Chicago set to make ‘chilling’ change to city ethics rules

The proposed change in city code would further tilt the scales in favor of the politically powerful, as they could be granted full knowledge regarding the investigation on their wrongdoing, including information on who brought the case to light.

Dimming the light of government transparency while raising taxes is an ugly combination.

America’s corruption capital is doing it anyway.

On July 27, Chicago’s Committee on Rules and Ethics approved a troubling change to the city’s municipal code that would require the Office of the Legislative Inspector General to submit all evidence gathered during an ethics investigation to the Board of Ethics, which could then provide that information to the subject of the investigation.

For obvious reasons, such a change would deal a massive blow to those trying to expose government corruption.

File a complaint against an alderman? Be prepared for him or her to know your name, address and exactly what you said. Confidential testimony could end up in the hands of the accused.

“This amendment will destroy the ability for citizens to make complaints without fear of retaliation and will have a chilling effect on potential witnesses … This is flat out wrong and dangerous,” said Legislative Inspector General Faisal Khan in a July 28 press release.

Given the amendment was sponsored by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the odds it goes unchallenged in City Council are high.

Passing the amendment will effectively loosen oversight on the most corrupt city government in the country.

The Chicago-based Federal Judicial District for Northern Illinois consistently reports more public corruption convictions than any of the nation’s 92 other judicial districts, according to tireless research from the Department of Political Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The district, which includes Chicago, Cook County and 17 other counties across northern Illinois, has been home to more than 1,600 public corruption convictions since 1976.

More than 30 Chicago aldermen have been convicted of federal crimes over the past 40 years, according to work from political researchers Thomas Gradel and Dick Simpson. These crimes include bribery, extortion, embezzlement, conspiracy, mail fraud and income-tax evasion. Aldermen are granted immense power in Chicago relative to other U.S. cities.

Attempts at reform have often been farcical, as seen in recent interactions between the Chicago Board of Ethics and Kahn, the City Council watchdog who sued the city last year for underfunding his office.

In an ideal system, the legislative inspector general would function as the “police,” charged with gathering evidence, and the ethics board as “prosecutor,” evaluating the charges brought against an accused official. But that’s not how it works in Chicago.

Seven of the nine cases brought before the ethics board by the legislative inspector general in the last two years have been dismissed. Why? Nobody knows but the board and the city officials accused of wrongdoing.

That’s because since 2013, subjects of investigations have been granted the privilege of meeting privately with the Board of Ethics. The subject of the investigation and his or her attorney are allowed to present to the board any information they wish without oversight or rebuttal from a witness or victim. The city shares the content of those meetings with no one.

The proposed change in city code would further tilt the scales in favor of the politically powerful, as they could be granted full knowledge regarding the investigation on their wrongdoing, including information on who brought the case to light.

Flawed processes like these are the reason the city makes headlines for corruption year after year.

Any attempts to chill oversight in Chicago should be met with strong opposition. There are few other places in the Northern Hemisphere that could do with more government transparency than the Windy City.