Lobbyists donating to mayoral campaigns in defiance of a 2011 executive order would face suspensions and/or stiff fines, under an ethics crackdown poised for City Council approval Wednesday that Mayor Brandon Johnson once opposed because it applies only to him.
Three months ago, mayoral allies used a parliamentary maneuver to prevent an emboldened Council from defying Johnson yet again by approving the ordinance championed by his hand-picked Ethics Committee chairman Matt Martin (47th).
At that time, Johnson said he opposed the ethics ordinance because it was time to stop “nibbling around the edges” of reform and start pushing for public financing of mayoral and City Council campaigns.
“If you want to eliminate corruption in government, we certainly should make sure that the rules apply to anyone who has been given the trust of the public,” Johnson said then.
But Martin said Wednesday he has spent “well over a month” working through the mayor’s objections.
Martin said he has no idea why Johnson changed his mind about the ordinance, which includes no substantive changes. He simply told the mayor he was “committed to passing the ordinance as quickly as possible because we need to move forwards — not backwards — on campaign finance reform.”
Instead of talking about votes, “we talked about the substance. … We have a deficit of trust in city government. … We’ve had dozens of city officials, including alderpeople, convicted and going to jail in recent decades. We always need to be looking for opportunities to strengthen our ethics rules,” Martin said.
“When the Board of Ethics sought to enforce several violations of that 2011 exec order, they concluded that they lacked the power to enforce that. … I’m glad that the mayor ultimately is supporting [closing] this loophole and I’m looking forward to working with him on our Fair Elections proposal” for public financing of campaigns for mayor and City Council.
Current city ordinance allows lobbyists to give up to $1,500 to candidates for city office, or up to the statewide limit of $13,700 through companies they control.
The new ordinance would bar all lobbyist contributions to incumbent mayors or mayoral candidates. Contributions would also be barred from companies in which a lobbyist has an ownership stake of at least 7.5%.
Lobbyists found in violation would be fined three times their contribution amount, unless they seek a refund. Further violations would result in 90-day lobbying suspensions.
The Board of Ethics urged the Council to codify former Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s 2011 executive order after investigating several contributions to Johnson’s campaign, including a $2,000 contribution from lobbyist Anthony Bruno. The donations were returned.
The board found probable cause that the contributions were improper but dropped the matter after determining it didn’t have the legal authority to enforce Emanuel’s order.
Previously, the Sun-Times has reported Lightfoot’s campaign took $68,500 from companies affiliated with lobbyist Carmen A. Rossi. Her campaign also ended up returning most of that money.
The ordinance doesn’t apply to contributions from city contractors, and doesn’t cover donations to Council members or other statewide elected officials.
Martin has another ordinance pending laying the groundwork for the city to establish what he called a “voluntary, small-dollar-donor-matching program” similar to a proposal that went nowhere nearly 10 years ago.
The 23-page ordinance lays out a detailed blueprint for how public financing would work in Chicago, including how Council candidates would qualify for matching funds and how much money they would receive.
The ordinance doesn’t say how the city would pay for the program — only that the “Fair Elections Fund” would receive “not less than one-tenth of one percent (0.1%) of the annual city budget,” adjusted annually to match the consumer price index.
That would amount to $16.77 million of Johnson’s $16.77 billion 2024 budget .
Matching funds would be dispersed to eligible candidates who “opt in” at a maximum rate of $150,000-per-election cycle.