Will Brandon Johnson bring back the light that flickered and died under his predecessor? On Monday, Johnson will replace the first Chicago mayor in modern times to make corruption fighting and good government a top priority.
Lori Lightfoot won City Hall on the steam of her campaign motto, “Bring in the Light,” by uplifting transparency and ethics in government. It’s still pretty dark out there.
In 2020, for the third year in a row, Chicago was America’s most corrupt city, and Illinois among the most corrupt states, an annual study by the University of Illinois at Chicago showed. The report, issued last May and co-written by Dick Simpson, a now-retired University of Illinois professor and a former 44th Ward alderman, is based on an analysis of public corruption statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice.
“The sheer number and political stature of the Illinois elected officials and business leaders who were implicated, indicted or convicted in 2020 is staggering,” said Simpson, the report’s lead researcher.
The Northern District of Illinois, the federal court region that includes Chicago and its suburbs, was the most corrupt metropolitan area in the country in 2020, the study found. Illinois, on a per capita basis, was pegged as the third most corrupt state in the nation.
Our government remains stubbornly crooked. Earlier this month, a federal jury convicted the “ComEd Four” defendants on all charges connected to a conspiracy to bribe former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan to win his backing for the utility’s legislative wish list.
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Madigan, perhaps the state’s most powerful politician ever, was not indicted in that sprawling case but has been charged in a separate but related racketeering case that is scheduled to go to trial next April. He has pleaded not guilty.
One of the jurors in the ComEd Four case, Amanda Schnitker Sayers, is a veterinarian who lives in Chicago. She weighed in after the verdict to say she was disappointed with government and the corruption that often infects it.
“I would say I would speak for the jury when I would say we want politics to run in a correct manner,” the Tribune quoted her as saying. “And we would really like the government to know that we as citizens all want to see that done in a correct manner, without any shady business behind the scenes that either skirts the rules or blatantly disregards them.”
So would I, but I am not optimistic. As Johnson takes his seat on the fifth floor of City Hall, three former aldermen await trial on corruption charges — Danny Solis, Carrie Austin and Ed Burke, the once all-powerful chair of the City Council Finance Committee.
Last year, former 11th Ward Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson was found guilty of two counts of lying to regulators and five counts of filing false income tax returns. He served four months in a federal prison.
In her May 2019 inauguration address, Lightfoot issued a clarion call against corruption and urged the incoming City Council to join her crusade.
“She had a good first month, and after that, it became more difficult,” David Greising, president and CEO of the Better Government Association, said last week in an interview.
Within hours of taking office, Lightfoot issued an executive order instructing city officials to end the practice of aldermanic prerogative. Aldermanic prerogative is the special privilege that gifts City Council members with near-total authority over zoning, planning and everything else that goes on in their wards. Experts say it can lead to corruption.
Lightfoot “did go after aldermanic privilege without completely stomping it out,” Greising noted. “She, I think, was serious about being committed to transparency, but that became more complicated than she expected. And by the end, (she) was, I think, not viewed as somebody who really was in favor of open records, open government.”
In the 2023 mayoral campaign, the fight for good government barely came up. In January, the BGA asked the Johnson campaign about a range of issues related to transparency and ethics.
Johnson said then that he would support a series of policies, including “the timely release of all inspector general reports”; implement the recommendations of the city’s oversight agencies; require the heads of the city’s sister agencies — the CTA, Chicago Public Schools, Chicago Park District and others — to appear before City Council committees when requested; and make “all direct introductions of legislation publicly available at least 48 hours in advance of” City Council meetings.
That “gives us reason to be encouraged,” Greising said.
Johnson was noncommittal on the question of aldermanic privilege, telling the BGA, “Lightfoot’s fixes by executive order early in the term have had beneficial effect. And since then, we’ve also seen alderpeople using their approval powers in positive ways — pushing developers for more affordable housing units, for example. This is a main reason we have not come out against privilege altogether.”
It’s one thing to fill out a questionnaire and quite another for our new mayor to stand as a public and staunch corruption fighter.
I asked a Johnson spokesperson: Has Johnson committed to taking any specific steps to address government corruption and strengthen ethics once he takes office? I received no reply.
“Unfortunately, the array of ethical issues that confront the city were not completely aired out (during the campaign),” Greising said. “And so, we won’t really know until he develops his record.”
So, we won’t know — until we know.
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Laura Washington is a political commentator and longtime Chicago journalist. Her columns appear in the Tribune each Monday. Write to her at [email protected].
Editor’s note: For this week only, Laura Washington’s weekly column is being published Sunday instead of Monday.
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