Okay.
Good afternoon, everybody. We are going to get going now that we have a
quorum. Thank you all for coming, particularly the committee m-members
on a very poor weather day.
So the Committee on Ethics and Government
Oversight will now come to order. We have three items on today's
agenda. First, a subject matter hearing regarding the Office of Inspector
General's quarterly report for the fourth quarter of twenty twenty-five.
Second, a subject matter hearing regarding OIG's audit
of the three one one service request process.
And then lastly, two appointments to the Chicago Board of Ethics, and we will be
taking those first, by the way, out of order.
We will begin with a roll call to establish quorum.
Please note that your yes or present response will be deemed a yes vote when
this quorum call is used for reference vote for later
items. Chairman Martin is present.
Vice Chair Hadden. Alderwoman Lee.
Alderman O'Shea.
Here.
Alderwoman... Great. Alderwoman Taylor, and we'll get back to you.
Rule fifty-nine's in a second. Alderwoman Tabaras.
Alderman Taliaferro. Alderman Waguespack.
Alderman Sposato. Alderwoman Nugent.
Alderman Vasquez. Alderman Riley.
Alderman Lawson. Okay, we have a
quorum. Um, we have several rule fifty-nine
requests. Um, I believe, Vice Chair Hadden is
one, Alderman O'Shea, and Alderwoman Nugent.
Do we have a motion to allow these three members to
attend remotely?
Aye.
Alderman Vasquez so moves. All those in favor signify by saying aye.
All those opposed. In the opinion of the chair, the ayes have it,
and these three individuals are allowed to attend the meeting
remotely. At this time, we will begin with public comment.
This is a period set for thirty minutes.
Out of respect for everyone's time, each speaker is limited to three minutes of
public comment. The first, and I believe only person we have
signed up, is Patricia Puente.
Please begin at your convenience.
Uh, good afternoon.
I have a concern regarding the homeless people
dumping toxic trash and
trag-- tra-- trash, regular
trash, too, at, at-- in the water
banks.
Now, they say because they're homeless, they are allowed to be
there. I feel that there is an illegal
dumping. I don't care if you're homeless, if you're rich, or whatever,
it's illegal to dump waste on the
water banks.
So then you're saying, "Oh, because they're homeless, it's okay for them to
dump it"? They're intoxicating our
waters. The other thing is,
um-- And I feel that that's
a terrible oversight of the
committee. Uh, the other one is
three one one. The day, what was it, Thursday, Friday?
I don't remember right now. I was on Ashland and,
Thirty-First trying to get three one one
regarding the water banks right there on Thirty-First and
Ashland. And the thing is that,
they put me on
hold, and I just took the train,
the Orange Line, got here, and I-- nobody
an- you know, they answered the phone, but then I was just on hold
until I was a block away. That's when they answered.
That long it took them to answer the
phone. I was like, "What the heck? I'm already here.
I might as well go and do it myself instead
of, of, you know, telling them what was I calling
for." That long it takes for three one one to
answer. I was at the Orange Line,
and I had to come, and I was on the phone still waiting for them.
They did respond, but they just put me on hold.
I got here, one block away. That's when they answered.
That long it takes. The other thing, Cardenas,
him,
I have a concern regarding him. With his staff, when he
says-- when we-- when the constituents ask
for, you know, for
him to help them with trash or getting
something done, his staff
say, "Uh, we can't do it."
Uh, and then the, the constituents say, "But that's your job.
That's why we're letting you know, because there's something wrong with-- going on
with the streets." And then their staff say, "Well, did you
hire me? No, you didn't hire me, so then we don't have to do
anything." Is that the kind of persons do you want running in
City Hall? Thank you very much.
Thank you. That begins our public comment for today.
Our first order of business is the Rule forty-five
report, from the prior meeting.
Can I have a motion to approve this report?
Uh, Alderman Vasquez so moves. All those in favor signify by saying aye.
All those opposed. In the opinion of the chair, the ayes have it.
Uh, as I mentioned earlier, we are going to be taking things slightly out of order,
beginning with two appointments to the Board of Ethics.
We are going to be taking them together for purposes of conversation,
but one, Esther Nieves, and the second, Bob Glaves.
I'd like to thank both of them for accepting these appointments and being
here this afternoon. Before I turn it over to the
appointees, I would like to just take a brief moment to
comment on the status quo process for the appointment process to this
board. This is the third year in a row where there's been at least an
eight-month gap in between the end of one member's term and the
appointment of their successor. And as people who follow the
Board of Ethics closely will know, this has had serious implications for the
board's process. Two out of the past five monthly meetings have been
canceled for lack of quorum, which has present-- prevented
several important ethics investigations from moving forward.
Um, in addition, the board has been without a permanent
chair since the former chair, Bill Conlin's departure in July twenty
twenty-five. I appreciate Vice Chair Cotizar for
stepping up in the meantime, but would note that his term, is
one of two that are up, in July of this year.
So I would, reiterate my ask, to the mayor's
office, um-That we name a chair as soon as possible and
ensure that we don't get a similar multi-month
vacancy the next time a vacancy arises later this
year. Um, with that, I will turn things over first
to Ms. Nieves and then second to Mr.
Glaves for remarks before we, get into
a Q&A. Ms. Nieves.
Thank you, Chairman Martin. Good morning.
Good morning, members of the Committee on Ethics and Government Oversight.
As the chairman has said, my name is Esther Nieves.
Um, I wanna share a little bit about myself.
Uh, first of all, I wanna brag that I was born in this great city.
I have always considered myself a student of this city.
I learned early on that Chicago is a place where community and grit go
hand in hand. Over the past thirty years, I've had the privilege of
serving this city in many capacities, and each role has taught me that public
service is not a title, but a profound responsibility to the
people of Chicago. My professional career and life journey have been
seasons of learning, intentional relationships, the importance of
transparency, and the vital need for a bridge between municipal government
and the neighborhoods it serves. I have seen firsthand how
policy, when executed with integrity, can change lives.
I've have-- I have held various leadership positions in the nonprofit
and philanthropic sectors. These role required me to be a steward of
resources and a champion for accountability.
These wer-roles weren't about giving so much as they were about
listening. Listening to community members, to stakeholders and
people underpinned my understanding about accountability and
ethical standards. Today, I serve as an assistant professor.
I work with adult learners at Lewis University at the Chicago
campus. In this role, I am constantly reminded of the ethical weight
carried by those in the social work profession.
I tell my students that our work is only as good as our word, followed by
our actions. I have sought to give back to the city that raised me through
volunteerism and board service. I serve on various
nonprofit boards aligned with my ethical grounding and life
values. These positions have never been about prestige.
They are about the quiet, often difficult work of ensuring
our city is responsive, institutions are healthy, and our great
city and its people can thrive. Based on my life's
work, there are two primary reasons why I wish to contribute to this
board. Uh, number one, to champion integrity as a shared
practice. Number two, to promote transparency and good government
practices. My perspective is rooted in the lived
experiences of everyday Chicagoans.
Along with other board members, I will strive to ensure that our ethical standards
protect the interests of all residents, regardless of their zip
code. To me, an ethical government is one that is not only honest, but
also inclusive, ensuring that the path to participation is not blocked
by conflicts of interest or failed transparency.
I am humbled by the possibility of continuing to serve the city of Chicago in this
new capacity and reiterate my unwavering commitment to the idea that
Chicago can be a model of transparency, equity, and
ethical governance. Thank you, committee members, for your leadership and for your
consideration of my nomination to civic service for the public
good. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Nieves. Next, we'll hear from Mr. Glaves.
Good afternoon. Uh, my name is Bob Glaves, and I'm honored to be considered for the
Board of Ethics as well. Uh, I have lived in Jefferson Park in the forty-fifth
Ward for thirty years now and believe strongly in public service generally
and service to the city in particular.
I currently serve on the city's Equity Advisory Council with Esther,
and actually previously served on the local school council for Beaubien
Elementary. And back at the turn of the century, I was on the Mayor
Daley's Twenty-First Century Leadership Council.
I've also chaired and served on several nonprofit boards and public service
bodies, most recently serving on the Illinois Judicial Conference for seven
years. As the longtime executive director of the Chicago Bar Foundation and
an attorney for thirty-five years now, ethics have played a central role in my
professional life from the start.
In my current work, I've been working closely with the bar and the courts to
modernize and improve our rules of professional conduct for years now, and I'm an
active member of the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers, a national
association of lawyers who specialize in professional ethics.
The core values of integrity, fairness, and justice that drive my work every day
are a fundamental part of the code of professional conduct that governs our legal
profession and of good government everywhere.
I would like to bring my experience, background, and commitment to these core
values to the Board of Ethics. I believe everyone in our city, from
everyday people living in one of the-- our many great neighborhoods right up to the
mayor, deserves to get a fair shake when they have a matter before the Board of
Ethics. I pledge to bring a pragmatic lens to this work, focused on
treating each person fairly and objectively based on the individual circumstances
of their case, as opposed to taking a one-size-fits-all
approach. Thank you for consideration, and I am happy to answer any
questions you may have.
Thank you, Mr. Glaves. We will now open it up to any questions from committee
members. Alderman Waguespack.
Thank you. Thank you, Chairman. Good afternoon, to both of you.
Um, question for, each of you. What do you think the
biggest issue specifically is in the city right now in terms
of ethics issues, and what would you intend
to do about it on the board?
You wanna go?
Uh, hello, Alderman. Thank you for the question.
I'll try to answer as best as I can. I think
the-- there are many c- there are many concerns in the city, but I think the big
one is transparency, making sure that, government
is transparent in its, in its,
various proceedings. Um, and so I think
that the opportunity to serve on a, on a committee that presses for that and
ensures that that happens is gonna be a good thing for Chicago,
particularly for our city, which has been tainted with, I think, a
reputation that I think is not fair.
And so I think that there are many good people of goodwill out there wanting to
ensure that we maintain transparency in our local government.
Thank you. We didn't call each other for this answer, but I'm gonna go with
transparency as well. But I, but I also agree, you know,
that that's a really critical piece.
Uh, but the idea of treating everybody fairly based on individual
circumstances, I think on the board of ethics, city
council, and really our courts every day is really just fundamentally
something I think,
everybody in the city wants to see, and I think we wanna model that behavior from
the board too.
Um, when you're both, you know, appointed to this, and I'm, I'm as-
I'm assuming we're gonna appoint you.
Um, it has to go through the full council, but I think this will be the
first test today. Um, when you look at
some of the issues that have come up more recently, you
know, where we've had, for instance, people
fired,
for what turned out to be no good reasons at all,
and people, having to fight to get their
job back for something, as simple as being put on the
do not rehire list. Um, how would you address that
specific issue? Um, if you've-- This has been out publicly in
the, in the news, you know, over the last couple years.
But how would you address something like that, where it's not quite somebody
that's showing up in front of you, but circumstances
that you see percolating either on the fifth floor
or in the city council or wherever it might be, and you are
sitting on the ethics board, and you have an opportunity to do
something or say something. Are-- Would you be looking at, this
position as a proactive opportunity to fix those things,
or more just wait until something comes before
you?
Uh, I can te- We can switch.
'Cause I think you've all said you have some experience in some of these areas.
Yeah. No, and I think this comes up with, in a lot of context in
law too. Uh,
I think we definitely are not limited to what comes before the board
formally. You know, when we see things, you know, see something, say something
kind of thing. But, but being mindful of we've got a great staff,
we've got Inspector General, other folks who are bringing things before the
board. But being mindful of, like, you know, w- if it's
something that squarely falls within the ethics code, and, and
should be there, that we should be open to bringing it up, independently as
well.
