Chicago aldermen to weigh tougher ethics rules without Johnson in lead

In the wake of former Ald. Edward Burke’s blockbuster racketeering conviction, his onetime colleagues on the Chicago City Council are faced with a choice: whether to hold themselves to tougher ethical standards.

They’re largely weighing that decision without input from Mayor Brandon Johnson, who, unlike his predecessor, is taking a hands-off approach to anti-corruption reforms.

The fresh debate is spurred by a slew of new recommendations from the Chicago Board of Ethics tightening rules for city contractors, campaign fundraising and advertising that a key committee chairman pledged to take up in the new year. It could be Johnson’s first significant opportunity to start to establish his “good government” bona fides.

The issue was front and center in the 2019 campaign after a raid on Burke’s office that Lori Lightfoot successfully seized on to help propel her to victory.

But Johnson and many council members aren’t treating it with the same urgency, despite a jury convicting Burke last month of wielding his power as alderman to secure business for his law firm. While the new rules wouldn’t have stopped Burke, they could at least send a signal to Chicagoans fed up with corruption that City Hall takes the situation seriously.

One close observer said Johnson has so far sent out “troubling” signals about his commitment to transparency.

And since the ethics board itself has no actual authority, its recommendations are only as relevant as the political will that exists at City Hall to act upon them.

Reached last week, Johnson’s administration was mum on which ethics board proposals were a priority and whether the mayor thinks they go far enough.

A spokesman said in an email Johnson “supports all efforts to make city government more transparent and responsive to the people that we serve. These proposed ethics reforms are a positive step toward a more accountable city government.”

Some of the most significant changes proposed by the Board of Ethics — which takes a fresh look at the city’s regulations at the start of each new mayoral administration — were spurred by Tribune reporting about the widespread use of aldermanic expense accounts to hire contractors.

Others would limit the contributions aldermen and other candidates for city office could take from leaders of businesses that have city contracts, and mandate that as candidates, they stand by the content of their political ads and mailers.

“I don’t think from my standpoint anything should be off the table,” said Ald. Matt Martin, 47th, the head of City Council’s Committee on Ethics and Government Oversight, who said he wants to be as comprehensive as possible instead of taking “lots of different little nibbles like last term.”

It’s unclear whether Johnson has the appetite to prod aldermen toward more ethics restrictions, however.

Lightfoot made it a 100-day agenda item, quickly passing a package that allowed the city’s inspector general to dig into council committees and prohibiting aldermen and city employees from doing outside work that could conflict with the city’s interests. Lightfoot argued her overwhelming electoral victory gave her a mandate to tighten the rules. It passed unanimously, but she failed to tackle other promised good government reforms — and in some cases, reversed her stance — as relationships with aldermen frayed over the rest of her tenure.

Johnson, meanwhile, focused on using his early political capital to pass pro-worker legislation in his first months in office. He also pledged to heal the fractures between aldermen and the fifth floor, framing himself as a unifier who could rebuild relationships across the city.

That gives the mayor far less incentive to exhaust goodwill to try to get aldermen to vote to be harder on themselves, especially while the migrant crisis has already strained his rapport with council and made it more difficult to pass other pillars of his progressive agenda.

“The administration doesn’t seem to be taking the lead,” said Geoffrey Cubbage, a policy analyst for the Better Government Association and a former aldermanic staffer. That isn’t necessarily bad: the BGA has advocated for aldermen to fulfill their role as legislators, Cubbage said.

“It’s less ethics and more transparency where BGA has trouble with the Johnson administration,” he said. That includes council sessions that were gaveled out without properly being adjourned, important matters being voted on without language being released to the public beforehand, and the short-lived proposal that would have changed the public’s access to the council floor.

“We’re seeing troubling signals,” Cubbage said. “We do honestly see this administration’s really not taking the bold steps on transparency that we’d hoped for” during the campaign.

Ald. Andre Vasquez, 40th, who has pressed for a ban on outside employment for aldermen, agreed ethics have not been a Johnson priority, adding that he expects some council members “will push back on everything.”

“I think he’s comfortable having the council try to figure it out,” Vasquez said of the mayor. But most of his colleagues are not raring to tackle it either, despite the potential boost to their reputations. “Do I think 26 alders are going to be like, ‘Yes, sign us up!’? … I don’t think that’s an easy lift, no.”

Ethics Chair Martin is looking to put the changes on the agenda in the coming months while “also making sure we’re moving at a very deliberate pace given what’s been in the news as well as the fact that it’s been, now, over a year and a half” since the council has taken a thorough review of its ethics ordinance.

He’s also open to a subject matter hearing on Vasquez’s ordinance on outside employment. Vasquez said he’s looking at grandfathering in the current aldermen who have other jobs, or starting the effective date later.

Among the changes proposed by the ethics board, contractors working for aldermen would largely be subject to the same ethics restrictions as city employees. If approved, those contractors:

• Would owe the same “fiduciary duty” to the city — always working in its best interest — as officials and regular city employees when they are working for council.
• Would be barred from getting involved in any city decisions that benefit their own financial interests, or that of other clients or employers. This would apply in “matters in which they stand to receive or have received income or compensation for a full year before and after that matter is pending,” ethics officials wrote in the footnotes of the proposal. They would similarly be subject to the same rules prohibiting city employees from making, participating in making, or using their position to influence “any city governmental decision or action in which he knows or has reason to know that he has any financial interest distinguishable from its effect on the public generally” for that same two-year window.
• Would be required to disclose a financial interest in any matter pending before any city agency to the board of ethics and, if the matter is pending in his own agency, to the head of the agency.
• Would be barred from making money from representing a third party — anyone other than the city — in any formal proceeding with a city agency, or in judicial, quasi-judicial, or other proceeding in court where the city is an adverse party or where it may hurt city finances, health, safety or welfare.

