CHICAGO — As a candidate for mayor, Lori Lightfoot promised to transform Chicago’s often corrupt political culture, in part by taking away the near-total power aldermen have over matters in their own wards and by leading a transparent government.
“For years, they said Chicago ain’t ready for reform. Well, get ready, because reform is here,” Lightfoot declared in her inaugural address.
Three years after that speech, however, activists and aldermen say the city’s political culture largely remains intact. And as she gears up for an expected reelection bid next year — this time as an insider — the Democratic mayor's record on cleaning up City Hall is likely to be a target of those who want to succeed her.
Lightfoot has already faced criticism that she’s abandoned core issues on openness, ethics and political reform that she campaigned on. Detractors cite her pledges to support an independent ward remapping process and to rein in the controversial developer-subsidy program known as tax-increment financing. She has also so far failed to substantively tackle aldermanic prerogative, which gives City Council members tight control over building and development in their wards.
To be sure, Lightfoot has achieved some successes as a reformer. The first-term mayor introduced ethics law changes strengthening the inspector general’s office and cutting back on outside employment by aldermen. She also expanded requirements for lobbying disclosures. In July 2019, she pushed to raise the fines for ethics violations, with maximum penalties increasing from $2,000 to $5,000.
But those increases were far less than the ethics board wanted and good-government experts have pointed to other cases where they said she didn’t go far enough or tried to roll back reforms. She attempted to undo a ban on lobbying by elected officials, for instance. She also delayed the appointment of an inspector general, leaving a critical watchdog position vacant for months.
Alisa Kaplan, executive director of Reform for Illinois, whose board Lightfoot previously served on, said “it’s not surprising that Mayor Lightfoot hasn’t followed through on all her ambitious campaign promises — few politicians do.”
“Things always look different once you get to an office — your own sense of self-protection kicks in, and you realize it’s not as easy as it looks to make change. But it’s frustrating that she made transparency such a priority as a candidate, but has failed to be transparent in key moments like the Anjanette Young raid and to build more transparency into the system,” Kaplan said of the administration’s attempts to withhold video of a wrongful police raid.
“She has made some very real strides in important anti-corruption areas like lobbying reform — things we never thought we’d see in Chicago and have become models in jurisdictions around the country. But she’s backpedaled on others.”
Madeleine Doubek, executive director of CHANGE Illinois, agreed the city’s reform results under Lightfoot have been mixed.
“I have to acknowledge that the mayor and every public official in the world has a pandemic to deal with, and that took up a lot of time and energy and continues to,” Doubek said. “But it seems to me there were a lot of missed opportunities here.”
‘Never going to be easy’
Lightfoot declined a Chicago Tribune request for an interview to mark her three years in office, but in a statement noted she increased the statute of limitations on ethics violations, worked with aldermen to eliminate conflicts of interest in their outside employment and signed an executive order aimed at curbing aldermanic power.
“There is certainly more work to be done, including taking on aldermanic prerogative when it comes to zoning, which remains one of the last tools aldermen have to block affordable housing in their communities, for example,” Lightfoot’s office said. “The work to undo the old Chicago way of doing business was never going to be easy, and the Mayor is focused on the long, hard road of building the coalition for that needed reform.”
As one of 14 candidates to replace Rahm Emanuel as mayor in 2019, Lightfoot gained traction through her criticism of longtime Ald. Edward Burke after federal authorities raided his office while investigating allegations that he abused his City Hall clout for private gain.
A pledge to curb aldermanic prerogative became a centerpiece of Lightfoot’s campaign and, at rallies and events across the city, she railed against the practice, complaining that residents and businesses shouldn’t have to “kiss the ring” to get approval for their projects.
Days before she was sworn in, Lightfoot disputed news reports that her administration would allow aldermen to keep power over zoning while limiting their influence on permits and other administrative functions.
“We can’t really successfully change aldermanic prerogative but say carte blanche when it comes to zoning,” Lightfoot said. “We’re not going to do that. We’re going to drive change there as well.”
With Burke getting indicted during Lightfoot’s second week in office — and with her landslide victory still fresh — the new mayor started with seemingly strong momentum to push for broad ethics reform.
In July 2019, Lightfoot pushed through a small ethics package that largely didn’t touch aldermanic prerogative but included other items that aldermen historically opposed, like giving the inspector general authority to audit City Council committees. It passed 50-0 with no debate.
Asked at the time whether it was a mistake not to seek more far-reaching ethics reforms, Lightfoot said changes need to be done “step by step.”
“I feel good about the way in which we are proceeding,” Lightfoot said. “These are big changes for everyone and we need to make sure that we get it right, that we’re bringing people together, and having conversations about the path forward.”
During a May 2020 interview marking her first year in office, Lightfoot said efforts to address aldermanic prerogative had been put off to focus on COVID-19 but reiterated her commitment to reform it.
Since then, however, Lightfoot has not yet substantively returned to the topic, despite repeatedly pledging she would do so.
On the broader subject of aldermanic prerogative, she is likely to face pushback, even from allies. Ald. Pat Dowell, Lightfoot’s handpicked budget chairwoman, said she doesn’t think the city has changed much when it comes to aldermanic prerogative.
“To me, aldermanic prerogative really means community input. I think when aldermen reflect the wishes of their community, they’re expressing the prerogative of their community. So I don’t think it’s changed that much over time,” Dowell said. “There’s been some small changes in some city procedures, but in the main, when you have large-scale projects, zoning questions, decisions on the use of taxpayer money, aldermen still have very have a lot of input and involvement in those decisions, as they should.”