Thank you.
Um, I concur with my colleague, but I also wanna add that,
what-- we need to look at the empirical, empirical evidence, right?
What exactly happened in the situation.
Um, I think everyone n-
definitely deserves a fair shot at defending themselves or
protecting their integrity, and that's what I would certainly want to
consider. Um,
I'll leave it at that.
Okay. Thank you both.
Thank you, Alderman. Alderman Vasquez.
Thank you, Chairman. Um, I, I-- for both of you, I had,
uh... One, thank you for even being interested in
applying and getting, the appointment.
Uh, my question is related to the Equity Advisory Board.
Um, I think there are a number of us that would like to know
w- how it's been functioning, what advice the advisory board has, what
areas of opportunity you all are seeing.
I think it's something that, because of all the things we're kinda tackling,
doesn't really come top of mind, unfortunately.
So I thought it'd be a good opportunity to kinda ask from both of your vantage
points, like, what you see it's been doing, how's it working, what are things that
we need to work on?
Got a leader.
Sure.
You're very kind. Thank you. Um, I am, uh...
Yep, I'm ending my term as a co-chair of the Equity Council.
Um, and it's been, a learning experience.
Uh, I've done it through the first, the first,
administration, this current one, and, and, Mayor Lightfoot.
And what we were, engaged in was trying to ensure
that the department directors had some kind of understanding of what
equity means. How do you interpret that in terms of your
department? Um, thirty years ago, we were talking about
parity, right? We're talking about, contracts and
employment and, seats at the table,
and so on and so forth. I don't think that's changed,
significantly. I think the political and economic conditions in the
country have changed. So I almost feel like we're starting,
again, to address some of the significant issues that are part of
our challenge as an urban center and a city that is,
tagged in particular ways. So I, I think that we have to go
back to that and remain committed to the sense of equity that
has to be something we see as a value in a city that
is quite diverse.
Yeah, I don't have a ton to add. I've been on for a couple years.
It's a newer body, so it's, it's still about f- five-ish years old,
I think, in terms of... And, and I think educating the department
leaders has been a big piece of, what it's been.
But I think right now, especially in the environment we have, the, the,
shifting environment from the federal government about what DEI
is, you know, and should be or can be,
I think tends to take
a lot of people into all or nothing positions where it's a much more nuanced,
conversation than that. And I think the, the council's got an
important role there to continue to educate that equity is still a good thing.
You know, there's still a lot we can do to ensure it across city government,
in lots of different ways. And, and I think trying to give pragmatic
advice there.
Okay. Yeah, I think, I don't know if it's precedent, but I think
through the chair, kind of any progress that's been done in those five years
or what kind of, conversation we're about would be important.
I completely appreciate that, like, the national landscape has changed, but I think
to both of your pointsThis hasn't moved forward that much in the city of
Chicago, and when we talk about contracts, it's constantly the thing that we
continue to kind of harp on, whether it's Black Caucus, Latino Caucus,
Women's Caucus recognizing that we're not where we need to be there, that I think
having those kind of conversations and seeing what's been done materially is
important. Um, and I'll say, a- obviously completely independent of the
work that you're doing, like
any city government department or body, if like five years
is like, hey, it's relatively new, which is government unfortunately,
it's not a lot of progress. And I think in the moment that we find ourselves trying
to see a little bit more of that speed in different departments, I think knowing
what we have done and what we need to do is kind of part of the question there.
So,
I guess, I guess
I'll ask a more general question, right?
Uh, because we had these conversations related to different matters, whether it was
hiring practices, do not hire list was mentioned, right?
But when an administration does something that's the fifth floor that's ultimately
appointing you to a position on a board, right?
There's a level of independence that needs to be there and a level
of ability to have accountability, right?
We have not had as much transparency even in this term, when it came to
budgets. I think it's why the budgets have gotten so contentious because we're not
getting that kind of transparency on the front end.
Um, what do you feel is your duty related to
holding a mayoral administration accountable when you're part of this board and
this body?
I think it's the same as anybody else.
You know, I, I think that the mayor is accountable and it should be, if anything,
more accountable than anybody else because he's the mayor.
Whoever's the mayor, right? Not-
Mm-hmm. Yep
... that's not a shot at, at the current mayor in any sense.
It's, it's that, you know, the-- But
everybody should be governed by the same rules, same principles, and
leading by example, I think for this council, for the mayor, is important,
for the rest of the city too.
I concur. I, I think that, if we're appointed, at least I, I would say
that we have to be an independent voice.
We cannot, we'd be
willy-nilly about what the fifth floor says or what the city council says.
We have to l-look at the facts, we like have to look at the evidence, and we have
to do, I think, what's best for the city of Chicago.
I'm a voter, I'm a resident. I was born and reared here.
My interest is to do the best that I can for the public good of our
city. So that's my response.
Yeah, I, I appreciate both those responses.
I think
absolutely in agreement. I think for me, I'm always a Harold Washington fan, right?
And it's about being fairer than fair.
You don't get a chance to do that if somebody's getting viewed differently, and I
think it actually undermines people's confidence in government when you don't have
that kind of a, accountability in place.
And so, I absolutely appreciate that.
And I think, my hope is,
obviously that y'all are appointed, this moves forward, but that in your positions
there's a bit, a willingness to be proactive in kind of
letting us know as a council and as a body the things that we should be doing to
continually improve and to not be satisfied. Right?
I think part of it, especially with the history Chicago has, is about
continuing to push in the o-opposite direction of what we've been known for back
in the day. So, that's a heavy charge,
but I, I appreciate that you all are willing to take it on.
And so, thank you for doing so, and that's all the questions I have.
Thank you. Before going to Alderman Riley, I wanted to note that, Chairman
Taliaferro i-is seeking to join as a panelist.
I think that he has, joined us but hasn't been recognized as a
panelist. Um, so he is, listening, but not able to participate just
yet. That said, he has submitted a Rule fifty-nine request to
participate remotely. Can I get a motion to allow him to do so?
Alderman Riley so moves. All those in favor signify by saying aye.
All those opposed. In the opinion of the chair, the ayes have it, and he is
recognized. Uh, Alderman Riley, you're up next.
Thank you, Chairman.
I'm on as well, Chairman. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Chairman.
Uh, thank you, Chairman. And I just have a few questions.
Uh, and thank you both for asking to be considered for this important
appointment. Um, have either of you donated or volunteered on Mayor Johnson's
campaign?
No, I have not.
No.
Excellent. And then I know in your opening statements each of you,
gave a, a, a brief synopsis of your background,
but if you could, each of you, and briefly
tell us what specific subject matter expertise you have in governmental
ethics, that would be helpful.
I'm sorry, in governmental ethics?
What specific subject matter expertise do you have in governmental ethics?
Well, I was thinking about that because I'm not an attorney, right?
I have been, engaged in many other variety of
work in, in civic engagement. Um, what I am, have
been involved with is the board of, of directors of nonprofit boards.
Um, and there are ethical standards that we have to follow as a nonprofit, so
the duty of care, duty of loyalty, and so on and so forth.
Very similar to, I think, what the ethics c-committee would
be doing, making sure that it represents the,
government, or rather represents the people of Chicago.
So in terms of my responsibility as a, in terms of
government, I must also say that, in nineteen eighty-four,
eighty-five, I was sitting, in this same body, at a
hearing, during the Washington administration when we were having
conversations about ethics. So my engagement has been at the community
level, at the philanthropic level, for example, in grant making and making
sure that we follow ethical standards in providing resources and services
to community. I'll leave it there.
Yeah, I, I will say, my
expertise is, is much more on the, the code of legal ethics, the
professional conduct that governs lawyers, is where more of my
experience is, but I
spend a lot of time working on that, and, have even
drafted-Uh, new rules, amendments to rules,
and certainly participate in a lot of different committees that look at the
rules all the time. Uh, but I think where that translates that
experience is, is looking at when there are
violations of it,
looking at what happened. Is this like a, you know...
Is this a lack of understanding, or is it, you know, like
there's, you know, and, and the lawyers in the room know there's like intentional,
there's negligence, there's a reckless, and you know, like what, what kind of,
what caused what happened to happen?
Was it-- Is somebody not understanding what the rules were and maybe in good faith
not understanding that? You know, how you're gonna view that versus you're gonna
view somebody who clearly knows better and does something that's a
violation. I think that is probably the biggest thing that carries over.
Yeah, that's the, that's the crux of the job.
Um, and
again, briefly, what can the Board of Ethics do
better? What is one thing the Board of Ethics can do
better?
You know, I, I don't have a, uh... Nothing jumps
out to me immediately to say that, except I think,
to be known more, you know, and to be more, outward in educating,
the public that, that, for all the reasons that,
many of you and, Esther pointed out earlier of,
of how our city too often has
the opposite reputation, right? You know, that, that ethics really are important
here. Can we be more visible in terms of making that known to more people is
probably what I would say.
Yeah. I, I definitely agree. I think we can be, uh...
First of all, I'm not on the committee yet, so my suspicion is what I've read and
what I've surmised. But I would say that being a proactive tool
for, integrity and independence,
is what I would certainly want to see my role as, as part of
this body. Um, and creating a body that works, and
challenging the public narrative that Chicago
is not a, a, a city
that is grounded perception that there might be some, you know, questionable
ethics. I think we can shame that-- change that narrative, and I think that's a
critical role that the Board of Ethics can play.
Okay. Well, just, you know, I would argue that the city has earned this
reputation, for, for its ethical lapses,
and unfortunately, in today's reality, we continue
to have these problems. And, and so we're looking to you,
not to help repair our reputation, but to hold people accountable-
Absolutely
... when they're violating our ethics laws.
Um, and, you know, I don't typically ask a lot of questions of
appointees, but in today's environment, and especially due to
recent history in this body
and with this administration, we're gonna need to
have responsible board members here, to help us
sort through the continuing issues that we have,
with lapses in, in ethics and in failure to comply.
I'm gonna ask one last question, Chairman, and that is,
what should the highest priority be for the Inspector-- Inspector
General moving forward? There are a lot of
different, areas that fall under the
Inspector General's, purview,
and over the years, depending on the Inspector General, we've seen
focus and emphasis on some more than others.
Uh, and to give you a sense, you know, we-we're talking about things like lobbying
compliance, campaign finance compliance, complaints
against the administration, complaints against members of city
council. Um,
each Inspector General has brought his or her own,
unique approach to the office. I think we've been well-served, in recent
history and certainly by our current Inspector General.
Um, but a-as a board member,
what of those areas do you think needs to be the, the primary
focus
i-in the context of today and what we're dealing with as a city
today? Um, which of those issues that I brought up would be
the top one for, for you?
Um,
I think, this Inspector General and any Inspector
General, has access to,
folks inside government. So I would say the, the
administration and the council, focus on the types
of things that aren't gonna come to the surface necessarily on their own,
outside. So people who, for reasons they may not go-- wanna go
public when they see something, to investigate those sorts of
situations and bring them forward if there's merit to it
to the board. Um,
but the, the kind of things that aren't gonna be as obvious in the, you know, to
the public eye, so the internal workings of,
the administration especially and, but also the, the
council,
where I would go.
I think for me as a, a, just speaking as a Chicagoan,
I would want to ensure that we don't have undue
influence, from
corporations or businesses. And I know that there was a rule,
that was, made by this body of a limit of fifteen
hundred dollars, I was reading.
