The public bickering over who illegally taped (and then leaked) a private conference call between Mayor Lori Lightfoot and city aldermen misses the larger point: The call itself was illegal.

It wasn’t the first one either.

Since at least March, Lightfoot and her aides have held similar “informational updates” with aldermen about City Hall’s response to the COVID-19 public health emergency and, more recently, about its handling of local protests stemming from the death of George Floyd during an encounter with Minneapolis police.

“These updates were arranged and carried out solely for the administration to convey information about the status of COVID-related efforts and field questions on those efforts,” according to a statement from the mayor’s spokesperson. “For a meeting to be subject to the Open Meetings Act, it must include deliberation (for example, legislative debate) and/or action (for example, a vote), which did not occur on these calls.”

Lightfoot surely knows better than that. So do aldermen, who by law are required to complete an online training course on OMA, administered by the attorney general’s office.

Here’s a refresher: The Open Meetings Act says citizens have a right to attend “all meetings at which any business of a public body is discussed or acted upon in any way,” except under limited and specific circumstances. Even if those circumstances exist, a meeting can’t be closed to the public without a majority vote, taken in an open meeting.

In a lawsuit filed Friday in Cook County Circuit Court, the Better Government Association asked a judge to order the City Council to follow the law. 

Read the rest at chicagotribune.com.

Among the everyday adaptations of our socially distanced lives: Zooming with the City Council, from the safety of your couch.

Gradually and sometimes comically, local governments across Illinois are figuring out how to conduct their business in public despite a statewide stay-at-home order.

Concern over the spread of COVID-19 has closed many public buildings and forced citizens and government officials to find new ways to interact.

For many, that means learning to connect over the Internet or conference call, via Facebook Live, WebEx, Zoom, Skype and the like. For others, it means new rules for physical settings: Council members in one room, spaced several feet apart, for example, while members of the public, also carefully spaced, listen to audio in another room. The Shelby County Board held its April 8 meeting at a picnic pavilion at Lake Shelbyville, surrounded by residents in strategically placed lawn chairs.

It might be tempting ― and surely more convenient ― to skip those meetings for now or to handle necessary public business in private. The coronavirus has interrupted all sorts of government services, after all. Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s emergency order allows governments to pause non-essential functions, prioritizing health and safety in a time of limited staffing and resources.

But transparency is more important than ever when governments invoke extraordinary authority as they have now. Citizens have a right to know what their elected representatives are doing on their behalf, and to contribute their voices to those decisions.

Pritzker’s emergency order suspended parts of the state Open Meetings Act so that public bodies could convene and take action to keep governments running. The governor waived rules that require officials to be physically present at government meetings and that limit remote participation.

Local governments looking for guidance on how to comply with the law can find it on the Illinois Attorney General’s web site. The office houses the state’s Public Access Counselor, which mediates disputes about OMA and the Illinois Freedom of Information Act.

The memo points out that the governor’s action does not negate OMA’s requirements that meetings must be “open and convenient” to the public and that citizens have an opportunity to comment. Other important points:

• Governments are obligated to post notice of these electronic gatherings, and should include instructions on how to access them. That means including call-in number, link or login information. (A how-to guide would be helpful, too.)

• In-person meetings should be postponed if possible. If urgent business must be conducted, use a larger room (or more than one room) to allow for appropriate distancing.

• Depending on the format, public comment can be challenging. If live participation isn’t possible, written or emailed remarks can be collected in advance and read aloud during the meeting. Some platforms allow for real-time comments.

• Record meetings when possible and post online afterward.

A few more best practices not covered on the AG’s web site: Begin the meeting with a roll call that includes those participating remotely. Take extra care to identify speakers in a virtual setting. When technical problems arise, resist the temptation to finish up the meeting with the public offline. Suspend it until access can be restored.

The good news is there are plenty of free or low-cost conference calling services or web meeting hosts. The bad news is everyone is a first-timer once. There’s a lot of connecting, disconnecting and reconnecting, a lot of cross-talk and background noise, a lot of unintelligible garble followed by demands to repeat the question.

By the time the emergency order expires, citizens and public servants will have plenty of practice muting and unmuting their microphones. It’s a good skill to master.

One day those crowded public gatherings will be safe again — but as before, they won’t always be convenient. Remote participation can make public meetings more accessible after life returns to normal, too.

This column was published in the State Journal-Register.

Staying at home saves lives. Illinois residents have absorbed that message, and it’s reinforced daily by Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

Riding out the COVID-19 emergency in our socially distanced units, we’ve come to rely on their afternoon briefings for detailed and forthright updates. Public cooperation depends on knowing what our government is doing to meet these unprecedented challenges, and why. Lightfoot and Pritzker seem to get that.

