Chicago watchdog says Ald. Jim Gardiner, former Mayor Lori Lightfoot violated city ethics code

Chicago Ald. Jim Gardiner violated the city’s ethics code when he allegedly retaliated against a constituent and vocal critic by directing staffers to issue bogus citations against him, Chicago’s top watchdog found in an investigation that makes the embattled alderman the first to be slapped with a probable cause finding in an ethics violation.

The specific alderman was not named in the Office of the Inspector General’s report released Friday. But multiple sources with knowledge of the investigation confirmed the alderman in question is Gardiner, 45th. The report said a City Council member ordered employees to issues citations for “overgrown weeds and rodents” at a constituent’s home.

The investigation is the latest ethics-related woe for the Far Northwest Side alderman, who is also the subject of an ongoing FBI investigation and in 2021 read an apology on the council floor for leaked misogynistic texts.

Reached for comment, Gardiner did not confirm or deny he was the subject of the investigation.

“I didn’t even know about this,” Gardiner said on the phone. Asked if the OIG’s summary sounded accurate, he cut in, “I’ll have to look into this and get back to you,” before hanging up.

Pete Czosnyka confirmed to the Tribune on Friday that he was the constituent cited for his garden in September 2019 and said he has been interviewed multiple times by the city’s watchdog since. Czosnyka runs the Facebook page “NWS Examiner” that has extensively criticized Gardiner, who assumed office in 2019 and was reelected this year.

“It’s in line with his other narcissistic behaviors that he’s employed with people,” Czosnyka said. “And Gardiner is of the sort who is just going to plow on by ignoring all of the bad stories that have come out about him. … My hope is that more people in the 45th Ward and citywide would speak out against corruption in an aldermanic chair.”

Czosnyka received $675 in ticketing over his garden following a June 2019 inspection that found excessive weeds over 10 inches leading to a rodent infestation, but the case was dropped that December after an extensive battle in municipal court, records show.

The OIG report says investigators “gathered evidence” that the alderman “conceived the idea” of the citations with two office employees who later transferred to the Department of Streets and Sanitation. They were informed that the plants at the constituent’s home were legal, but nonetheless proceeded with the plan, the OIG report says.

The investigation alleges Gardiner violated these sections of the ethics ordinance by using city employees and resources to punish a political critic: fiduciary duty and unauthorized use of city property. The Board of Ethics issued a finding of probable cause that he violated the ethics code in a June vote. Gardiner is entitled to respond to the city ethics board, which could decide to clear or fine him.

The same garden in question was destroyed in 2021 when a woman who Czosnyka believes is a Gardiner supporter drove over it in a fit of rage during the middle of the night. But a judge did not find that video of the incident conclusively proved the driver’s identity, Block Club Chicago reported.

Czosnyka and five other 45th Ward residents are also embroiled in a lawsuit alleging that Gardiner violated their First Amendment rights by blocking them on his official government social media accounts. That case is pending in federal court.

Friday’s update was a remarkable finding in the city’s history of issuing such watchdog investigations. In the past decade, the OIG has successfully pursued a probable cause finding in just 13 ethics investigations, and Gardiner was the only subject who is a current City Council member.

Inspector General Deborah Witzburg noted in her cover letter to Friday’s report that “In this quarter, we report the first-ever finding of probable cause in an OIG Ethics investigation of a sitting member of City Council.”

Earlier this year, the Tribune reported that federal investigators searched Gardiner’s text messages a little over a year after he assumed office as part of an investigation into whether he accepted a $5,000 payment from a developer in exchange for stalling a housing development in the 45th Ward. The ongoing FBI probe into allegations that Gardiner retaliated against political opponents and engaged in political corruption was first publicly revealed in a 2021 Tribune story.

Gardiner, who has not been charged with a crime, has courted an exceptional amount of controversy for an alderman just starting his second term.

In 2021, he took the highly unusual step of apologizing on the council floor after leaked texts showed him using profane and offensive language to describe a gay colleague, a female city staffer and a female political consultant.

And this January, a sworn deposition was made public in a federal lawsuit against Gardiner that detailed how a former aide last autumn said the alderman obsessed over Facebook criticism and pledged to rid the ward of his detractors, who he referred to as “rats.”

The city’s watchdog also found probable cause that former Mayor Lori Lightfoot solicited campaign contributions from city workers in this year’s mayoral race.

“OIG obtained political campaign emails sent by the official’s political campaign which demonstrated that the official misused their City title in pursuit of a political purpose, as well as misused the authority of their office and City email addresses for a political purpose,” Witzburg wrote, without naming Lightfoot. “The political campaign emails also demonstrated that the official improperly solicited political donations from City employees, over whom the official had supervisory authority.”

The finding of probable cause against Lightfoot follows extensive coverage of her campaign email practices from local media. Lightfoot’s team solicited teachers to give students extra credit for political work on her campaign, a scandal first reported by WTTW. WBEZ and the Sun-Times later reported that her campaign sent thousands of campaign solicitations to public employees’ emails, while the Tribune reported Lightfoot was told to stop electioneering to city employees nearly a year before her staff tried to recruit CPS students to do political work for extra credit.

When the campaign-related emails to teachers came to light in January, Lightfoot’s camp first defended but then quickly denounced the practice of sending emails to public workers soliciting campaign help. But an email direct to Lightfoot from Witzburg in March 2022 warned her to cease sending political communications to public employee emails.

“On March 15, 2022, BOE sent a letter via certified mail to Lightfoot for Chicago’s Chair, Treasurer, and Custodian, with a copy hand-delivered to your City Hall office,” Witzburg wrote in the email, released by the mayor’s office in response to a broader request seeking Lightfoot’s January emails. “In that letter, BOE advised that your campaign immediately cease sending electioneering communications to city of Chicago employees at their city email addresses and purge such email addresses from campaign email lists.”

Despite the warning, Witzburg wrote, the inspector general had accumulated evidence “that this practice has continued at a significant scale for months after BOE’s March 2022 letter, with your campaign continuing to send electioneering emails to city employees at their city email addresses, as well as to sister agencies’ employees.”

Lightfoot, too, is entitled to rebut the findings with the city’s ethics board.

A spokesperson for the former mayor released this statement Friday: “The Inspector General’s conclusion that Mayor Lightfoot breached any fiduciary duty with respect to digital campaign fundraising solicitations is demonstrably false. We worked diligently to ensure that those who subscribed to our fundraising solicitations did not use any government email addresses. At no point did our campaign intentionally take action to add government email addresses to this list, or to otherwise influence government employees to take political action. Furthermore, the Mayor herself, of course, was never involved in personally monitoring email list subscribers. Every fundraising email gives the recipient the option to unsubscribe in each email.”

The statement continued: “We look forward to providing the Board of Ethics with a complete accounting of the facts and we are confident that the only fair and unbiased conclusion based on those facts and relevant law is that Mayor Lightfoot did not breach any fiduciary duty or otherwise commit any wrongdoing with respect to this matter.”