And I thought that was a really effective rule because it limits the
abil-ability to influence or the perception of influence and
access, and I think that's important.
I think that's essential to make sure that we have guardrails that
protect us from undue influence and some having access and others
not. I'm speaking now as a member of the
city.
Okay. All right. Thank you, Chairman.
Thank you. Um, any other questions?
Um, I think Director Be-Berlin is here, and I understand that you will need to
leave soon. I had two quick questions I wanted to pose to you if you can
come to a microphone.
Sure, Mr. Chair.
So my recollection is at the beginning of this term, the board had sent
to myself as the chair as well as the mayor a list of recommendations,
that the board had compiled over the prior several months or
several years. Is that standard practice?
And regardless, is that something that the board
could continue doing such that to, in response to some of
my colleagues' points, proactive,
recommendations around changes to the code and other things could be something
that the board shares no later than, let's say, summer of next year?
Sure. It is, it's a very good question. It is standard practice.
Um, one of the, provisions in the governmental ethics ordinance is that the
Board of Ethics has the power and the duty to recommend such
legislative changes to the mayor and the city council as it deems
necessary to, enact the mission of the Board of
Ethics and, and the idea behind the governmental ethics ordinance in the first
place. So the last time we proposed changes was in,
th-the last month of twenty twenty-four, so
about fifteen months ago. And, it's good practice
always to have a list of changes at your, you know, in your,
in your pocket because you never know when the governmental ethics ordinance is
going to be opened up. And when it is opened up,
you wanna pounce.
Understood. Um, and I would just, say to our two appointees,
assuming you move forward, and join the board in an official
capacity working with Director Berlin and others, to
proactively share, your recommendations would be much appreciated by this
committee. Um, my second and last question is, as I mentioned at the outset,
Director, we have the vice chair who I believe is
acting as the acting chair from a procedural perspective
because this, I think, vice chair's term runs up, runs out
this summer. Um, let's say that person does not seek
reappointment, and leaves exactly when the term has
expired. What is the process for naming a
new chair and vice chair for the board?
Does that need to be a separate appointment, or is that something that the
mayor, can just select and w-without our
body weighing in?
Uh, the mayor can select the chair, from anybody who's already a
member of the board. So, if the mayor wanted to,
bring somebody in from the outside, that individual would still have to be
confirmed by this body as a member of the board, but not as the
chair. That's, the, the, designation of the chair is solely
within the mayor's discretion. But the individual has to be a member of the board
to begin with.
Understood. Thank you. That's all.
Um, can I get a motion to recommend the approval of
Esther Nieves as a member of the Board of Ethics?
Alderman Lee so moves. All those in favor signify by saying aye.
All those opposed. In the opinion of the chair, the ayes have it, and that
appointment passes. Next, can I get a motion to recommend the approval of Bob
Glaves as a member of the Board of Ethics?
Alderman Lawson so moves. All those in favor signify by saying
aye. All those opposed. In the opinion of the chair, the ayes have it,
and that appointment passes. Thank you both so much for the service that you are
about to provide the city.
Thank you.
Um, next up, we are going to turn to the
f- fourth quarter twenty twenty-five quarterly report, which will be taken
up as a subject matter hearing, it's done by the Office of Inspector
General. Um, in a moment, I will introduce General
Witzberg, invite her to provide some brief remarks.
In the meantime, we have had a few members, share questions
about the process, for selecting the next
inspector general. So I just wanted to provide a little bit of an update
in terms of where things stand with that process.
Um, so we passed in the
ethics committee an ordinance mandating a particular timeline for selecting
the next inspector general because as some of you may recall, after General
Ferguson, stepped down, we had about a six-month
gap, between, him leaving and General Witzberg joining us,
and in my opinion, that was much too long to go without a permanent
person in a position making very critical and sensitive decisions
on the city's behalf. Um, so we passed an ordinance in
July s- of twenty twenty-three specifying this process.
Um, it still is the case that you have a selection committee
that in turn, selects a selection firm
that cr- presents a shortlist to the committee, and then
ultimately they present a shorter shortlist to the mayor.
Um, so if we can go to the next slide, General Witzberg will
be leaving us on April twenty-sixth.
And so we do have, a selection committee in place
as well as a search firm. Um, and once they do their
work, and assuming the mayor selects someone based on their work, it'll
come before this committee for consideration, and if it moves forward through the
committee, then the full city council. Next slide, please.
Um, and so there are five members on this search
committee. The, the three in the first column were selected by Mayor
Johnson. That's Emma Ty, Emmanuel Andre, Jeff Levine.
Uh, Jeff, you will remember, his many years of service as a deputy
corporation counsel. I selected two individuals, Sharon Fairley,
currently of the University of Chicago Law School, who previously worked as I
think the inaugural head of COPA, as well as in the Inspector General's
office and the U.S. Attorney's office, and Brian Zarru, who is a
senior member of the BGA, the Better Government Association.
Um, right now we are on tr- we're still on track to meet
the deadline specified in the ordinance that we passed, and I believe
right now we are waiting on the selection-- or the, the, the
s-s-selection committee to make a decision about the names that have already been
provided to them by the search firm, which is CPS HR
Consulting. Um, so that's where things stand.
And with that, I would invite up here General
Witzberg to speak first to the Q4 report from last
year, and then we will take up the three one one audit.
Um-
Bear with us for just a
second.
General, when you are seated and ready, if you could introduce yourself for the
record and then begin at your convenience.
Certainly. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you for having me.
I'm Deborah Witzberg, Inspector General for the City of Chicago.
Thank you all for your time this afternoon.
Um, I will first, as we have had the opportunity to do a number of times in recent,
recent quarters, I will go through the, the fourth quarter report for twenty
twenty-five. And Chairman, as always, I really appreciate the opportunity to do
this with the committee. It is I think a-- it's been a very good opportunity to, to
bring our work more visibly before this committee.
So, briefly in overview, this quarterly report was published January
fifteenth. It discusses the work of the office completed obviously in the fourth
quarter of twenty twenty-five. Um,
first taken up in that report is the kind of the intake
landscape for that quarter. We have, as we have discussed in this body before, we
have over the course of my term, we have centralized our intake function
so that we are doing a better job of, of learning from
the Chicagoans who reach out to us.
We receive significantly more intakes than we used to, which I think is a, is a
good news story. I think that's not because more things are going wrong, that's
because more people know who we are and what we do and where to find us.
So I take that to be good news. In the fourth quarter, we received two
thousand nine hundred and nine intakes.
That's up slightly, but very close in number to the, to the number the quarter
before. As is usually the case, most of those e-- most of those intakes are
received over email, although we are conscious of the fact that not all Chicagoans
have, access or the same amount of access
to the internet. And so we also take intakes and have received many by
phone, letter, et cetera. OIG also has
statutory authority to self-initiate intakes, and we did that
sixty-nine times in the fourth quarter.
Um, in terms of our misconduct investigation, so as you all
know, we conduct both administrative and criminal investigations into
allegations that those under our jurisdiction have, have violated a rule or broken
a law. At the close of the fourth quarter, we had two hundred and ninety
active misconduct investigations, of which one hundred and seventy-nine
had been open for more than twelve months.
That's up, from a hundred and fifty-nine the quarter before.
I will note here one thing that we've discussed at great length in this committee
is, in terms of the timeline for OIG investigations is, is
the question of our access to city records.
Over the summer, this committee and then the full city council passed an
ordinance clarifying OIG's authority to review certain city
records. Um, we have not yet been
able to actually access some city records pursuant to those new
provisions. So, we have requested records from the Department
of Law under that, those new provisions of the ordinance, and have not
yet been able to access
records pursuant to that provision, nor is there yet a protocol in place
to ensure OIG's access to those records.
So I just flagged that before this committee,
in terms of the, the state of the city's compliance with its obligations there.
The subjects of these opens in- open investigations are listed here.
Two hundred and forty-six of those open investigations have city employees as
subjects, twenty of them elected officials, nineteen have as their
subjects contractors, subcontractors, and persons seeking contracts with the
city, three licensees, no appointed officials, and
two in this other category. Um, that category might include any number
of people. Worth noting that for the first time in recent
years, we have pursued ethics investigations against members of the public.
The provisions of the city's ethics ordinance are such that they can be violated
both by, for example, city, employees and
officials taking impermissible gifts, but also members of the public offering
or giving those gifts. And so just by way of example, not to say that those are
these two, but those are some of the investigations we've conducted recently
which might fall into this category, which are part of our new,
relatively new, historically speaking, efforts to rigorously enforce the city's
ethics rules. Um, as is our usual
practice in the quarterly report, we include de-identified summaries as
permitted by the municipal code of sustained administrative investigations.
We reported ten of those sustained investigations this quarter.
And among those, to be clear, this is sort of a selection.
These are, these are kind of, this is a highlight reel of the quarterly report.
So there are others in the report, and I'd be happy to talk about any of those that
are of further interest. But included among the, sustained administrative
investigations we reported were one of a foreman with the Department of
Transportation who faked an on-duty injury to collect workers' compensation
benefits to which they were not entitled.
We looked at a Department of Finance employee who provided false
responses on their statements of financial interest in, a number of
years from twenty fifteen forward.
We found a hoisting engineer who, repeatedly
visited a social club on city time,
a CPD sergeant who lied to obtain more than forty-five
thousand dollars in pandemic relief loans, and separately a CPD
civilian employee who lied to obtain, again, a, a PPP loan,
a, a pandemic era relief loan, and resigned after being
notified of their coming interview with OIG.
Um, these-- the, the investigations we have done into allegations that city
employees have committed PPP loan fraud has been appropriately the, the topic of a
lot of interest and discussion. This has been a very large scale and
long-running effort at OIG. Um,
as we've discussed before, we-- because of our concern about this issue and,
and the notion that people cannot both defraud the government and expect to
collect a government paycheck, rather than sort
of wait for complaints about city employees receiving
fraudulent PPP loans, we undertook a proactive data analysis where
we took the body of data available from the federal government on
pandemic relief loan recipients and conducted a
data analysis to match that pool against the
universe of people under our jurisdiction.
That initial proactive data analysis yielded about a thousand
loans issued to people under our jurisdiction.And to be sure,
not all of those loans were fraudulent.
Some of them were entirely appropriately obtained.
But as is the case in many other governmental entities, we saw many indicia of
fraud on those loans. And so kind of triaging and,
working our way through that caseload has been a, has been a substantial and
long-running effort. So just by way of update, we have reported out
at this point a, a number of these PPP loan cases, including
the two we just discussed that were reported in the fourth quarter.
When we issued, issued the fourth quarter report, so that is to say back in the,
two months ago now, the middle of January, we-- I, I noted in the
cover letter to that report kind of the then current state of affairs by way of
update on this body of cases. We were at that point awaiting responses
to three additional PPP cases which were with city departments.
We were closing four sustained cases in the days immediately
following the release of that report.
And at that point, we were projecting to close at least a dozen more
within, within this quarter. So we are now obviously
two weeks short of the close of the first quarter of twenty twenty-six, and,
our quarterly report, which comes out April fifteenth, will reflect further
substantial progress in kind of working our way through this, this particular
caseload.
Approximately how many people, city employees, have you found,
fraudulently obtained PPP loans?
Um,
we-- I'll-- we'll be in a better position to update that number at the close of
this quarter. But we have reported out to
date, between twelve and
fifteen sustained PPP loan cases.
