A Chicago City Council meeting last year.
Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times
If Chicago got a dollar for every time a politician used the word “transparency,” the city would have a new revenue source. If the dollar were paid, only by politicians who delivered transparency, it would be a different story.
That’s why three of Chicago’s most influential government watchdogs — the Better Government Association, the Civic Federation and the League of Women Voters of Chicago — on Thursday demanded structural and procedural changes to deliver the transparency and public access to City Council proceedings that Mayor Brandon Johnson and his predecessors have promised but failed to deliver.
The changes outlined in a letter to Mayor Brandon Johnson and Rules Committee Chair Michelle Harris (8th) include: sharply limiting “direct introductions” of legislation; posting agendas four business days before committee votes, instead of 48 hours and expanding the 30-minute period set aside for public comment before committee and Council meetings while also streamlining the sign-up process.
Exceptions to the four-day posting rule would be made only for “substitutions that make non-substantive, technical revisions.” Agenda items would include “expanded detail,” including a “summary narrative” of the item and the city departments involved. Materials presented at committee meetings would be posted on the city clerk’s website.
“It’s very important that we see legislation in due time and that it doesn’t just pop up out of nowhere. Some of the worst laws in the history of our state are those that are passed without adequate public scrutiny and even scrutiny within the elected bodies that represent us,” David Greising, president and CEO of the Better Government Association, told the Sun-Times.
Johnson is “at least the third mayor in a row who promised to be the most transparent mayor in the city’s history,” but so far, has failed to deliver it, Greising said.
Under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Lori Lightfoot, the BGA “had to sue to have them even abide by the law,” Greising said. Mayor Brandon Johnson is “also finding it very difficult,” as evidenced by his mishandling the migrant crisis, the extended contract with ShotSpotter and his failed plan to limit public access to City Council meetings.
“We had to send a letter and advise the mayor about the law and the Open Meetings Act in order to have him reverse what was a deplorable, anti-transparency impulse on his part to basically not just block public access to meetings, but to make the public’s input in meetings completely irrelevant,” Greising said.
Civic Federation President Joe Ferguson, who spent 12 years as Chicago’s longest-serving inspector general, noted Thursday’s letter was signed by “people and organizations whose job it is to know and understand what is going on in the government of the people.”
“If we find it difficult as a matter of information, access and transparency to understand what is going on, then it is a near-impossibility for the public to understand what is going on. Which means that we are not serving the cause of democracy and the voice of the people,” Ferguson said.
The mayor’s office had no immediate comment on the proposed changes. Harris did not return repeated phone calls.
Ferguson called the proposed changes “door-opening suggestions” — not a “do this or else” ultimatum, he said.
“We need to have a conversation because it is not working…It is not transparent. It is not accessible. It does not encourage meaningful public participation in a way that actually can be received and processed and integrated by the legislators that vote,” Ferguson said.
“Aldermen can’t even find things in a timely fashion that they’re supposed to be voting on. All of these things add up to a sense of chaos and a sense of a government that doesn’t care for the people whose business they’re conducting to even know what’s going on.”
Two years ago, a divided City Council Rules Committee shot down a similar crackdown proposed in the name of transparency to rein in Lightfoot’s penchant for getting around City Council oversight by introducing legislation directly to committee under the guise of “emergency.”
Armed with endorsements from the BGA and the League of Women Voters, Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) tried and failed to convince his colleagues on the Rules Committee to level a playing field Reilly believed was tilted in the mayor’s favor.
“If you’re about bringing in the light, this ordinance is for you,” Reilly told his colleagues that day, referring to Lightfoot’s 2019 campaign slogan.
“The two biggest good government groups in the city who are all about transparency strongly support this ordinance. And there’s only one entity that’s opposed. That entity resides on the fifth floor of City Hall.”
But after warnings from two department heads about the potentially paralyzing impact on city government, the Rules Committee voted down Reilly’s proposal, 24 to 17.