Mayor Lori Lightfoot ally says she will tackle ethics reform in new City Council package
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A City Council ally of Mayor Lori Lightfoot promised Friday to introduce a series of ethics reforms that would have a broad impact across city government in the wake of multiple criminal investigations at City Hall and spats over conflicts of interest among Chicago elected officials.
The ethics package being proposed by Ald. Michele Smith, 43rd, follows the introduction just one month ago of a similar but smaller series of ethics proposals from a key aldermanic critic of Lightfoot that so far has found little support among council members.
Smith, one of Lightfoot’s hand-picked committee chairs, said she will debut the legislation at Wednesday’s City Council meeting in the hopes it will “significantly strengthen Chicago’s ethics laws.” The provisions Smith highlighted include upping the maximum fine for ethics violations from $5,000 to $20,000 as well as banning former council members from lobbying the City Council.
The proposal also calls for broadening what is deemed a “conflict of interest” for city officials or employees, Smith said. Under her proposal it would be a conflict if any “administrative, legislative action or decision” could benefit relatives or partners of city officials or employees. The current conflict-of-interest provisions only apply when it comes to contracted firms of city employees or relatives.
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Smith’s proposal comes as the City Council is once again being hit by federal criminal convictions and indictments tied to allegations of corruption.
Just in February, then-11th Ward Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson was convicted of felony tax fraud and ordered to vacate his seat, while current 34th Ward Ald. Carrie Austin was indicted on bribery charges last year and Ald. Edward Burke, 14th, the longest-serving alderman in city history, was charged with racketeering and other counts in 2019. The latter two have pleaded not guilty.
“Our city is grappling with its historic legacy of corruption as various high-profile criminal cases work their way through the judicial system,” Smith said in a statement, adding that she hopes her package helps end the “‘I got a guy at City Hall’ mentality and move to fair representation of all in our city business.”
In March, Southwest Side Ald. Silvana Tabares, 23rd, introduced a smaller ethics package aimed at prohibiting spouses, partners or immediate family members who live with city elected officials from lobbying aldermen, the mayor or other city officials or employees.
Tabares said her proposal was a response to reports that City Clerk Anna Valencia, who’s running for Illinois secretary of state, had failed to report her husband’s lobbying work at City Hall as required under ethics rules. Tabares has endorsed Valencia’s top opponent in the secretary of state’s race, former Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, though Tabares said she would have introduced the ordinance whether Valencia was running for the statewide office or not.
Unlike Smith, Tabares is not a Lightfoot ally on the council.
After Tabares introduced her ordinance in March, Valencia stood with Lightfoot at a news conference and called the proposal an attempted distraction by Giannoulias. The problems with her ethics forms related to her husband’s lobbying were “a human error,” Valencia said, that she corrected when she found out there had been a mistake. Lightfoot has not made any endorsements in the secretary of state’s race.
“My husband and I have very different careers,” she said. “He has his own thing. I have my own. We support each other in different ways, so we’re already following the Board of Ethics rules and will continue to do that.”
Tabares’ legislation was later sent to the City Council’s Rules Committee, where ordinances the mayor opposes sometimes die from inactivity. Smith, who chairs the council Ethics Committee, may have a better shot at passing her package, which also has the backing of the Chicago Board of Ethics and the nonprofit Better Government Association.
Lightfoot has made ethics reform a cornerstone of her political campaigns but so far hasn’t seen passage of major reforms, such as eliminating aldermanic prerogative.
In 2019, she tried to deliver on one campaign promise focused on the City Council when her own ethics reform package sailed through the body with no debate. It gave the city inspector general more powers and tightened rules on outside jobs and City Hall lobbying.
But the Chicago ethics board had proposed a much heftier maximum fine for ethics code violations — the $20,000 in Smith’s ordinance — that Lightfoot declined to include that year. Instead, she increased the ceiling for fines from $2,000 to $5,000.
