We know of a suburban mayor who is absolutely meticulous about abiding by rules stating the earliest time he can take his garbage to the curb for weekly pickup. He also pays close attention to the next-day deadline for putting his empty cans back out of sight.
It’s anyone’s guess whether others in the village are so vigilant with their own cans or pay attention to what the mayor is doing. But the mayor knows people expect those at the top to strictly adhere to village policy.
Yet, as Fran Spielman reported, Mayor Brandon Johnson has not been open about gifts he’s received. When Chicago Inspector General Deborah Witzburg’s investigators sought access to a room where gifts sent or given to the mayor are kept, they were denied access. Witzburg said her office was denied access to the room on multiple occasions. At first, they were also denied access to the official gift log.
Why didn’t the mayoral administration simply do what it is supposed to do and cooperate with the inspector general?
Yes, it’s true that Witzburg found every mayor, going back to the late 1980s, has been exempt from rules on reporting gifts to the Board of Ethics and the city comptroller, based on some sort of “informal agreement. And there were similar transparency problems under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot.
But even so, Johnson made an unforced error when he didn’t promptly allow the inspectors to check how gifts to the mayor are handled, and didn’t instantly say he would ensure everything would be handled in a professional, transparent and ethical manner going forward.
Another lesson learned: Live by the rule of full public disclosure. Or risk looking bad in the public’s eye because of some Hugo Boss cufflinks, designer handbags and a personalized Mont Blanc pen.
Past history at City Hall
At times in the past, there’s been a fairly formal procedure for mayors accepting gifts. An aide — sometimes from the mayor’s scheduling office — logged them, detailed who gave the gift and when. Then the gift went into storage within the mayor’s Fifth Floor suite. The mayor’s correspondence unit often was tasked with sending out a thank-you letter to the gift-giver.
Information about gifts should be easily available to the city inspector general’s office. Instead, the inspector general was blocked from entering the gift room, which included other fancy largesse. What kind of message does that send?
A city ordinance prohibits a mayor from accepting gifts of more than $50. Anything worth more than $50 can only be accepted on behalf of the city.
Besides being available to the inspector general, information about the gifts should be free for members of the public to examine. But when the inspector general’s office submitted a Freedom of Information request without saying who it was from, the request was not responded to in a timely matter, Witzburg reported.
The inspector general’s office and the Board of Ethics now are advising the mayor’s office to report gifts promptly.
When Witzburg’s office finally obtained a spreadsheet showing 380 gifts presented during Johnson’s administration and the last 15 months of former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration, there was no entry showing the donor for nearly 70% of the items. Clearly, that’s important information. Who is giving gifts to the mayor, and what did they maybe hope for in return?
The city is offering to open the gift room to inspectors by appointment only. But unannounced visits are part of Inspections 101. City Hall should comply.
Johnson tried to downplay the issue, saying he had never seen the gift room and calling the report a “mischaracterization” and the probe “a so-called investigation.” But that was a mistake.
“Nothing to see here, folks,” simply does not work as a guiding principle for a mayoral administration.
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