Mayor Brandon Johnson nominated former high-ranking federal prosecutor David Glockner to be Chicago’s next inspector general Monday, setting up a confirmation vote in the City Council.
Glockner, a longtime Chicago resident, led an array of private and public sector investigative units, a news release announcing the appointment said. If confirmed by aldermen, he will head up the city’s top watchdog agency, following former Inspector General Deborah Witzburg, whose term ended Friday.
“David Glockner is a seasoned public servant with the experience, independence, and integrity needed to serve as the City’s watchdog and strengthen accountability across our operations,” Johnson wrote in a statement.
The office oversees investigations into all city employees, a wide-ranging task that this month led to newly published investigations into O’Hare International Airport employees drinking on the job, several Chicago Police Department officers committing fraud and a former top city bureaucrat steering contracts to try to get their child an internship.
Glockner rose up the ranks of the U.S. attorney’s office in the Northern District of Illinois between 1987 and 2000 before becoming chief of the criminal division, where he remained until 2012.
He prosecuted a range of cases there that intersected with financial crimes, including a former Chicago police officer accused of mail fraud and money laundering
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involving a fictional Caribbean bank and the sprawling case of the Cosmopolitan Bank official who bribed former state Treasurer Jerome Cosentino. Glockner won the conviction of union boss John Serpico on charges that he leveraged his powerful position to secure personal loans from Capital Bank and Trust.As head of the criminal division, Glockner oversaw cases involving financial fraud, public corruption, cybercrime, national security and violent crime, according to a release from his former employer, Exelon. Glockner worked under then-U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald as the office prosecuted two Illinois governors and a host of city officials.
He went on to serve as regional director of the Securities and Exchange Commission from 2013 to 2017, overseeing nine states. That stint included local investigations into the United Neighborhood Organization and its charter school network and a fraudulent hotel deal in the city of Harvey.
He joined Citadel after his time at the SEC as chief compliance officer and joined Exelon in early 2020 to similarly “build a comprehensive, best-in-class compliance program” in the wake of former House Speaker Mike Madigan’s bribery scandal, according to an Exelon release.
Glockner was tasked with a redo of the company’s ethics and investigations program and testifying before the Illinois House’s six-member special investigating committee in September 2020.
He acknowledged that ComEd, an Exelon subsidiary, intended to influence Madigan by paying and giving jobs to his allies. The committee did not charge Madigan with conduct unbecoming a legislator, with the vote failing on party lines. Glockner stayed at Exelon until the end of 2025.
“The Office of the Inspector General plays a vital role in ensuring the integrity and efficiency of City government for the benefit of all Chicago residents,” Glockner said in a statement.
Glockner was first picked by a Johnson-appointed committee before being selected by the mayor. If confirmed, he will serve a four-year term, which could be extended for a second term.
Johnson appeared poised to deny such a second term to Witzburg before the former inspector general announced in July that she would not seek an extension. The mayor recently argued that Witzburg, who published several investigations into his administration, “has politicized the position.”
Asked by the Tribune last week what she thinks the next priorities for the office should be, Witzburg said such decisions should be left to her successor.
“The independence of this office is sort of the hallmark and the lifeblood of the work, and protecting that independence requires constant vigilance,” she said.
Ald. Matt Martin, 47th, chair of the City Council’s Ethics Committee likely to first vet Glockner, gave an early sign last week that Glockner will have to prove to aldermen that he will be independent of Johnson as he shared praised of Witzburg.
“Whoever her successor is, they have incredibly big shoes to fill,” Martin said.