The rest of us get this: It’s impossible for governments to do all the things they’d normally do. Protecting citizens and public employees is job one. That’s why Pritzker’s March 16 executive order allows governments to prioritize their actions, performing only essential functions.

But what’s non-essential? Chicago isn’t towing or booting vehicles except for safety-related violations. The Secretary of State has extended deadlines for driver’s license renewals and vehicle registrations. The state crime lab isn’t processing routine drug tests. 

Now there’s a debate over whether it’s essential for governments to respond to public records requests from reporters and citizens during the pandemic.

Read the rest at chicagotribune.com

The inspectors general hired to oversee the Illinois General Assembly have been consistently vocal about the legal and political constraints that sabotage their work. But former Legislative IG Julie Porter’s most recent protest was especially timely. 

In written testimony prepared for the Joint Commission on Ethics and Lobbying Reform on Feb. 6, Porter revealed that a formal complaint against a sitting lawmaker — filed by the Attorney General at Porter’s request — had been “buried” by the Legislative Ethics Commission.

Twice before, Porter had asked the LEC to publish reports detailing investigations that concluded in a finding of misconduct. Neither report was published.

Porter couldn’t share details of her investigations because of confidentiality provisions in the law. But the Chicago Tribune’s Dan Petrella pieced together records from the LEC’s meetings in May at which a pending complaint was considered by the eight lawmakers — four Democrats and four Republicans — who make up the commission.

A motion by Democratic Sen. Terry Link to close the case failed 4-4, the Tribune reported. That left the case open until a second meeting, at which Republican Rep. Norine Hammond moved to find that the complaint supported a violation of the ethics act. That motion also failed 4-4. That was the end of it. Porter’s finding never saw daylight.

That 4-4 deadlock is a built-in obstacle to legislative accountability. The law says commission members — party leaders in the House and Senate each appoint two —  can be lawmakers or members of the public. But the appointees invariably are all lawmakers, four Democrats and four Republicans. Instead of policing misconduct, the members seem to view their job as playing defense.

Former LIG Tom Homer, who testified alongside Porter and current LIG Carol Pope, said legislative leaders historically “have put their surrogates on there to protect the interests of the caucus.” All three IGs confirmed that they had sometimes asked the commission to publish reports of wrongdoing and had been denied by 4-4 votes.

Homer said lawmakers should consider adding a ninth “tie-breaker” member, appointed from the public. He also suggested that instead of requiring a majority vote to publish a founded report, the law should require a majority in order to decline publication. 

Those are both good ideas, but the real solution is to revamp the whole oversight system.

Under current law, the Legislative Inspector General can barely cross the street without permission from the Legislative Ethics Commission. The IG can’t open or expand an investigation, issue a subpoena or publish findings of an investigation without approval from those eight conflicted lawmakers. It’s also up to the commission to decide whether to investigate a complaint of serious wrongdoing filed by the Attorney General on the IG’s behalf.

Better oversight models can be found across the country (or over in the Illinois executive branch, where inspectors general aren’t restrained like their legislative counterparts). Publishing reports of misconduct is the default in most states; Florida even publishes reports of investigations that conclude no wrongdoing occurred. Several states have ethics commissions made up of both lawmakers and non-lawmakers, and a few commissions have no lawmakers at all.

Pope, who has been LIG since March 2018, said asking permission from a panel of legislators doesn’t just undermine her independence; it compromises the confidentiality of her investigations. Last year, she made her case in a letter to the LEC and again to legislative leaders, asking them to make changes in the veto session. 

Homer, who served from 2004 to 2014, called repeatedly for changes to make the office more independent and transparent. 

Their entreaties have inspired countless bills meant to empower the IG, but none has advanced. 

I’m not the first to suggest that finally fixing the dysfunctional oversight system will be the true test of whether the General Assembly is serious about strengthening Illinois’ ethics laws. But as Homer observed, history doesn’t bode well. The state’s recurring ethical crises present opportunities for reform, but “once that window closes, things just grind on,” he said.

“I came here hoping this time would be different.” 

This column was published in the State Journal-Register.

In a Dec. 18 letter to the Chicago City Council, BGA policy director Marie C. Dillon urged aldermen to support an ordinance that prohibits city officials from lobbying other governments on behalf of paying clients. The measure also prohibits officials from state and local governments from lobbying the city.

The measure was approved. The letter is shared below.

Way back in July, the Illinois General Assembly’s inspector general wrote a letter to legislative leaders, asking them to act during the fall veto session to give her the authority to do her job. It didn’t happen.