And in each of those cases, we have recommended that that city employee be
terminated, and in each case, the relevant city department has agreed.
Thank you.
Uh, we have one update on a charged criminal case.
Uh, this is a, this is, um... There have been periodic updates on this case in a
number of quarterly reports. This is an investigation in which OIG was involved,
dealing with a former grant recipient of the city, who was
indicted back in twenty twenty-two.
Th-this update appears in the fourth quarter report because, sort of at long
last, on December nineteenth, twenty twenty-five, the defendant was sentenced to a
term of probation and, and perhaps most notably for this body, ordered to pay
restitution, including, restitution to the
city. Um, campaign
finance oversight is another area where w- in a, in a, I think, a
new and meaningfully more aggressive way, we have focused resources, focused
oversight and investigative resources.
This too has been an area where we have leveraged proactive data analysis.
So here too, rather than waiting for complaints to come in about improper
campaign contributions, we have, undertaken a new approach where
we,
use the state's, campaign finance data on contribu-
reported contributions, and we have analyzed that
against our own data on the various,
categories of restricted contributors.
So as you all know, there are various categories of people, who face certain
restrictions on amounts of money they can donate to people who are candidates for
city office. And those categories include city employees and lobbyists and
people holding contracts with the city, etc.
Um, and so with this much more proactive approach, we are undertaking a
more serious effort to get illegal money out of city politics and, and to
take-- to eliminate any impression or reality that there is a for sale
sign on the door to City Hall. In the fourth quarter of twenty twenty-five, we
reported on the return of more than a hundred and eighty thousand dollars in
illegal contributions. So the w- the process that's set out in the ethics ordinance
provides for a cure process where if we identify an improper
contribution pursuant to that part of the ordinance, we send notices
both to the, the contributor and the recipient, and there is an
opportunity for each to cure the illegal contribution.
The recipient can cure it by returning the money.
The contributor can cure it by asking for the return of the money.
Um, and if the contribution, if the violation is cured, then that
ends the inquiry. If and only if an improper contribution is
not cured, do we proceed to an investigative posture where we are looking at a
violation of the city's ethics ordinance.
So from my perspective, it is a good news story when we are able to
identify and have cured improper contributions.
It gets, gets improper money out of city politics.
Um, and this total that we reported in this quarter of more than a hundred and
eighty thousand dollars in improper contributions returned was the highest total
ever reported by OIG in a quarter.
Moving to our public safety section, again, sort of high- highlights of the work of
that section during the fourth quarter of twenty twenty-five.
We published an evaluation report on CPD's implementation
of discipline, including the exercise of what are called options to
suspension, which is, a, a
long-standing practice by which CPD members are permitted to
give up accrued time off rather than actually serving an unpaid
suspension when they are, assigned one in a disciplinary
matter. So we looked at that process, the implementation of discipline, and record
keeping around discipline. This is part of, both our service
of the ordinance requirements, the powers and duties of the public safety section
pursuant to the municipal code, but also reflects my view, our
view that, a robust and
transparent disciplinary system for CPD members is, is
critical in improving the operations of the police department and the relationship
between the police department and the community.
I am a firm believer that we all ought to view it as a high priority to
have a police disciplinary system in which both members of the public and members
of the police department have reason to be confident.
And so in each of these inquiries where we are looking at the police disciplinary
system, we try to take an eye toward whether it is consistently and
fairly administered, and whether appropriate
records are kept to ensure accountability for CPD members.
So this, this project, this effort looked at whether finalized
disciplinary actions, that is to say we finally get to the end of the long and
winding road of the police disciplinary system, we have a final disciplinary
decision. We looked here at whether those disciplinary actions are
imposed in a consistent way, including
whether this idea of options to suspension is offered and implemented
consistently and fairly, and then also whether there is an accurate history of
disciplinary actions. We-- certainly the city is put in a difficult position
if we do not have clear and comprehensive and accurate disciplinary histories
for CPD members for lots of reasons, including of course, in this body
you see settlement proposals, for example, come before you, where
there are very high dollar questions around conduct of members of the police
department. The city is ill-served by not having a clear record of the outcome of
disciplinary investigations.Um,
we found some areas of concern, certainly, both in terms of
consistency and fairness as well as record keeping.
Um, of some, of, but I'll note a handful of these.
Um, we found that CPD's record keeping of its implementation of final discipline
was inconsistent. In our sample, kind of in our period of inquiry,
CPD could not provide documentation for more than a ha- more than half of
finalized reprimands for its members, and over a third
of finalized suspensions. That is to say, in the sample, over a
third of people who were suspended, those are, disciplinary outcomes for which
the department was unable to provide documentation.
The relevant city departments involved, specifically the police department, the
Office of Public Safety Administration, and the Department of Human Resources, did
not-- do not necessarily share among them a common understanding
of who owns which reporting obligations.
Um, we made some recommendations around that.
Um,
we found that neither the police department nor OPSA have clear criteria
around this idea of the use of options that people can avoid
actually serving a disciplinary suspension by sort of burning accrued
time. I-- That I think is an important, an important
practice area for a number of reasons, including as we think about
the real purposes of discipline, there's a, there's a discussion to be had about
whether we are serving those purposes if people are not actually serving a
suspension. We certainly, in the context of criminal law, think about,
incapacitation as among the purposes of punishment, that we'd remove people's
ability to commit further harm for some period of time.
We're obviously not serving that end if people are-- people have
no kind of interruption in being out on the street exercising police
powers, even, even though they've been assigned a disciplinary suspension.
There also are certainly consistency and fairness questions around who is allowed
to exercise options and under what circumstances.
Um, and then again, of no surpri-- of, of, of, I think,
significant importance to this body, we found that incomplete and inaccurate
disciplinary records impact the application of progressive discipline and, and
preclude the city from analyzing trends in disciplinary histories
that might be of service in efforts at early intervention and risk
detection, to, to manage the city's exposure.
Um, we published a product, this is sort of a descriptive product on CPD's
response to hate crimes and hate incidents.
So this, this was really an effort to improve the public's access to
information about how CPD handles allegations
that, crimes are committed in a, in bias-motivated
circumstances. Um, see, this is an area where CPD has certainly made
recent efforts to improve public information on hate crime reporting.
Um, we noted some areas which might bear further consideration, including
allocation of staff and, and approaches to public
reporting. In addition to our performance evaluations,
as you all know, the other kind of critical function of our public safety section
is to review closed disciplinary investigations that are conducted by the Bureau of
Internal Affairs and by COPA. Um, we review
every one. We review every disciplinary investigation closed by BIA or COPA, and we
do that really for two reasons. W-- As, as laid out in the
ordinance, one is to make recommendations to inform and improve
future misconduct investigations.
The other is to recommend the reopening of any investigation that we
find, to have a deficiency which materially affects its
outcome. That is to say, where something went so wrong that, that we cannot be
confident in the landing place of the investigation.
So in the fourth quarter, that the, our investigative analysis unit
looked at two hundred and sixty-six closed disciplinary investigations and opened
twenty-four of them for an in-depth review.
Again, just a, a selected example here is a COPA
investigation, where we identified
that CO- that COPA had not addressed the possibility of
a false statement. They had-- CO-COPA's investigation did not consider or did not
evidence a consideration one way or the other of whether one of the accused members
had made a false statement to a supervising officer.
We recommended the reopening of that investigation.
We have, we have written and spoken at length about how critical it is that
CPD's rule against false reports be,
enforced in an aggressive and appropriate way.
This is, this is really part of that effort in my view.
So we recommended that COPA reopen this investigation to consider whether Rule
fourteen, the rule against false reports, had been violated.
COPA accepted the recommendation, reopened the investigation, and upon reopening,
sustained a Rule fourteen violation against one of the subject members and
recommended their separation. This is, in my view, a, a good demonstration of
the sort of oversight value in this particular function.
This is, this is getting at investigative quality.
We are not recommending particular outcomes in these investigations one way or the
other, but this function is set up to identify gaps in
investigative quality. Um, and I think this, this case is a good example of how
that, what that looks like and how that can work, and I appreciate COPA's accepting
the recommendation in this particular case.
We also sent a notification, regarding misconduct investigations
involving a, a specific Sig Sauer weapon.
Um, this is one of the weapons which C- which is
appro-- which was approved as a CPD duty weapon.
So the Chicago Police Department is unusual among major city police
departments in that it does not procure duty weapons for its members, but
rather members get their own weapons.
Um, that is, as I say, unusual among major city departments.
One of the weapons which was approved t- for members to carry as a duty
weapon was one, w- was this Sig Sauer P three
twenty. In recent years, there have been a number of documented cases of
unintentional discharges of that weapon that have resulted in law enforcement
agencies across the country discontinuing the use of that particular model
as a duty weapon. Um, the, the concern that's been raised here is the
risk that the weapon will discharge without a trigger pull.
Um, so the notification that we sent had to do with a number of misconduct
investigations in which CPD members had been accused
of some misconduct around the discharge of this type of
weapon.And the concern that we raised was once
CPD had joined those other law enforcement agencies in discontinuing the use of
this weapon as a service weapon, we wanna make sure that we did not-- we were not
disciplining CPD members for an equipment malfunction.
So we recommended that the department go back and review any misconduct
investigations where, members had been disciplined
arising out of an, an improper discharge of this particular
weapon. Ah, CPD recommended, excuse me,
CPD responded that they-- it found a sufficient basis t- existed to
support the outcomes and penalties in each case where this was an
issue. Um, some of these
cases were with, were COPA cases. COPA did not respond to
this, notification despite their statutory
obligation to do so. Um, turning to our
audit and program review section, publications in the fourth quarter
included an audit of the Chicago Fire Department's annual fire prevention
inspection and tests. This is obviously a matter of
significant life and safety concern for Chicagoans, and, and
this audit found at a high level that the Fire Prevention Bureau was not completing
annual inspections of buildings as required by the city's fire code.
Because of missing and inaccurate data, the Fire Prevention Bureau did not have or
maintain a complete and accurate inventory of the buildings that require
an inspection under that code. Where we don't know how-- we don't know what
buildings we're responsible for, the city is not well-positioned, needless to say,
to inspect them all for the safety of either the Chicagoans using those buildings
or pointedly for the city employees, we expect to rush
into those buildings when something goes wrong.
Of the buildings and tenant spaces which are reflected in the database, which we
know to be an incomplete universe, only sixteen point eight percent of those
received an annual inspection within a twelve-month period.
And in fact, nearly half of those buildings had not been inspected in five years or
more. We published a second
follow-up, um-
Can I stop you right there?
Yes.
Um, what was, the fire department's response to that?
Was there a determination that there needs to be a, a change from a
record-keeping standpoint? Is this a personnel issue?
Is it a mix of those and/or other things?
A mix of both of those, I think would be a fair characterization of the fire
department's response on that matter.
What did OIG think of the fire department's written
response?
Um,
I think that we see both of
those issues, both the quality of information management systems
and staffing and staffing allocation as ones-- as threads that
frequently run through departments' responses to our recommendations.
Um, where there are such, salient life
safety concerns as there are here, again, both for members of the public and for
city employees on the front lines of emergency response, I hope that both of
those things will be prioritized, including from a budget perspective.
Okay. Thank you.
Um,
e- also kind of addressing life safety concerns, we had a second
follow-up to our second audit of, fire
department's response times to medical emergencies.
So I, I emphasize there that this is the second follow-up to the second
audit to say this is an issue which OIG has been
grappling with for a long time now, going back to twenty
thirteen. OIG's original audit on, on emer- emergency medical services response
times was at this point thirteen years ago.
