Mayor Brandon Johnson has shown himself to be “reflexively hostile to oversight” and has “not lived up to” his campaign promise to govern as a reformer, outgoing Inspector General Deborah Witzburg said Thursday.
Witzburg has clashed with the Johnson administration on a host of issues — from the mayor’s decision to deny her investigators access to the City Hall gift room to the Law Department’s demand to water down ethics reforms and sit in on IG interviews with city employees.
Johnson also rejected Witzburg’s demand that he fire senior mayoral adviser Jason Lee for refusing to cooperate with her investigation of an alleged quid pro quo threat that Lee made to Ald. Bill Conway (34th) in 2023.
The relationship between Johnson and Witzburg was fraught, minimizing any chance that the mayor would reappoint her.
On Thursday, Witzburg pulled no punches as she evaluated the most progressive mayor in Chicago history on his track record for embracing ethics and good government.
“This administration has shown itself to be reflexively hostile to oversight. This has come largely through the Law Department… interfering with OIG’s access to city premises, withholding records from OIG, declining to provide records even though they were, in fact, publicly available, declining to implement recommendations from OIG,” Witzburg told the Sun-Times.
“Reasonable minds can differ on facts, and even on the law. But we are entitled to, and we ought to see, this course of conduct out of City Hall for what it is — a pattern of things.”
Garien Gatewood claims he was fired as deputy mayor for community safety by Lee and chief of staff Cristina Pacione-Zayas in apparent retaliation for the complaint he filed with the inspector general’s office in October accusing them of improper interference in City Hall’s contracting process. The same sources said Johnson was made aware of those contract interference concerns.
Witzburg refused to comment on that investigation, nor would she say whether it involves the long-awaited search for a replacement to ShotSpotter, the gunshot detection technology contract that Johnson terminated shortly after taking office.
But Witzburg appeared to echo Gatewood’s concern about being “targeted” when she said, “The thing we ought to be cautious about is whether city personnel processes and city legal processes are being weaponized to protect political allies and go after opponents.”
The mayor’s office pushed back, saying the inspector general’s office may be “using its platform to air politicized grievances in a manner that risks compromising the credibility and independence” of an office that “must remain grounded in facts, fairness and the public trust.”
Johnson “remains deeply committed to good governance and public transparency” and has “worked in good faith to implement and abide by” the watered-down ethics reforms that Witzburg negotiated with the Law Department last summer, the mayor’s office statement said.
Two years ago, Johnson was forced to restore 162 police jobs tied to implementing the consent decree after Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul threatened to ask a federal judge to hold the city in contempt.
On Thursday, Witzburg said it’s time for the city to “fish or cut bait” on a consent decree that, seven years in, is “somewhere between a fifth and a quarter” fully implemented.
“That bodes for a very long and very expensive road… if we continue to move this slowly,” Witzburg said.
“If you’re pedaling your bicycle too slowly, the bicycle tips over… That is sort of where we are… If we are going to be serious about getting out from under the consent decree, then the department needs adequate resources to make the appropriate changes.”
As chief watchdog, Witzburg is also tasked with investigating waste and fraud in city government, and recommending ways the city could operate more efficiently.
She argued that Johnson has come up short on that front. Although he “inherited a deeply compromised fiscal landscape,” the mayor “owns everything that has happened for the last three years,” Witzburg said.
“When we look at the rapidly growing uncollected debt [and] at the fractious and damaging process that went on with the City Council during the budget season, the historical legacy is what it is,” she said.
Witzburg will conclude her one-and-done, four-year term on April 24. A nationwide search for her replacement has been under way for months.
She refused to disclose her next move, but said she is “not going far.”
“I will steal a phrase from Rahm Emanuel. We heard him say recently he is not done with public service and he hopes public service isn’t done with him,” Witzburg said. “I have spent my whole career as a government lawyer. I have only ever intended to work in public service. That continues to be my plan.”
