Chicago's inspector general has released a new report detailing gun crimes and other bad behavior committed by city employees, saying she needs more authority to investigate wrongdoing.
“The ‘Chicago Way’ is a proper noun and not for a flattering reason,” Deborah Witzburg explained to a Lincoln Forum audience Tuesday afternoon.
Following the release of the report, Witzburg her job as watchdog is needed now more than ever. She said the city of Chicago operates at an enormous “deficit of legitimacy” with its residents.
“People don’t trust City Hall, and we have given them every reason not to,” she said.
Reasons she outlined in a quarterly report released Tuesday included the details of hundreds of investigations undertaken by her office since January. The names in the report are redacted but the deeds and the departments are not.
Among what she called the “lowlights:”
- A Streets and Sanitation Truck driver “who brought a gun to work” then left it in a bathroom.
- A member of the Chicago Police Department who “failed to disclose an illegal financial interest in city business.”
- A Business Affairs and Consumer Protection supervisor who “threatened and harassed a business under their jurisdiction during an intoxicated altercation.”
Witzburg said the latter official “made threats to kind of misuse the authority of their city position. We cannot have that.”
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Witzburg is pushing for new legislation, currently pending in the City Council Rules Committee that would give her office more independence to oversee City Hall, and allow her to avoid the pushback she says her investigators received when they tried to see what was in the mayor’s gift closet.
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“This matters, from a transparency and accountability perspective because its city property.,” she said.
The Mayor Tuesday was asked about some of the items in the report during his weekly question and answer session. He said was unaware of some of the more specific allegations.
Witzburg says she considers inspectors general like herself an endangered species. Her future with the city of Chicago, she said, is not yet certain. “We have a great deal of work to do, And I want to be doing it for as long as I am allowed to do so,” Witzburg said.
