Mayor Lori Lightfoot promised transparency but has yet to release reports on major investigations

Early in her term, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot successfully pushed aldermen to change city law so that her administration could release previously confidential reports from the inspector general.

Lightfoot cast her campaign to give her office more discretion on the release of such reports as a key point in her “bring in the light” reform agenda at City Hall.

“During my campaign, I committed to holding my administration to the highest levels of transparency, and this ordinance provides the public with an opportunity to fully examine the inspector general’s findings on the most high-profile and consequential investigations in our city,” Lightfoot said in a summer 2019 statement accompanying her ordinance.

But in the more than two years since, Lightfoot and her lawyers have yet to release a full inspector general’s report on any high-profile incidents that have occurred during her tenure.

And Lightfoot has released only three previously confidential inspector general reports: one on the Chicago Police Department’s cover-up of Laquan McDonald’s murder; another on an investigation into the death of two city police officers; and a third on the death of David Koschman, for which Richard Vanecko, the nephew of former Mayor Richard M. Daley, pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter.

All three incidents occurred long before Lightfoot became mayor.

At issue are key reports written by Chicago’s inspector general, the independent watchdog tasked with investigating allegations of wrongdoing and then providing extensive reports on alleged misconduct to city officials, which are later released in condensed summaries to the public.

Lightfoot’s ordinance, however, gives the city’s top lawyer an option to release IG investigation reports in cases that involve a death or a possible felony, and are “of a compelling public interest.” They also must be reports that include sustained findings of conduct connected with a felony or death, a Lightfoot spokeswoman said in a statement.

City Hall points to those restrictions to argue the administration’s hands are often tied when it comes to decisions about releasing reports.

“The Lightfoot Administration will continue to follow the law, and any such report that meets these criteria will be released,” the statement said.

Alisa Kaplan, Reform for Illinois executive director, acknowledged the limitations in how the law is written and said Lightfoot should revisit it “if she’s serious about following through on those promises of transparency.”

“The ordinance that she and her team wrote doesn’t allow the transparency she promised as a candidate or in some of these specific cases,” Kaplan said.

Since Lightfoot’s ordinance passed, the mayor has resisted calls from media, aldermen and members of the public to release reports detailing some of the biggest scandals of her tenure.

For instance, Lightfoot refused to make public the inspector general’s report on the October 2019 incident that led her to fire police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, one of the defining moments of Lightfoot’s term.

Lightfoot’s team recently received two major reports, one involving the administration’s handling of the botched raid on Anjanette Young’s home, the other on a faulty demolition in Little Village that sent a dust cloud over the Southwest Side immigrant neighborhood.

Chicago police had carried out a raid on Young’s home when they acted on a bad tip and made her stand naked and handcuffed as she repeatedly insisted they had the wrong place. The raid in February 2019 became national news the following year in large part because Lightfoot officials sought an extraordinary order to prevent CBS-2 from airing the footage, setting off a public relations nightmare for the mayor as her office mishandled the situation.

City lawyers initially requested sanctions against Young for sharing video of the raid with media, though they later backpedaled, saying they only wanted sanctions against Young’s lawyer, before dropping the request altogether.

As the scandal unfolded, Lightfoot released a statement in December 2020 falsely saying she “had no knowledge” of the matter involving Young before CBS aired video of the errant raid. Lightfoot also insisted at a news conference that her administration hadn’t refused to give Young video from the raid, even though her administration had done exactly that.

Lightfoot later acknowledged that she had been informed about the botched raid in 2019, though she downplayed what she was told.

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Lightfoot has since personally apologized to Young for the errant raid, though her administration played hardball in defending the department’s actions before coming to a $2.9 million settlement agreement.

In response to questions from reporters, Lightfoot has publicly declined to commit to releasing the full 163-page report by former inspector general Joe Ferguson.

An outside investigation by the law firm Jones Day, meanwhile, found that Lightfoot officials failed to follow appropriate procedures, did not adequately communicate across departments and “did not live up to the public service mission” in their handling of a botched police raid on Anjanette Young’s home, according to a report released last week.

But the firm also said it found “no evidence” of “purposeful concealment” by the mayor or any department, even though city lawyers objected to releasing video from the raid to Young’s lawyer because they were concerned it would be given to the media.

Lightfoot’s administration recently confirmed it will not release a report involving the 2020 demolition of a former coal-fired power plant’s smokestack in Little Village by Hilco that sent massive dust clouds into the working-class community.

Ferguson’s report on the demolition recommended discipline for at least three city employees, with a finding that one should be fired.

Little Village Ald. Michael Rodriguez and U.S. Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia sent Lightfoot a letter in October urging her to release and respond to Ferguson’s report “as soon as possible to maintain an honorable level of accountability and transparency we have promised our constituents.”

gpratt@chicagotribune.com