Throughout the session, the Capitol was consumed by talk of ethics reforms, as the plot thickened around all those federal search warrants. But not much came of it. Lawmakers hastily passed some new disclosure requirements for lobbyists, then punted to a joint House-Senate committee that will have until March 31 to propose more changes.

Strengthening that toothless watchdog should be at the top of the list. But let’s not forget that the laws governing legislative conduct are toothless, too. Watch closely: If lawmakers are serious about ethics reforms, they’ll fix both.

In that July letter, Legislative Inspector General Carol Pope reminded lawmakers that she isn’t allowed to open an investigation or issue a subpoena without permission from the Legislative Ethics Commission — a panel made up of yes, legislators. Fox, meet henhouse.

Months earlier, Pope’s predecessor, Julie Porter, wrote an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune expressing frustration that the same panel refused to publish her recent finding of misconduct by a current lawmaker. It’s a big deal, because releasing the report — a public shaming, basically — is the only consequence available when a legislator is found to have acted unethically. See? Toothless.

Inspectors general who oversee the executive branch can launch investigations without a mother-may-I, and they report to a commission appointed from the general public. Lawmakers operate under a different model because lawmakers wrote the rules.

That almost certainly explains why there have been only three findings of misconduct against legislators in 15 years. It’s hard to chalk it up to scrupulously upright behavior, especially now that the U.S. Attorney is raiding offices, left and right, of lawmakers and their associates.

Of course there are shades of misconduct, from unethical to criminal. But Illinois laws tolerate all sorts of conflicts of interest that invite lawmakers to leverage their positions for personal gain, at the expense of taxpayers.

In 2014, Thomas Homer — the state’s first legislative IG — investigated House Speaker Michael Madigan’s decades-long habit of dictating personnel matters at the Metra commuter rail system.

Homer was forced to conclude that no laws were broken. No report was issued. In an awkward written statement to the media, he noted that his finding “does not constitute a good housekeeping seal of approval.”

“Although I can recommend new laws to address what I believe to be inappropriate conduct by legislators, enforcement actions are limited to violations of existing laws and rules,” he wrote.

Weeks later, the retiring Homer left lawmakers with six pages of proposed fixes targeting patronage, conflicts of interest, the lack of transparency and independence in IG investigations and the need for rules about when and how a lawmaker can intervene to help someone get a government job or other favors. He urged them to strengthen the legislative code of conduct — the ethics act explicitly states that the code is aspirational — and to include penalties.

Lawmakers thanked him by leaving his job vacant for almost three years.

They were shamed into filling it by a #metoo moment. An activist’s sexual harassment claim against a lawmaker had languished in a file, untouched, for nearly a year because there was no inspector general to investigate it. When word finally got out, the General Assembly quickly filled the job and passed a law prohibiting sexual harassment by lawmakers, punishable by a $5,000 fine. Good. But there are still no consequences for most other ethical breaches.

That has to change. A fully empowered inspector general is only as strong as the laws she enforces.

So yes, by all means let’s give the watchdog some teeth. But let’s give her some laws to work with, too.

This column was published in the State Journal-Register.

“I reject the idea that Illinois politics should be defined by its worst actors,” Gov. J.B. Pritzker told the Democratic faithful in Cook County last week.

That’s a wishful sentiment that rings hollow in the face of the federal investigation engulfing the Capitol. How many Illinois lawmakers are on the U.S. attorney’s latest list of “worst actors”? What exactly was going on between the General Assembly and the state’s largest electric utility? Rather than trying to float above it all, Pritzker should capitalize on public outrage to press for ethics reforms that have long been resisted by state lawmakers.

Ethical righteousness is a cyclical thing in Springfield, invariably triggered by a spectacle of staggering public corruption exposed by the feds. The 2003 State Officials and Employees Ethics Act was prompted by the licenses-for-bribes scandal that sent Gov. George Ryan to prison. Another bout of reform fever followed the impeachment and conviction of Gov. Rod Blagojevich, now imprisoned for trying to shake down the CEO of a children’s hospital for campaign cash, among other things.

So why do our ethics laws still need fixing?

One answer is that the General Assembly never fixed the ones that apply to itself. The Illinois Compiled Statutes are riddled with loopholes that enable conflicts of interest by legislators. One set of rules for lawmakers, another set for the rest of Illinois government.

Read the rest at chicagotribune.com.

The BGA and the Illinois Press Association sent a letter to the University of Illinois Board of Trustees, asking the board to take action to protect the First Amendment rights of journalists at WUIS FM-91.9.

The university, which holds the NPR license for the station, has told WUIS journalists that they cannot protect the anonymity of sources who say they were victims of sexual misconduct. According to the university, the journalists are “responsible employees” under federal Title IX guidelines. That means they are required to report those claims — including the identity of the complainant — to the university’s Title IX office. 