Under the current rules for contractors, the “machinery is still in place” for such workers to “essentially be patronage hires,” said Cubbage. The proposed fixes are a good start to addressing contractors’ roles, he said.

It is also currently difficult to know independent contractors’ potential conflicts: Of the 18 independent contractors aldermen paid between January 2019 and December 2022, a Tribune review in June found only five had statements of economic interest available on the Board of Ethics’ website for each year they were paid. Those statements include questions about other work or income. The remaining 13 were all missing at least one year, and eight of them had no statements filed at all.

The ethics board proposal also tightens up rules around contractor disclosures. The Tribune found some were paid through LLCs, which allowed them to avoid filing annual statements of financial interest at all. One of the proposals clarifies the definition of “City Council contractor” to include “both entities and the individuals who own or are employed by” entities that perform services for members of council, committees, bureaus, or other City Council service agencies, according to the summary.

No changes have been proposed that bar contractors from working at City Council if they are on a sister agency’s do-not-rehire list. That would require a separate fix to city hiring practices, not tweaks to the ethics ordinance. Even so, Martin said he wanted to speak with sister agencies to see what rules could be incorporated across the board “so nothing’s falling in the cracks.”

One such contractor, Alonzo Williams, was put on the Chicago Park District’s do-not-rehire list for his involvement in the district’s sexual abuse lifeguard scandal, but was hired and worked for four aldermen.

City records show payments to Williams’ firm stopped in July 2023. Two of the aldermen that hired Williams said he was not let go, but had taken another job. Williams’ LinkedIn page says he has since joined an IT consulting firm that previously helped launch the council’s e-voting system in the spring of 2022.

The city’s Human Resources Department previously told the Tribune the city conducts background checks for employees, vendors and contractors, but did not identify any office that vets City Council contractors.

Several ethics board proposed revisions deal with campaign snafus that emerged during the most recent municipal elections.

After Lightfoot’s mayoral campaign was embroiled in controversy for sending emails seeking interns to Chicago Public Schools employees, the board is also calling for a rule that would “make clear that no candidate or political fundraising committee may, for example, send emails soliciting political contributions or campaign work to city employees or officials to their official city email addresses.”

The case against Lightfoot was ultimately dismissed because, the board found, Lightfoot herself was not responsible for the emails, the fundraising committee and its leadership were. In its November decision, the board noted it “regrettably” did not have the power to hold the wrongdoers to account.

The change would add “political fundraising committee” to current language that says no official or employee “shall compel, coerce or intimidate any city official or employee to make, refrain from making or solicit any political contribution.”

The BGA’s Cubbage says he expects another proposal to garner significant attention: one that would close a campaign finance loophole involving contribution caps imposed on businesses with city contracts.

As it stands, companies doing business with the city can donate up to $1,500 per candidate, but its officers, directors, partners, or members/owners of LLCs or other business entities can also donate on top of it. They are currently allowed to contribute up to $6,900 each per election cycle in addition to the business’s $1,500. Reforms would consider all donations from the businesses and its officers in aggregate and subject them to the $1,500 cap.

That’s similar to rules in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and in Illinois for state offices, the board says.

The board made a similar proposal to close that loophole in 2019, but it was not heeded.

Separately, after more than a dozen “enforcement actions” were taken during the 2023 election cycle against candidates for city office who used pictures of Chicago police officers or firefighters, their vehicles, or logos or insignia in campaign materials, the board also proposed added language to make it “clear that use of such photographic images in electioneering communications for or against candidates for elected city office is strictly prohibited.”

Several candidates, including U.S. Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia and Ald. Nick Sposato, 38th, were dinged for including such insignia or personnel in campaign ads.

Sposato posted a picture of himself online in a CFD uniform and in front of a fire truck, and Garcia used footage of a conversation with a uniformed police officer in an ad (a violation of Chicago Police Department policy). The board issued warnings, telling candidates not to use city property in campaign ads, but did not issue any fines or fees for violations.

“As long recognized by courts, the government has a significant interest in maintaining control over official symbols of authority like these, as well as manifesting law enforcement and firefighters’ official neutrality as to supporting particular candidates while in uniform or on duty,” ethics officials wrote.

The ban on of use city property for electioneering would include not only use of the city seal and city buildings in ads but also “any intellectual property or personal property, equipment, machinery, or tangible items owned or used by the city for city business purposes, including but not limited to any uniform, badge, or other insignia that identifies or purports to identify an individual as a city employee.”

Also proposed: a “stand by your ad” provision requiring candidates themselves to say in radio or filmed campaign ads “that the candidate personally reviewed and approved the communication,” per the ethics board summary.

Cubbage was encouraged existing laws were enough to snag Burke and said the new proposals make important fixes to hold council members accountable going forward.

By acting to address other potential conflicts, Vasquez hopes to avert future damaging headlines tying aldermen to corruption: “Rather than hoping these are bygone days,” it’s important to make change so history “doesn’t repeat itself.”

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