Um, the bottom line here is that very little has changed since twenty
thirteen. So in our original audit and our follow-up work on that,
and then our second audit in twenty twenty-one, and now our two follow-ups
there, the bottom line continues to be that the city
is, is not, is not
positioned to comply with best prac-- to align with best practices on
emergency medical service response times.
This continues to be an area where I think there are similarly information
management concerns and, and kind of systems obstacles.
Um, the fact of the matter is
very little progress has been made in the intervening thirteen
years. Um, finally here, we
note a follow-up to our audit on the Chicago Department of Public Health's
construction and demolition debris recycling enforcement.
Um, I-- this is-- there's a, there's a really good news story here,
which, which we don't always have the opportunity to tell in front of this body.
And so when we do, I wanna make sure that we -- I wanna make sure that we talk
about that. One of the things we addressed in this audit of CDPH's C
and D debris recycling enforcement was the fact that the code, the municipal code
required the creation of a devoted fund which took
in, costs collected by the city, and then those, those m-- that
money was to be used for related purposes around the
appropriate disposition of construction and demolition debris.
One of the findings in our audit was that that fund had not been either
stood up or, or funded appropriately.
And in response to those findings and our recommendations,
CDPH worked with other relevant city departments in the city's kind of
administrative operations to establish that fund, and the city then
transferred into it unallocated funds that sort of made it whole as it should
have been from its creation. And I, I think, you know, that's a-- that is a good
news story. So I wanna make sure that we, we highlight that here.
Um, briefly, other advisories and notifications, other kind of
oversight products that we published in the fourth quarter.
Um, we had an advisory on the Chicago Moves program
and, and more generally, we looked there at reducing fraud risk in
emergency preparations. I-- we've talked a bit about the PPP loan
program and how much vulnerability there was to fraud in that program.
That is a risk that's probably inherent to emergency response programs, where there
is some sort of emergency which requires a
rush to implement a program. There are risks around that sort of
situation. And so the advisory we published here recognizes very
much that Chicago Moves was a kind of one-time program.
This is a-- this was a program where the city distributedum,
spend restricted preloaded debit cards, and the idea was to
defray transit costs during the pandemic.
Um, and so
y-you know, not to say that w-we necessarily anticipate the specific
circumstances around Chicago moves to repeat themselves, but there are risks here
which might come into play in any kind of emergency response, and we would be well
served by being prepared for them.
So we notified the mayor's office of a number of, o-of those risks associated with
kind of expediting programs outside of the city's regular
procurement process in, in an emergency response.
Um, this program lacked controls to detect and prevent
misuse. So a total of about two hundred and two thousand dollars
was spent in excess over the loaded value of
these tran-- of these cards. Um, and about a-- about half of
that was-- were funds that were misspent altogether, so that is to say money that
was spent at retailers which were not among those covered by
the program. That's not how that money was supposed to be spent.
Worth noting here, the city
was not itself on the hook for this excess spend,
but this is certainly a-- this is a failure of controls of which we wanted the city
to, to be aware. We sent a
notification concerning driver's license monitoring.
We sent this notification to the Department of Streets and Sanitation, where we
identified in the course of some investigative work some,
s-the steps that the department was currently taking to make sure that people
driving as parts of their city jobs had a valid driver's license.
We also identified some ways that that process could be improved so that if
someone, for example, was arrested and had their driver's license suspended or
revoked, the city could minimize its, its risk that that person
would be driving a city vehicle while they were not permitted to do
so. Um, we issued this notification, as I say, to the Department of Streets and
Sanitation, but, but it is certainly an issue which
transcends that department and touches any department where, where city employees
are driving vehicles. And so, that-- the
sort of responsibility for that response and f-- therefore for a unified city
policy was sort of transferred to the Department of Human Resources.
There has not yet been a policy implemented, in response to these
recommendations, but we understand that work is underway with the Department of
Human Resources on that policy. We have a notification of a
federal settlement. The city's debarment rules permit the city to take certain
actions against city contractors when they-- when there is some sort of
triggering event, around wrongdoing.
So we notified the Department of Procurement Services of a recent settlement that
involved a city contr-- a c-- excuse me, a city subcontractor.
Um, the settlement resolved the federal government's claim that the subcontractor
had submitted false claims for payment.
Uh, we notified DPS so that they could take any action they deemed appropriate
regarding that subcontractor, which might have theoretically included debarring the
subcontractor from city work. DPS
took no action, but said that it would take-- it would keep the
settlement agreement in mind.
Um, finally in this category, and we're almost at the end here, so I appreciate
your patience, was an advisory concerning unannounced inspections of city
premises. So the municipal code provides that the Office of Inspector
General, in order to conduct its oversight work, will have access to each
department's premises, equipments, personnel, books, records, and papers,
that those shall be made available as soon as practicable to the Inspector
General. Uh, despite that requirement in the
ordinance, we identified two
situations in sort of recent efforts
where OIG was denied access to city premises for the
purposes of conducting an unannounced inspection.
Unannounced inspections are, are a valuable tool in
oversight for perhaps obvious reasons.
It allows us to identify conditions as they exist,
in a kind of unexamined state. That, that is a, a good
way to know what is happening when no one is watching.
Um, and so that's why those are an important tool in oversight.
The two situations we identified here was one where, OIG
investigators were denied access by the Department of Law
to, the mayor's so-called gift room.
Um, the mayor's office had eventually-- we had eventually learned from the mayor's
office that gifts accepted on behalf of the city were being stored in what the
mayor's office had described in documents as a gift room in City Hall, but
the Department of Law denied OIG access to that room when we attempted
to conduct an unannounced inspection of it.
Um, we learned later that, in fact, that room
ha-was not constructed until after OIG attempted to inspect it,
and that, I think, maybe underscores the value of an unannounced inspection.
We were told that this room existed. We came to conduct an unannounced inspection.
We were blocked access, and then we later found city records confirming that the
room, in fact, had not-- was not, was not built until after that attempted
inspection. The second situation we identified in this notification was one
where we attempted to inspect a city office to determine whether
certain items prohibited by city policy were present in that office, and again,
the Department of Law denied OIG's access for purposes of an unannounced
inspection. We were labor-later able to confirm that the prohibited
items were in fact present in that city office.
So we made recommendations here, that the mayor's office take whatever steps
necessary to ensure that OIG was given the sta-statutory access to
city premises. The mayor's office did not commit to any responsive action.
And then finally, as, as is, are the, the case on an ongoing
basis, OIG has statutory authority to monitor the city's employment
actions. This is sort of post-Shackman litigation work where,
the ongoing responsibility for making sure that the city's following the
rules in its employment and, and hiring decisions came to rest with OIG
after the city's substantial compliance with the Shackman decrees.
Um, so this is regular ongoing monitoring of the city's employment actions.
In the fourth quarter, we
monitored six hiring sequences across three city departments, including
the, while also doing the various other kind of ongoing
tasks assigned by the city's employment plan.
One selected case here was a notification we sent to the Department of Human
ResourcesRegarding a mistimed test at the Department of
Aviation, th-the test administration and, and ensuring that, that
applicants are provided fair opportunities to test for city jobs is an important
area of focus in that work.
So Chairman, that concludes my general summary of the quarterly report, but I'd be
happy to answer any questions.
Thank you. Uh, Alderman Lawson.
Thank you, Chair, and thank you General Witzberg.
Um, I always ask about the PPP numbers.
And so, I'm, I'm pleased to see that the progress continues.
Yes.
I'm a little concerned that with your departure it may not, because there's
still a lot of cases left in the hopper, right?
Yes.
Well, can you ballpark that for us?
Um, in the last quarterly report, um...
So, so we are-- One of the things we're mandated to do in the quarterly report is
identify that universe of cases open more than twelve months, and there were
something like eighty of those were PPP loan fraud cases
specifically. I will say we have made very substantial
progress so far in this quarter in closing out more of those cases, and I
won't have those numbers exactly for another two weeks or so until the end of this
quarter. But, I have every reason to think that
that investigative effort will, will continue, and, and we've made a lot of
progress since we last reported on the numbers.
B- the total number was over a thousand, correct?
The total number of loans, of PPP loans-
Right
... issued to people under our jurisdiction was about a thousand.
Okay.
Now, some of... Uh, and I should say some of those loans were totally appropriate
and, and-
Right
... no wrongdoing attached to them.
Of the universe of loans where there were some indicia of fraud, sometimes
stronger than others, the reality is that we, along with
many of our colleagues in investigative work across the country, have, have gone
through a sort of triaging and prioritization process.
We are certainly not gonna, we were not gonna conduct a thousand investigations.
Um, so we have prioritized our investigative efforts.
Some of those have been administrative cases, some of them have been criminal cases
with our prosecuting partners. And in prioritizing the administrative
cases, we have looked at factors like whether people occupy positions
of kind of elevated public trust, whether they have access to city money, if we
have law enforcement officers signing sworn reports, et cetera.
Great. Great. Um, I'll leave that there.
Um, I, am concerned that you,
the administration is not complying with the ordinance that we passed last
summer, on access to records. And-
Me too
...
I appreciate you raising that because I think there are concerns about, you
know, the or- the city council passes a law and, and then the administration
doesn't get to choose what it gets to enforce in an act or, or doesn't.
Um, and, and that's salient right now with my, my friends, dealing with
the budget. Um, what's the remedy?
I mean, do, is there a claim? Do we, is there a, a, a
lawsuit? Uh, does this go to court?
What does that look like if, the administration refuses to follow, the law
of the city?
I appreciate this question. I, I'm concerned about it too.
Um, the Illinois Supreme Court has determined
that the Office of Inspector General does not have separate legal standing as a
separate legal entity to sue the city.
So, y- you know, this is an interesting topic of
discussion in the national oversight community.
We certainly have colleagues in other cities who have filed suit against their city
governments for access to records.
That is not an option that we have available to us here in the, given the current
state of the law. Um,
and, and frankly, that is one of the reasons which,
that's one of the reasons for which the legislative effort that we undertook in
this committee, was so important because it is really, it,
we're... There are not a, not a lot of options here in terms of how
to clarify OIG's authority. And so,
I remain hopeful that,
we will see effective implementation and compliance
of, of the ordinance passed last summer.
The fact remains that ordinance was passed in July.
It became effective in September.
We made our first request for records during the fourth quarter in late
November, under that provision.
Um, and so
there has been plenty of time
in my view. I, I am concerned about this too.
I, I, in terms of what the options are, I, I, I
suppose that if we are not able to make any progress
working with our colleagues at the Department of Law that, that we will be
back before this body seeking further refinement or
clarification of that ordinance to the extent that there's
any confusion about what it says.
I certainly hope we don't water anything down because it's not being followed.
Um-
Oh, agreed
You know, I, I, I sort of-
I, I was thinking sort of in the other direction.
W- well, right. Um, you know, a- as, again, an aggrieved citizen,
do they have standing here? Um, is there s- is there some legal enforcement
or is it an issue that we need to raise, publicly and,
and, or with the state, right? As, as... Thank you, Alderman Link.
Um, so maybe more on that because we will be talking to some people who wanna be
the IG, right? And, their interactions with the mayor on this
issue is probably really important. Um, couple other quick things.
Uh, hundred and eighty thousand dollars in campaign contributions
returned. Um, it looks like it was thirteen different cases.
Are those thirteen different campaign committees as
well?
Um, not necessarily.