The U of I notified WUIS of this position after NPR Illinois and ProPublica reported on several cases in which the university allowed employees who were found to have violated the sexual misconduct policy to leave with no blemish on their record, sometimes with pay.

Requiring journalists to reveal anonymous sources violates their First Amendment right to gather and disseminate the news. It also discourages victims from coming forward, which is counter to the intent of Title IX.

BGA President and CEO David Greising and IPA President and CEO Sam R. Fisher asked trustees to direct the university to exempt journalists from this requirement. The letter is shared below.

With all the talk about people fleeing Illinois to escape the taxes, it’s helpful to remember that for some, it’s a tax haven.

“Illinois ranks among the best 15 states to retire because of its tax policies for older citizens,” reads a Sept. 23 editorial in the Beloit, Wis., Daily News. “That’s why, for example, huge sprawling retirement home developments can be found in Illinois — Huntley is a good example — but not in Wisconsin.”

A June 11 column in the Quad City Times, meanwhile, sizes up the shifting tax climate on both sides of the state line and gives Iowa the overall edge. It notes, however, that Iowa taxes retirement income, while Illinois does not. “For those of us over a certain age, this clearly favors Illinois as a choice of residence,” it says.

Here in Illinois, despite anticipated windfalls from recreational cannabis and an explosion of legal gambling, state and local governments are desperate for more money. Everyone has designs on the estimated $3.4 billion to be generated by Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s graduated income tax — and voters haven’t even approved it yet.

The Chicago Sun-Times recently brought up the perennial sore subject of taxing retirement income. The paper’s editorial board, which supports Pritzker’s tax plan, notes that it would raise hundreds of millions more if applied to higher-income retirees.

“Expanding the state’s income tax to include six-figure pensioners could provide additional revenue that could help Chicago and other local governments that are struggling with underfunded pension plans,” a Sun-Times editorial said.

The Better Government Association explored this unpopular question in 2016, and was soundly thumped for even suggesting it. Here we go again.

Of 41 states that have an income tax, only three — Illinois, Pennsylvania and Mississippi — do not tax retirement income. Many states exempt some retirement income, such as pension or Social Security benefits.

Illinois’ across-the-board break is hard to defend when it seems everything else is on the table: sales taxes, head taxes, “congestion” taxes, real estate transaction taxes, you name it. Groups including the Civic Federation and the Center for Tax & Budget Accountability have supported some form of tax on retirement incomes. In general, they favor taxing higher-income retirees while protecting seniors with modest incomes. That could be accomplished via the graduated brackets in Pritzker’s plan, as the Sun-Times suggests, or through exemptions and other breaks for lower-income seniors.

But politicians know those are fighting words. Rep. David McSweeney, R-Barrington Hills, is the lead sponsor of a resolution opposing any attempt to tax retirement income. Rep. Allen Skillicorn, R-East Dundee, wants to amend the state constitution to prohibit such a tax.

Seniors vote, after all. And when talk turns to taxing their retirement income, they often threaten to vote with their feet: “Florida, here I come!”

But do they really leave over taxes? That’s hard to prove or disprove. Florida is 60 degrees in February and has no income tax, period, so if you don’t already live there it’s probably not because Illinois isn’t taxing your pension checks. Maybe it’s because Florida is steamy from April to October and the cockroaches can fly. Maybe Illinois is home.

Florida used to be mine. But I wouldn’t move back to avoid paying income taxes, because I have too many reasons to stay in Illinois. Reason No. 1 is my son, a first-year public school teacher. Illinois should be more worried about keeping him than me.

The state needs young adults to put down roots, pay taxes and raise more little taxpayers. But too many of their future tax dollars are already spoken for, thanks to the pension debt and other bills already on the books. That’s a real disincentive for them to stay.

Illinois needs to get its financial house in order now. A lot of retirees (and aspiring retirees) could afford to pay taxes on our retirement income, though of course we’d rather someone came up with a better idea. Anyone?

This column was published in the State Journal-Register.

Chicago’s disastrous parking meter deal was two mayors ago. Raise your hand if you’re still mad about it. I thought so.

The $1.2 billion the city collected upfront is long gone, but the private firm that controls the parking system holds a lease that doesn’t expire until 2083. Hourly parking costs quadrupled the first year.

Then-Mayor Richard M. Daley sprung this desperation deal on the City Council in 2008, with less than two days to deliberate and no Plan B. Aldermen were cornered. They approved the deal — only five voted no — because they were ill-equipped to push back. They still are.

That could change Wednesday, when an increasingly proactive City Council votes on an ordinance to strengthen the Council Office of Financial Analysis, or COFA.

Read the rest at chicagotribune.com.