When Margaret “Peggy” Daley read the latest watchdog report on apparent clout hiring coursing through another Cook County governing body, she thought about her former role as chair of the county’s Board of Ethics.
Last month the Office of the Independent Inspector General found commissioners at the Board of Review, which considers property tax appeals, repeatedly recruited job candidates based on personal and political connections, in what Daley said was a “pretty scathing” expose. It came months after Cook County Commissioner Jeffrey Tobolski resigned following an FBI raid in his office in 2019.
The ongoing instances of political patronage and corruption investigations makes Daley wish Cook County’s Board of Commissioners had made progress on the suggested ethics reforms she and her former colleagues rolled out the week of her abrupt ouster by Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle earlier this year.
“You just read it and you just sigh,” Daley, who was replaced on the ethics board in January, said about the inspector general report. “And you go, why?”
The proposed revisions to Cook County’s ethics ordinance, which the ethics board voted to recommend in January, include forbidding both nepotism in county hiring and county commissioners from taking certain outside jobs. They also would mandate lobbyists disclose if they have relatives who work for the county, introduce new rules to clamp down on sexual harassment, prohibit the state’s attorney from settling ethics lawsuits without the ethics board’s approval and increase fines for certain ethics violations.
Now, three of the board members who crafted the reforms are gone, and their recommendations haven’t moved forward. Preckwinkle, who appoints and reappoints ethics board members, told Daley her term would not be renewed in January, prompting board member David Grossman to resign in protest. Then Preckwinkle also informed Juliet Sorensen, who replaced Daley as chair, that her time on the ethics board would end in June.
Preckwinkle spokesman Nick Shields wrote in a statement that her office had been reviewing all county boards, not just the ethics body, in an examination of how to fill vacancies and make new and old appointments. The changes include the Cook County Board recommending an advisory committee for the medical examiner be dissolved because many of the office’s problems are resolved and killing the injury compensation review committee.
Shields also wrote that Preckwinkle has expanded protections against sexual harassment, the authority of the ethics board to impose sanctions, the mandated training for lobbyists and the number of county employees required to undergo ethics training.
“President Preckwinkle truly appreciates the efforts the Ethics Board members have undertaken,” Shields wrote. “As Board members’ terms were set to expire, we wanted to give other members of the public an opportunity to serve. We wish the former board members all the best and thank them for their contributions and we will continue to work in partnership with the Board of Commissioners to determine how best to further enhance the County’s ethics ordinance.”
The ethics board enforces the county’s ethics ordinance, which sets rules on how more than 20,000 county employees and officials should conduct themselves. Five unpaid board members are tasked with investigating complaints of ethics ordinance violations, spearheading audits, drafting up recommendations and other guidance.
Daley said she is cautiously hopeful for the prospect of an amendment to the current ethics ordinance that Cook County Commissioner Larry Suffredin, D-Evanston, said he plans to file for the next meeting on Sept. 24. Suffredin declined to elaborate beyond writing in a statement that it will be “comprehensive” and include many of the ethics board’s recommendations.
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But Daley said the progress should have come sooner and without what she described as an internal “debacle” within the ethics board. She and Sorensen also wonder why the board’s meetings have stopped entirely, to which Keith Chambers, executive director of the ethics board, said there was a lack of quorum after the last assembly on Feb. 26.
Pre-coronavirus, “efforts were underway” to fill vacancies, he told the Tribune in an email, but the pandemic delayed that process. Sept. 17 is the target date for when meetings will resume.
On the issue of board member churn, Chambers said there is no reason to think the board’s mission to deliver transparent government to Cook County residents has been jeopardized.
“It is important to keep in mind, the terms of previous board members had expired or were about to expire,” Chambers wrote. “To that end, turnover is to be expected during a transition period.”
Sorensen told the Tribune she was disappointed that she had to leave after a five-month stint as chair — so brief that she joked she was “the William Henry Harrison of ethics board chairs,” referring to the U.S. president who served just one month in office.
“I thought it was too bad,” Sorensen said. “The Board of Ethics functions best when its members are independent, reform-minded individuals who have significant training and experience in matters related to ethics, public corruption and the law. I would like to think I brought that to the board.”
The Tribune previously reported that Sorensen, Daley and Grossman donated a combined $8,500 to the mayoral campaign of Preckwinkle’s then-political rival Lori Lightfoot, according to election records. But Daley wonders whether the issue of the ethics ordinance revisions was behind her departure.
“The feeling I got was that we were pushing this to happen, and they wanted to slow-walk it,” Daley said.
Shields maintains the time had simply come for fresh faces, despite the disagreement over how the the ethics board handled its suggested ordinance revisions. In a Jan. 21 letter from Preckwinkle’s special counsel, Laura Lechowicz Felicione, wrote that the office is “interested in more fully reviewing the proposed edits” because there were “areas that need additional consideration.” She suggested a meeting at the end of February or early March to “engage in the necessary legal research.”
The ethics board went ahead and approved the proposals without waiting, and Shields at the time stated that some members had “opted to grandstand.”
Daley and Sorensen balked at that characterization.
“We don’t want nobody that nobody didn’t send,” Daley said when asked about why she was no longer on the board.