Right.
Some of those may be from the same, the same recipients.
Were... So that's my question. How many different campaigns were involved here?
We don't report the identities of the campaigns-
Fair
... at this, at this cure stage. Because to be clear-
Right
... you know, in, in as far as the ethics ordinance is concerned, if the
contribution gets cured, then nobody has, nobody's-
Right
... committed any misconduct.
So to that point, does, does that number include,
a, a, a self-cure, right? Like I find
out somebody's doing a zoning change that I didn't know about and I took a check
from them three months ago, so I'm gonna say, "Hey, we gotta deal with this now."
That's an excellent question, and people certainly can self-cure in that way.
Right.
That wouldn't land in this report.
Right.
We ne- If that never comes through us, then we wouldn't, that wouldn't be reported
here.
Right.
But that certainly could happen.
So I'm gonna ask you about the-
Apologies for interrupting.
Sure.
Point of information, Alderman Abasquez.
Thank you very much. Yeah, related to that question, there's actually a question I
had. So yes, you're not, you're not going to share who,
but asking the amount of is a different question, right?
Is it
13 different campaigns? Is it two campaigns with 13?
Just knowing the amount of recipients would be different than who.
Right.
So I was wondering if that's something we could find out.
It's in the report.
Um, just to sort of
aggregate the amounts to understand whether certain contributors or recipients were
responsible for more than their fair share of this hundred and eighty thousand.
Am I understanding the question correctly?
I think, yeah, when I'm thinking about a hundred eighty thousand, I'm trying to
figure out is that ten different people with eighteen thousand or is that two
people with a hundred and twenty thousand, the other one has sixty thousand.
I see.
So it's more trying to figure out how many folks you're talking about.
Yeah. I see. Um, that is not something we have ever reflected in the
reporting before. Let me give that some thought in terms of what we can comfortably
report-
Oh.
-um, about those cured cases.
I, I think it's in the report, actually.
Well, we have-- We-
I mean, you have-- there's thirteen cases ranging from
one of them is like seventy-five thousand down to
twenty-five hundred.
That's right. What we don't, what we don't say here is whether some of those are
the same committee.
Fair. Fair.
So let me give that some thought.
Right. But there's definitely like a one-third of this is one case.
Correct.
One committee.
Correct.
Right.
To kind of elaborate a little bit, the, the reason the concern is if it's the most
we've seen in a quarter-
Yeah.
-I wanna figure out if it's more people or is it one
or two players that are having larger amounts, and that's why it's that highest
quarter.
Uh, understood. I, I, I will say what, what we do have in the public reporting for
this quarter is that there are a, a handful
of
individual contributions where the, the amounts are large here.
So we have seventy-one thousand dollars in returned funds in one interaction,
forty-eight thousand five hundred in another, twenty-five thousand five hundred in
another. So those are certainly the biggest pieces of the total.
So maybe the better question is, is it one contributor who's causing a lot of
trouble? Or, or a handful of people that need to be educated that, hey,
these are not permissible under any circumstance.
Actually, I don't even think it's an either/or. It's all those questions, right?
Both. Both. Right. Right.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Um, I-- these are good questions, and I, I, I do think,
again, the, the campaign finance report is-- or the campaign finance oversight
work, rather, is, is near and dear to my heart because I really do think when we
talk about, fostering trust in government, I, I
think that getting illegal money out of City Hall is, is really important to
people. These are good questions, and, and let me give some thought to whether
there's more we can say as we look ahead to the next quarter to kind of give some
improved transparency around this work.
I think for, for a little bit of context, my apologies, is like I know in the
beginning you mentioned like twenty elected officials from the city, so there is
some level of number count there.
Yep.
So whatever that could look like I think would be helpful for us.
Yeah.
Especially if we're trying to make the case that we're moving away from like our
history.
Yep.
So.
That's really helpful.
The only other thing on that is th-these are not new cases.
Some of them go back to twenty-one, twenty-two.
Um, I know some of them were filed in twenty-four and twenty-five and then just,
you know, the last quarter, but that just seems like a long lag time for something
that, is self-reporting. How are you guys--
So you're i-- you're identifying these through, the quarterly
reports. Um, you know, sometimes this is hard to find, right?
Yeah.
An LLC has multiple members. One of those members makes a contribution.
That's, you know, how, how are you going about that?
It's a really good question. These are both proactive and reactive-
Okay.
-investigative leads. So the reactive one, sometimes someone will call our hotline
and say, "My alderperson took an illegal contribution from a developer in my
neighborhood." That certainly happens, and we pursue those.
Others of these are proactively generated leads out of this data analysis that I
described, where we take the state's quarterly reporting data, and we kind
of bump it up against information about restricted contributors.
Um, so some of both of those things.
There are, um-- That is not a straightforward exercise,
that data comparison, of course, because entities have different names.
People have different spellings of their names.
We have entities, corporate entities that have related-- You know, we'll sometimes
we'll have a, a private company or law firm, for example, that might have an
affiliated political action committee.
There's a legal analysis to be done there around shared control.
Do they have the same business address?
Do they, do they have overlapping decision makers, et cetera?
So depending on the circumstance, that can be more or less
time-consuming. Um, some of what you are seeing here with these contributions
going back to, for example, twenty twenty-one, those are,
those are likely to be contributions dating to that time which have
own-- which we've more recently identified in this proactive data
analysis as we've kind of gotten that up and running.
Is there a restricted contributors list that is public?
This is an excellent question-
Yeah.
-and one that we have grappled with.
So the municipal code requires a publication, the publication of
a list. Um, that responsibility lives,
I believe, with, um-- This has gone back and forth a bit
as, as AIS and, and 2FM and Do
It have-
Sure. Sure.
-split and combined-
That's about right.
-over the year. There is a list which is required to be published, and one of the
things we look at is whether, for example, campaigns have consulted that list,
whether, you know, whether a contributor appears on that list.
Not all restricted contributors do, but there is a list.
Okay. So the, the ones that are known are on a list.
There may be others that are unknown, obviously.
And, and then, like, like I said, I might not know someone.
They may not know that they're gonna be applying for a city contract or a zoning
change.
That's why the cure process exists.
Right.
Because there certainly is some room for good faith mistake-making here, and in my
view, that's why the cure process in, is in place.
Can we just send the link through the chair if, if that's possible-
To the office.
-so we can all have eyes on that? And then my final question, I promise, Chair.
That's fine.
Um, what would be, some examples of prohibited
items that you would be looking for, in a government, in
a city office?
Um, I wanna avoid talking too much about the details of any particular
investigative effort, but I will say that there are various city policies which
prohibit the, the contraband of all kinds, right?
People can't have
drugs or weapons or alcohol or
many other kinds of things in their city offices.
So specifically like legal restrictions as opposed to, I mean, th-th-there's
campaign things that you shouldn't have in your city office too-
Sure
... or files that you shouldn't have, but-
Yep
... a six-pack of beer in the, the ward office fridge might be a
problem.
Um, that is a, a I, I will leave, leave it to you to consult the city's alcohol
policy on that.
Fair enough. Fair enough. All right.
Thank, thank you again, g- General Witzberg.
Uh, I, I appreciate th- this time that you've had and your time in the city.
I don't know if we'll see you again before your end date, but wanna thank you
for your service.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Alderman Lee.
Just following up, on my colleague's line of questioning 'cause
this just came to mind. Um,
in the case where somebody is, you've, there's a contribution that's been
made, and, you know, within a six-month period, because I know it's six
months before and six months after is generally, the time that you
should not be accepting contributions, where it's sort of un-
unbeknownst to you. Uh, I, I'm wanting to just make sure
that we're filing everything that we should as well.
Um, have, has the OIG's
officers, ethics even provided any sort of,
I guess, guidance or tools to assist with that?
Because there could be m- lots of different avenues, by
which someone is doing business with the city or applying for funding or applying
for a grant or something like that. Um, and it's a lot to keep up with.
Not that we don't want to comply, but, like, in order to comply ,
you know, the, the, the burden I'm talking about and, you know,
the, the amount of, or the different places that we have to
go to, I guess.
Yeah.
So.
Well, I think I, I agree. I think there are a lot of-
Yeah
... there are a lot of places to go. There are a lot of different processes by
which someone-
Mm-hmm
... or an entity might find their way into a con- a restricted contributor
pool. Um, I also think there's this issue of related entities where
you could be doing all of you, a-
Uh-huh
... a candidate or a committee could be doing all of the diligence in the world and
not have any reason to know from the name of an entity that it might be
legally cognizable as related to-
Right
... a PAC, for example. I mean, you just might not, that might not be apparent on
its face. Um,
so, again, in my, in my view, when we send out these cure
notices, we sort of lay out what, what the problem is-
Mm-hmm
... that we have identified. And,
much, much more often than not, people respond to those cure
notices-
Yeah
... for exactly this reason and say like, "Didn't know, didn't realize the time
overlap, didn't realize these were the same people," whatever the case may be.
So,
again, I, my view of the cure process is that it addresses exactly this
reality, which is that it can be very hard to know, despite best efforts,
what, what exact c- restrictions apply to any one
contribution.
Fair enough. Thank you.
And thank you for your service. I, I'm realizing that this may be your
last, ethics committee meeting with us.
We hope not. But still-
But I, but-
More than one committee of, of thanks is, is, is good.
I'll take it.
In, in the event that it is, I, I don't wanna miss the
opportunity to thank you on the record for your service.
Um-
Thank you
... I think you were the, the first person I voted for, for from
an appointment perspective. You were appointed shortly after I was appointed.
Um, so this will be different for me to, like, operate in, in
city council without you at the helm of the OIG.
Um, but I've, I've really enjoyed working with you, have the utmost
respect for your professionalism and how you've led the department with all of the
things that are thrown your way. Um, and-
Thank you very much
... wish you all the best in whatever the next chapter holds for you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Great. Um, seeing no other questions, I think we will go on
to the last item, which is the 311
audit.
Wonderful.
Um, oh, and, before we do so, I want to acknowledge that
Alderwoman Taylor, has filed a Rule
49, request to participate remotely.
Um, is there a motion to allow her to do so at today's
meeting? Rule 59, excuse me. Sorry.
Thank you. Uh, Alderman Vazquez so moves.
All those in favor signify by saying aye. All those opposed.
In the opinion of the chair, the ayes have it.
Alderwoman Taylor is permitted to attend remotely and,
take it away.
Thank you. Um, I'll, I will talk briefly about a recently published audit
on the city's 311 service request process.
This is a report that came out of our audit and program review section.
The folks who did this project are in the gallery, so I appreciate their hard work
very much.
Um,
as you all know, those in this chamber know, know better than most,
311, which is the city's mechanism for providing
non-emergency city services, is a critical point
of contact. This is how Chicagoans get what they need from the
city whenever it is not accompanied by lights and sirens.
This is a, a vital conduit for city services, the most basic
of the city's obligations to its residents.
So 311, which is an operation, it, it is a, it is a production of, of
OEMC, the Office of Emergency Management and Communica- Communications.
311 tracks the city's response to complaints using work
orders. Um, a complaint or an issue is reported to 311.
Someone, either one of your constituents, sometimes one of your
staffers, one of you, one of us, someone reports an issue to
311, that's logged as a service request.
Depending on the type of that request, a city department will respond to
confirm the issue and to determine next steps.
Each step in that process is tracked as a work order, which is kind of a
constituent part of the service request.
Um, some complaints require several work orders from multiple departments
before they can be resolved. You all have seen this complication.