Black Caucus chairman Ald. Jason Ervin, also a close Lightfoot ally, echoed Dowell.
“I really haven’t seen a lot of changes,” Ervin said.
Former Lightfoot floor leader Gilbert Villegas, who is also the Latino Caucus chairman, said aldermanic prerogative is something “constituents want their local elected official to have, versus a department or a bureaucrat down at City Hall.”
Lightfoot did succeed in delegating cannabis dispensary zoning applications to the Zoning Board of Appeals, which is appointed by the mayor and bypasses City Council. That diminishes the power aldermen have over where lucrative but sometimes controversial marijuana shops can operate.
The mayor’s office also pushed through plans to build a $91 million apartment complex with some affordable housing units in Ald. Anthony Napolitano’s Northwest Side ward against his wishes.
Lightfoot may soon return to the subject of aldermanic prerogative, potentially by changing how the city handles issues dealing with affordable housing.
An ‘independent’ process for remapping city wards?
The once-in-a-decade redrawing of the city’s ward map was another area where Lightfoot promised one thing as a candidate and delivered something else as mayor.
Long before Lightfoot ran for the office, she advocated for independently drawn maps that don’t protect entrenched incumbents. Early in her term, she called for an independent commission to draw the map but ultimately abandoned it after aldermen pushed back.
Lightfoot has walked a delicate line on the remap. Publicly, she urged the Black and Latino caucuses to compromise and reach an agreement on a map to avoid a referendum that would have been costly and divisive but also would have given voters the opportunity to choose. Publicly, she distanced herself from negotiations to avoid being blamed if they couldn’t make a deal. Privately, she made several efforts to mediate a settlement.
Last winter, for instance, Lightfoot joined a group of Black, white, and Latino aldermen at a South Loop hotel to discuss the conflict.
She was not able to forge a compromise that weekend, however, and largely backed away from the process afterward, though she remained in touch with key aldermen. In the meantime, discussions between Black and Latino aldermen turned ugly, not just over how many majority wards each demographic would get. Latino aldermen criticized City Council rules committee chairwoman Michelle Harris for hiring former Michael Madigan attorney Michael Kasper as their lawyer. The Black Caucus, meanwhile, criticized the Latinos for hiring Victor Reyes, a lawyer who was a high-ranking Daley aide with Madigan ties, too.
Aldermen approved a compromise deal this month that was negotiated behind closed doors.
“Unfortunately I think when people get in office, at some point they start making all their decisions from a political calculation,” Doubek, the CHANGE Illinois executive director, said. “She got to the point that a political calculation was made that it wasn’t going to serve her reelection purposes to alienate key members of the Black Caucus and she would’ve had to do that to uphold the principles and values that she championed for so long before she became mayor ... when it comes to equitable remapping.”
Asiaha Butler is co-founder and executive director of the Resident Association of Greater Englewood who served on Lightfoot’s good government transition committee. Butler said the mayor hasn’t been as transparent as promised and she expected a different approach to the remap.
“It’s still been these back room deals,” Butler said.
She’s seen some improvement from the city on communications, including projects that are part of Lightfoot’s Invest South/West community development program, but Butler said Lightfoot still has work to do.
“They are attempting to engage community but this too needs a revamp and more transparency,” Butler said. “It’s still feels like a top down approach and we are engaging with the hopes to make it more meaningful and mutually beneficial for community and local government.”
‘Bring in the light’
As mayor, Lightfoot has maintained a level of secrecy at odds with her campaign pledge to “bring in the light.”
Early in her term, Lightfoot successfully pushed aldermen to change city law so her administration could release previously confidential reports from the inspector general. But she has refused to release any full inspector general’s report on any high-profile incidents that have occurred during her tenure and blamed it on the way the law was written by her own team.
Lightfoot staff have also repeatedly refused to release public records on sensitive subjects. Late last year, the Tribune obtained more than 2 1/2 years of Lightfoot’s text messages with aldermen through a series of Freedom of Information Act requests — which her aides failed to comply with until the state attorney general admonished them and the Tribune threatened a lawsuit.
The Tribune has filed a lawsuit against the city of Chicago over records in cases involving misconduct allegations that officials have refused to release despite two separate attorney general opinions in the newspaper’s favor. First Amendment attorney Matt Topic, who frequently sues government agencies over refusals to release public records, said Lightfoot’s record is “awful.”
“I have not seen any meaningful transparency change from this administration,” said Topic, who also served on Lightfoot’s good government committee.
Aneel Chablani, chief counsel for the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, said his group is “fairly disappointed with the lack of community engagement as part of the purported efforts to reform TIF.”
TIFs, or tax-increment financing districts, funnel property taxes back into the hands of landowners, a practice long criticized as unnecessary subsidies for wealthy developers.
In February 2020, the city announced creation of a TIF committee to look at whether payouts were equitable and going toward projects aimed at redeveloping blighted land.
At first, Chablani said, his group was optimistic. But they haven’t gotten a clear picture of what the TIF committee has actually done and are disappointed that it seems to consist entirely of city officials. His group filed a Freedom of Information Act request to get records about what the group does but did not receive responsive documents from the city, so his group filed a lawsuit last month.
“That’s been very frustrating,” Chablani said.
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