Three years after blocking ethics reform, Mayor Lori Lightfoot has finally decided to tackle one of the issues she ran on as a candidate. Don’t be fooled. The revelations suddenly prompting this move are not only years old but certainly not the first troubling instance of abuse of power in the city’s history.
The mayor’s reform measures put forward by the few City Council allies she has left are pretty standard provisions for many cities, yet it took her until the final year of her four-year term — coincidentally an election year — to begin the effort.
As Lightfoot amps up her reelection campaign and attempts to reintroduce herself to voters as a born-again reformer, it’s important to take a stroll down memory lane — one littered with examples of the mayor’s unethical behavior and persistent lack of transparency.
Two months into her tenure, the mayor trumpeted “transparency” legislation that permitted the release of inspector general (IG) reports of major investigations of public interest. At that time she claimed that she was “committed to holding (her) administration to the highest levels of transparency” and her intention was to empower the inspector general’s office and the IG reports to provide the public with an opportunity to fully examine high profile, consequential investigations in our city. She has done just the opposite. Consider the following:
* Lightfoot ran as a corruption fighter who was going to consolidate the inspector general offices of the sister agencies into the city IG yet failed to follow through on that campaign promise.
* Lightfoot pushed the City Council to pass an ordinance that effectively muzzles the IG by enabling the mayor’s corporation counsel to block the release of IG reports unless they involve sustained findings associated with a death or is a felony of a compelling public interest.
* Lightfoot supported and gave cover to the Park District IG who resigned in disgrace after being part of a slow-roll cover-up of the horrific lifeguard sexual abuse scandal.
* Lightfoot promised full transparency with major IG investigations yet buried then-IG Joe Ferguson’s reports on Anjanette Young and the HILCO-Little Village smokestack demolition, among others.
* After Lightfoot signaled she would not reappoint Ferguson, she left the IG’s office without leadership for six months even though Ferguson provided notice months in advance of his departure. She did this in spite of the IG selection committee recommending Ferguson’s deputy, Deborah Witzburg, weeks after the end of Ferguson’s term.
Witzburg is universally respected by city and community leaders and was ultimately tapped by the mayor. What exactly took her so long to get around to filling this critical vacancy? One would think a mayor who touts transparency and ethical conduct wouldn’t leave the city without its top watchdog for months on end.
While the mayor’s proposal will surely include some form of improvement, the true measure is not relative to the city’s badly lagging standards of a still echoing past, but rather how the legislation measures up to national best practices.
At a minimum, real ethics reform requires the consolidation of the IG offices and their unshackling by providing the IG unlimited access to city information and data. There should be no restrictions on members of the City Council or the public in being able to access IG reports and investigations.
This should extend to releasing past IG reports that the mayor’s office has kept sealed. There should be full transparency not only in the reaching of all settlements but also in the process of awarding contracts — this requires ending the practice of negotiating public sector contracts in secret.
Finally, the mayor must provide City Council with full access to the city’s financial information so they are able to analyze and assess the data. Any ethics “reform” package that falls short of enacting these basic changes is wholly insufficient.
Paul Vallas was budget director for the city of Chicago and CEO of Chicago Public Schools.
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