We've looked at this, how this comes up, for example, when there's a sewer
cave-in in a city street. There are a whole lot of cooks in the kitchen to fix
that problem, and the fact that there are many steps in the process and many
people with their hands on those levers is, is kind of one way to think about the
complexity of this service request work order process.
Um-When an issue and all related work orders, that
is all of the steps along the way, have been resolved, the department that last
had their hands on the problem, completes the last
work order and closes it. That serves to close out the entire service
request. So
this, the, the objectives here of this audit were to determine whether
311 is in fact providing members of the public with good
information about the status of a service request in keeping with its
mission, which is, which is explicitly to document, monitor, and provide easy
access to that information.
Um, you know, public transparency in government is
sort of a, a value for its own sake. I think in this particular situation,
again, because 311 is the, is the mechanism by which Chicagoans get
basic fundamental municipal services, we are in a bad
place in terms of, of the city's confidence in, in
the, of the public's confidence in the city's ability to do its job when people
can't figure out the status of, of a request that they've made for help.
So, so that goes to the first of these audits, excuse me, the objectives.
The second objective here
was to determine whether 311 is, is assisting city
departments as it is intended to do to improve customer
service and manage resources more efficiently on the basis of information it's
receiving. So where the city is getting millions of
311 complaints, over the course of a year, there, there
can and should be an opportunity for the city to learn from what it is hearing from
Chicagoans to proactively improve city services.
And so the second objective here is to look at whether the city is successfully
doing that. The first of these findings is that the 311's
public-facing platforms do not provide users with clear information
on the overall process, the status of their request, or work order
time frames, when people might reasonably expect help to be
coming. Some key points in that finding, 311
staff are certainly aware of the importance of high-quality information
relevant to its mission, and they're taking steps to
improve both public-facing and internal aspects of, of
Salesforce, of the information management system.
Um, that said, the 311 system lacks an easily accessible
explanation of the complaint response process.
I imagine that is, that is a concern which is no stranger to your ward staff.
Um, the information available on Chi 311, that's the app
that, that people use to interface with the system, may be inconsistent with the
work that actually happened. This is the scenario we heard about from people where,
where they say, you know, "There's a pothole in my street. It's dangerous.
I called 311 and reported it. I'm looking in the system, and it says that that
request has been completed, but I'm looking out my window, and I still see the
pothole." That is a difficult set of circumstances under which
to ask Chicagoans to trust the city's ability to provide basic municipal
services. Um, we found that departments do
not, classify duplicate complaints
consistently, which can contribute to misleading information.
It is not at all unusual for there to be duplicate 311
complaints, either because more than one person calls 311 to report a
problem, or because when they are unable to get good and
accurate and up-to-date information about the status of their own service request,
someone might call again and, and repeat a request.
Um, we found that actual wait times for complaints do not align with those
displayed online. That is, we're not doing a good job of helping people kind of
manage expectations about how long city services will take.
We did, we did a great deal of public engagement
on this issue, again because I think it is so fundamental to, to the
interactions between Chicagoans and their government.
We, we ask people to pay their taxes to the city so we can provide city services.
This is how we get city services to people who need them.
And so much to the credit of our project team and our community engagement team,
we, we spoke with a lot of Chicagoans, again including some who work in your
offices, about this issue. And we,
we-- So we did a citywide survey. Um,
we distributed basically palm cards and digital information all over
the city that said, "Tell us about your experiences with 311." We
also, spoke with staff at five aldermanic offices.
And we have here and throughout the report kind of observations that we heard from
Chicagoans about their experiences here.
One person told us that when a request is completed, it's not clear what the
outcome is. There's only a message that it's completed.
The lack of clarity in what happens with the request, if anything at all, this
person says, "has discouraged my use of the app.
It feels like a waste of time to report problems that won't be addressed."
Someone told us here that they wished the app would tell them more about what
different phases of work meant, just so that people could tell sort of what, what,
if anything, was happening as things went.
And then we note here that multiple community members and ward staff use the term
black hole when referring to their experiences with 311, that they would call
311, and the information they provided would go into a sort of black hole
of, of city operations. Again, as we--
That, that's a big deal when we think about efforts to improve public trust in
government and, and whether we are running a government in which we can ask people
to be confident. So
recommendations to the department here.
We made some recommendations around clarifying the complaint process for
complainants, including that 311 should provide
better and clearer information to the public, kind of in summary here.
Easy, easy access to knowledge articles,
sort of ex-explanations of how these various things work.
Um, we made recommendations, around reviewing and updating
information on the city's website and in the mobile application, and inclu-to
include explanations of what happens when, a
repeated... What happens in the case of duplicate complaints so that we can sort of
hopefully unburden the system and clarify for users how,
how duplicate complaints are treated.
We made recommendations to ensure that departments provide accurate information
about duplicate complaints, as I mentioned.
Um, we looked at the creation and distribution of guidance
to city departments to improve the likelihood that departments are
using various features of Salesforce correctly and that we are
categorizing complaints in a correct and consistent way so people have a good view
into what's actually happening.We recommended that 311 provide the
public with definitions of those various categories,
and that they continue to implement whatever systems
solutions, technological solutions are available, to,
to make responses in the field more efficient.
In response to those recommendations, OEMC committed to clarifying the
service request life cycle, reinforcing existing guidance and
training, developing guidance to support the con- the more consistent
treatment of closures of complaints, to work to provide clarity
around statuses in, in public messaging materials, the, the kind of
explainer information that's available to people, and to continue to work with
other city departments to improve the information management system.
The second finding here has to do with, this
notion that we talked about in the objectives that the city is getting a
huge amount of information from people who call 311.
That is an opportunity for the city to learn a great deal about what is and is not
working in the provision of city services.
Um, and we found that 311's potential to improve city services and its ability
to provide a deeper analysis is, is really hampered by, by
limited staffing, in the positions which might be situated to
do that. Um,
311 is, is to provide support to user departments,
but there is no city response-- There's no city body responsible
for actually carrying out this endeavor to, to
use 311 data to deliver improved customer service and manage resources more
efficiently, despite that being explicitly included as, as part of
311's mission.
So our recommendations here include, a, a more
proactive and intentional approach to do just that, to develop staffing
and policies and procedures to ensure that city departments are-- that the
city, rather, is positioned to, to do this kind of proactive improvement of city
services using what we learn. We also recommended a staffing
analysis which we've had much discussion of in other city departments, including
but not limited to the police department, where as the city,
really improves its approach to
budgeting, we ought to think about not how many people we had last
year in a job title, but how many people we might need going forward to actually
carry out the function successfully which we have assigned to city departments.
I think this is a really good example of that.
We need to start, starting sort of from the beginning, starting from a clean
page. We need to give some thought to how many people we need working at
311 in order to perform the duties that, that we
want that function to perform. Um, in response to
this, this finding and these recommendations, OEMC stated it would reach out to
departments to more proactively check in with them about system
needs. It would ensure departments are aware of what resources, training, and
support do exist, and that it would coordinate with OBM as part
of its annual budget review process, to ensure that 311 is
equipped to, to support its mission.
So, our conclusion-- This is just the conclusion language from the report and,
and, and nothing we haven't talked about here.
Just to underscore that 311 is the city's primary mechanism for
delivering all city services that don't come with lights and sirens.
And so I think this is really a vital conduit for us to get Chicagoans
what they, what they need from the city i-in a
very, a very everyday way that has
profound impact on people, on the quality of life in Chicago's neighborhoods.
So, Chairman, I'll leave it there and be happy to answer any
questions.
Great. Before I turn it over to Alderman Vasquez for the first set of
questions, just wanna commend you and your team for working on this.
Um, I think that in my opinion, this is one of the most
important audits that your office has put out, certainly in
my time in office, because at the aldermanic level, we can certainly
appreciate how increasingly 311 sits at the nexus
of things. And while I'll have some questions and,
statements to share in a minute, I just wanna uplift how important this
work is. Um, so thank you for, putting this
high on the list on your audit report.
I'll pass those, those thanks on to the team.
Yeah.
I'm glad they're here to-- I'm glad they're here to hear that view of it.
Yeah. Um, Alderman Vasquez.
Thank you for being so calm in articulating where I'm about to
go. Thank you, I love you and the team for focusing on this
one. When we talk about people having any level of confidence in
government, city government is driven by the fact that people pay
taxes and expect a return on their investments.
And we've seen time and time again, and I say that as somebody who all last term
worked to make improvements at 311.
Um, I learned about this 'cause I put in a tree re- request, tree trim.
They told me fourteen days. A year later, they told me fourteen days, the exact
same ticket, which led to us going to the, to 311 and
OEMC and actually changing the way they look at that.
Because to your point, you open a ticket, you close a ticket.
You have an average amount of times it actually takes, and if you level with
people, they'll give you the respect rather than these false expectations.
And so I appreciate you saying that.
There's also things that, um... And I'll g- I'll get to
the question, but se-- I mean, you could tell my head was, my head was about to
fall off my neck during this whole presentation.
Um,
did you all have any conversations related to the fact that nobody can look into
another ward's 311 numbers and results?
'Cause there's no way to compare across wards to see what's
happening. W- If you're seeing more requests of a certain type in a certain ward,
what completion rates are looking like, there's no access to that.
Was that part of any of the investigation?
Um, I, I think that would fall under our kind of broader observations about
transparency around-
Yeah
... performance and how these things w- these things work.
I, I will say, as you know from the data dashboards that we have on our information
portal,
there's almost always an interesting geographic dimension to data
on city services. Chicago is very much a city of neighborhoods, and challenges and
opportunities in city services look very different in some parts of the city than
others. And so I can certainly imagine a world in which improved public
transparency would permit that sort of inquiry.
Yeah. And, and I think also, like
My understanding when we did the work is the city has five different
contracts with Salesforce, and yet it was having a hard time finding the one
person to address the issues So even when we talk about the
contracts and how much money is going into it
that's inefficient. Um, I think
the fact that we can't use Salesforce backend as a CRM for all of
our offices is a problem. So each different office has a different CRM
they're using. We use Airtable, other people use others That's add- an added
expenditure. So there are so many different points where not only
from the constituent side of it, but just us operating it, there seems to
be tons of problem. Um, a- and I
apologize because this might be in the report, but I also almost want, like, the,
like, the staff breakdown, emails, contact
information, because
it is great that the response from OEMC is we're gonna talk to different
departments about it. That doesn't lead to a level of accountability that they're
gonna execute in a way that gets the changes done in the amount of time we need it
to be, right? So, yeah. Is that
provided in the report, or can you provide as far as those points of contact?
Points of contact at 311?
311, OEMC. Anyone who has any level over 311 is,
like, what I'm looking for-
Yeah
... because we're gonna stay on them from now on.
Yeah. Um, that's an interesting question.
Um, and, and it's one to which the answer should probably be
more straightforward than it is. During the
life cycle of this audit,
there was a, a service unit
at, at OEMC devoted to this work, at least sort of in
name. And that was the unit that was referred to
in the 311 documentation on OEMC's website.
It was discussed at our entrance conference with the department.
Some of the people we spoke with over the life cycle of the audit
reported themselves as working in that unit.
Um, and then at the conclusion of the audit, the department reported that that unit
had not existed for a number of years.
Did they close that ticket? Is that- Is it gone now? Yeah?
I'm sorry.
I will, I will, I'll leave that answer to you.
Um, i- in the days and weeks since the publication of this
audit, the references to that unit have been removed from OEMC's website.
