune of $11 million this year. Its staff of more than 100 employees can launch investigations, issue subpoenas and publish findings at will.
Ferguson, since his appointment by Mayor Richard M. Daley in 2009, has uncovered corruption involving red-light cameras, exposed the police cover-up of Laquan McDonald’s shooting and detailed the racially biased workings of the Chicago Police Department’s gang database. Ferguson’s investigators also found ineptitude and failed leadership in the city’s response to last summer’s disturbances following the murder of George Floyd.
His office routinely conducts audits that can produce blockbuster findings. A recent one scrutinized the work of ward superintendents, setting off a defensive backlash in the City Council over one of the last vestiges of Chicago’s machine-politics era.
The independent powers of the office encourage Chicago’s inspector general to be creative and unafraid. The office routinely attacks structural failings of government. The IG’s independence from the city’s power structure creates the confidence to just publish findings and let the aftershocks hit where they may.
Then there’s the virtual opposite: the office of the state’s Legislative Inspector General. The current Legislative IG, Carol Pope, resigned last week. She cited the office’s structural weaknesses — and noted that the Illinois legislature’s so-called ethics reform bill made matters worse.
If Chicago’s IG stands as an example of an oversight office in full, the state’s legislative inspector general’s office is the opposite. Pope put it succinctly in her resignation letter: a “paper tiger” she called the LIG.
Ferguson during his 12 years in office — investigating city government under mayors Daley, Rahm Emanuel and Lori Lightfoot — completed dozens of blockbuster investigations.
Compare that with work completed by the state’s legislative inspector general: Publication of just nine documented findings since the office was created in 2003 after Gov. George Ryan’s corruption conviction, according to the General Assembly’s website.
Nearly half the findings prohibited political activity by lone legislative staffers. Three arose from sexual harassment and hostile work environments. And two found “conduct unbecoming” of an elected official.
Wrongdoing? Yes. Relatively small-bore stuff compared to the kind of institutional breakdowns routinely targeted by Ferguson’s office? Yes again. Only the harassment findings against two associates of former House Speaker Mike Madigan are of a consequence to match the Chicago IG’s best work.
Springfield’s LIG is so weak, even when the Chicago IG’s office is so strong, for one chief reason: Lawmakers in Springfield won’t sanction any meaningful independent scrutiny of the way they run state government. They even go so far as to starve it of resources: A paltry budget of just $920,000, compared with Ferguson’s $11 million.
No wonder the office is so inconsequential that the position went unfilled for more than three years, ending in late 2017. And the public barely noticed.
Lightfoot won her job in part due to public revulsion over the criminal corruption charge against Ald. Edward Burke, 14th. One of her first acts in office empowered the city IG to independently investigate City Council committees.
The Springfield legislature has been the focus of a sprawling federal corruption probe that has snared four state lawmakers and also has Madigan in its focus — though he says he did nothing wrong.
And the legislature’s response? A brazen “ethics reform” measure that had the net effect of weakening oversight of the General Assembly.
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The “ethics reform” bill does grant the IG the power to launch investigations on its own, a first. But that’s just window dressing. The rest is loaded with codicils that hobble the IG’s effectiveness.
No investigation can launch without a written complaint from outside the IG’s office. Subpoenas can be issued, but only after approval of the Legislative Ethics Commission, which is made up almost entirely of sitting lawmakers. Findings can’t be published without the commission’s approval, either.
And the scope of investigations is severely constrained. Only activities arising directly from a lawmaker’s official duties can be reviewed. As Pope noted, this leaves matters of sexual harassment, say, or even tax evasion on earnings other than a legislator’s paycheck, outside the scope of IG oversight.
At present, one person in the state has the power to bring much-needed strength to the IG’s office: Gov. J.B. Pritzker. Yet Pritzker apparently will refuse to exercise that power.
The governor has signaled an intention to sign the “reform bill,” even while acknowledging its shortcomings. The most Pritzker could muster when asked about Pope’s resignation was that state officials “always need to work on ethics reform.”
Pritzker lives in Chicago. He knows what a real IG looks like. If Pritzker signs the ethics reform bill without exercising his power to strengthen the office of the legislative inspector general, it will show he believes that, for the people of Illinois, a “paper tiger” IG is just good enough.
David Greising is president and CEO of the Better Government Association.
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