So I say all that just to say, I think there
continues to be some confusion about exactly where responsibilities for
some of these functions lie.
Yeah. The-- That's-- Thank you for sharing that.
It's like a ghost unit at this point, is very weird.
Uh, and it doesn't help us improve anything if we're not knowing which parties we
actually need to talk to, right? Like, there are technical things that could be
done that are like algorithm changes, software changes that would
be fairly quick to do, see the responses and improvements
there that just don't, like, we don't even know to go to.
So for your, your example
about the difference between a service and-- service request and work orders,
right? Somebody puts in a ticket for a pothole.
Uh, CDOT comes by and says, "That's not a pothole, that's a sinkhole." It goes to
Department of Water Management instead of CDOT.
No one knows any of that except that the ticket got closed because C- CDOT said
it wasn't a pothole. That's a simple thing, and the fact that it
took us years to get any level of improvement is just embarrassing as a city.
And so I think, yeah. Any,
any
information beyond what's in the report that can lead us to who we need to talk
to, I would want all of that. I wanna spend so much
time, 'cause
the fact that we spent that much time last term to get one small change done and
seeing the enormity of what could be improved,
we-- it's a hard time-- it's hard for us as city council members when
we're trying to find out ways to save money
and then go asking our constituents to pay more taxes and
revenue to not improve the level of service when it can be improved.
It is unacceptable as a city, and we can do much better.
So the more you can send us as far as information, I'd really appreciate
it. Yeah, I, I-- thank you, Chairman Martin, for saying it, 'cause I
know as much as we focus on CPD,
like,
seeing this in real time and the work being done, it just kind
of got me to just-- we're bringing it back. We're gonna refocus and fix this thing.
So thank you for the work. Thank you, for the office.
And, that's all I've got.
Alderwoman Lee.
Thank you, Chairman. Um, and thank you for this audit.
I'm just gonna piggyback from my colleague here.
Um, it is absolutely
the place I think where we have the best opportunity
to improve services for our constituents. It is so frustrating.
I'm sure you heard through every conversation or survey response that you
got back. And it just seems to me the city has a really great opportunity to
leverage artificial intelligence and the data gathering piece of
this. But I think it's beyond OEMC.
There needs to be some sort of accountability, and it seems to me that within
the-- maybe the place to start is in the mayor's cabinet for-- at the
commissioner level, to, to really
assign folks to take a look at the internal processes
for, how just in that same example, pothole's not
actually a pothole, it's a sinkhole.
Um, so and, and it boils down to communication. It wasn't closed.
It was closed on the, on the CDOT end because it was
not a pothole, but it should be classified as, you know, closed and
transferred because we don't-- I mean, look, Amazon delivers a package.
Someone takes a picture and shows you that it's been delivered.
Yeah.
Why we don't have that today is kind of crazy to me.
Um, but I think that we, we have to have ways to, and I'm sure this is
part of, part of your recommendations too, it's just we've, we've gotta get the
right people sitting down at the, at, at the table thinking
through how would you want to be communicated with as a
constituent? Because i- if you-- and, and we tell people all the
time, the more people who are making these service requests
or 911 calls, the more attention it's going to get.
So now all we have are more people who are just upset with the city
vis-à-vis our ward offices because there's such incompetence happening
that seemingly the one thing that we've asked to get done isn't getting done and
it, like, consistently every time I put it in, I know it's still not done, but it's
still closed, and there's no explanation on the other end.
Yeah. I-Couldn't have said it better myself.
I think you raise, you raise many important things there, maybe two in
particular. One having to do with kind of the quality of the customer service
experience, and you know, we are all Chicagoans and likely users of 311, and I
think the question of like how would we want our, our city government to interact
with us as, as taxpayers is a vitally important one, and that, that really
was so palpable in our community engagement around this.
The other point you raise has to do with coordination between and among city
departments. That is an absolutely critical observation about the way
the city does its work, the way the city provides services.
We've talked about this many times in the public safety setting.
It's certainly true in other contexts and city services as well,
where city operations happen in an ecosystem.
There are very few problems, and therefore very few solutions, which are cabined
entirely within one city department.
And so the observation that something might go through the hands of CDOT
and Streets and, and who, who-- and, and others, you know, is a really
important one. Um, I will note here one other thing that
we've written about, and it's been a while since we talked about it in this body.
The municipal code requires the mayor to appoint an administrative
officer for the city, where one of the statutory duties of that
person is to oversee coordination among city
departments. Um, the municipal code requires that the mayor appoint an
administrative officer with the consent of this body, so that it be a city
council-conformed person. That job has gone vacant for
decades. So despite the fact that it is required in the municipal code and that one
of its statutory duties is this coordination among city departments, vital for
reasons just like this one, that position has not been filled i,
I believe since the administration of Mayor Byrne.
Oh, wow. It would seem to me that this might have been
something that would have been great to fall under the chief operating officer.
Um, I, I mean, I would have put it there just instinctively.
Um, but thank you for flagging that, 'cause certainly that, that is
clearly something that's been missing.
And look, 311 in theory is great because it's an app, it's
p- it's very accessible. You don't have to wait for a ward office to open up in the
morning to do that. You can call or you can do it on the app.
Um,
but there seems-- it, it's obvious there's, yet still a lot of work to be done.
And it's not-- I don't want anybody to walk away thinking that this is all OEMC's
fault.
No. Agreed.
Uh, the, the, this is a totality of city government responsibility.
An ecosystem problem, to be sure.
Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Agreed. Thank you.
Great. Um, few questions on my end.
Um, when is the follow-up audit likely to happen?
The ink is just dry on the original report. No.
Um, it-- you know, the timeline for follow-ups depends a little bit, on the
nature. Uh, we-- they're often, they often come at about the year mark.
Mm-hmm. Okay. Um, with regard
to
what Alderwoman Lee was mentioning about this central individual
or office, putting aside the
statutory, position that you had just mentioned, given the
current constellation of departments and employees, is
there someone or some entity that you think is best situated to
insert itself and provide that oversight and
direction?
Um,
well, I think that
it depends a little bit on the angle of approach, I guess.
I think in terms of, of leveraging the 311 data specifically for
proactive use, I, I do think that OEMC,
while I wholeheartedly agree that this is not uniquely an OEMC
problem, they're the people answering the phone when people call 311.
And so I, I really do think that OEMC is best situated
to collect that data
and, and to kind of synthesize it in a comprehensive way, and, and to distribute
it to city departments. And, and to be clear, doing just that is
part of OEMC's articulated mission for 311.
So my concern there isn't that that's situated in the wrong place, it's just that
it's not, it's not quite getting done.
And I do think that that's a staffing and a resource challenge, among other
things.
W-what was their response at a high level of that
sort of suggestion, which I think you got at in the
audit? Because I think that in some ways there is a
delicate balance and one that's tough to disentangle
between the entity that is sharing the data and then the entity that
is reviewing the data and help ensuring that it's getting
utilized in the right way.
Yeah. Um, agreed. I think it would be fair to characterize OEMC's
response as kind of acknowledging that there are staffing shortages which are
prohibiting it from fully occupying its own function here, and they
have committed to doing better and more proactive information sharing
with the various city departments.
Now, you are also, I think, correctly observing that even
perfect information sharing by OEMC wouldn't necessarily result in like shovels in
the ground, right? I mean, that wouldn't necessarily result in implementation of
solutions. Um, I am inclined to think that the
responsibility for making sure that departments are actually
coordinating in, in, in a meaningful way from an implementation
perspective, I think that should probably come from the mayor's office.
These are departments which respo- which res- which report to the mayor.
I think that's probably the right place for that kind of,
coordination enforcement to, to be
located.
Yeah. With regard to some of the deficiencies you
found involving, vague,
inconsistent, inaccurate information, were there departments-- I, I don't
mean to pick on anybody. Different departments have, you know, different
staffing levels, different sets of responsibilities that are or are not reflected
in 311 that, you know,
caveat in place. Is there a department or two or three that you
feel, based on this audit, there's the most room for growth in
terms of how they're able to more effectively interact with 311?
Um,
I don't think so. I don't, I don't think that that's what we get at here.
I think the critical observation here is that departments are left a little
bit to their own devices to navigate how to use the
information they are getting from 311 and how toProvide information
into the three one one system. And so we therefore inevitably have kind of
inconsistencies across departments.
I, I think that's more the nature of, of what we identified here.
Okay. That's helpful. And then lastly,
KPIs, key performance indicators.
I'm curious with re-- with that in mind, you know,
the idea of doing a staffing analysis at every departmental level, I think at
a, at a high level in a vacuum would be ideal, but I think
practically speaking is not gonna happen.
Um, it took many, many years for us to do it with CPD, even though that's
obviously our, our largest department.
I'm curious as a maybe next best step, how you
see there being interplay between key performance
indicators, which exist at varying levels across
departments, the three one one data that's come out, and
budget.
Yeah. Um, I think, Chairman, few people are, are
better positioned than you are to, to think through the complexities of a
staffing analysis and, like, how exactly we go about that and what exactly we're
trying to get at for all the reasons that you identify, given all of your, your
work on that. I think that, in a situation like
this, we have, we have
functions that are explicitly assigned to three one one in, in its mission
language, and we have, I think, universal acknowledgment that
those, those functions are not getting fulfilled.
And so
I'm not sure how we know what the perfect number of, of people would be, but
it's more than zero. It's more than we have now.
And I think in the spirit of, of not letting the perfect be the enemy of the
good, I think that
even a sort of,
back of the envelope calculation about how many people we would need to do what
we've said we're gonna do would, would at least get us on the road.
Yeah. Um, and look, I, I think that in some ways, this is
a bit outside of your office's purview as we've,
delineated it in city code, but just like the
dashboard that you have in place for public safety is extremely
helpful in us as well as members of the public being able to provide
oversight, I think that there are many dashboards
that could be created that show, okay, with some of the
frustrations that have been mentioned by members of the committee, well, how often
is it actually the case that a tree is trimmed within a particular period of time,
even though that's maybe not the best-
Yeah, no
... example anymore given how we've gone to a grid-based approach.
But that I-- it maybe is more
of a
question and observation for your successor-
Yeah
... for obvious reasons. But I think that there are ways in which, depending on how
you are able as an office to access data, you could put dashboards
up to see where there is the most room for improvement
with various three one one items. So-
Yeah
... maybe it's something just to share with your team more than-
Yeah
... with you specifically to the extent they'll be staying past April twenty-sixth,
but I think that there's a lot more that can be done still in keeping
with what your office has been doing well, particularly on the public safety front.
Yeah. I appreciate that, and I, and I agree.
And I think this also goes to Alderman Vasquez's observation about kind of
geographic differences across the city.
I will say
w-w-- this is maybe not a searing insight, but, but we have, we have built a lot of
dashboards based on city data, and we have certainly seen up close the
fact that, any meaningful effort at public
transparency animated by the principle that information about the government
belongs to the governed is wholeheartedly dependent upon our gathering the
information in the first place. And so I do think that the hurdle here is
to collect and store high-quality information, and then once we are
doing that, then the exercise of making it publicly vis-visible for all of
these reasons in all of these ways is a next step which, which any number of
the city's functions should, should be able to accomplish, us included.
Agreed. Great. Well, there being no further questions before
the committee, can I get a motion to adjourn? Alderman Vasquez so moves.
All those in favor signify by saying aye. All those opposed.
In the opinion of the chair, the ayes have it. The meeting is adjourned.
Thank you
all.