Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson will officially announce his re-election bid this afternoon following the Chicago Bears’ season opener.
But when it comes to fighting corruption in city government, the mayor has fumbled the ball.
In fact, the Johnson administration has not led the passage of a single significant ethics reform during his nearly four years in office, according to Chicago Policy Center analysis—a glaring oversight in a city still known for its pay-to-play political culture.
Chicago voters: Remember to order your ballot for the Nov. 3 Chicago school board elections.
Johnson’s ethics record
Chicago Tribune reporter Jake Sheridan asked Johnson in 2025 what he thought of his administration’s record on ethics reform.
“The ethics or ethos of our government can’t just be simply mired in our conversation around the potential for corruption,” Johnson said.
“Ethics is about how we equitably distribute government in a way that everybody can feel proud of.”
This is a narrow view of ethics—limited to equity in government services rather than whether elected officials place loyalty to the law and ethical principles above private gain, avoid conflicts of interest, and refuse to use public office for personal benefit—the baseline definition under federal ethics law.
In this context, the mayor’s ethics shortcomings are not surprising. They include:
Working to kill an ordinance restricting lobbyists’ political giving, which City Council later passed over his objections.
Failing to fill the vacant chair of the Chicago Board of Ethics for over a year, a problem compounded by the resignation of the board’s executive director in August. “The mayor could install a permanent chair today if he wanted to,” Ald. Matt Martin, 47th Ward, told WTTW. “Transparency and accountability have been delayed for too many critical ethics matters … It’s disappointing that ethics is not a priority for the administration.”
Blocking investigators’ access to city property and city records as part of the “gift room” controversy.
Refusing to fire top advisor Jason Lee as recommended by the inspector general’s office, which found Lee did not cooperate with an investigation into a complaint that he threatened to withhold public safety services as a strong-arm tactic to whip votes in City Council.
Failing to recuse himself from billion-dollar negotiations with his former employer and largest campaign contributor. Chicago Public Schools Chief Talent Officer Ben Felton wrote he was concerned about a potential conflict of interest in the mayor’s dealings with CPS due to the fact that the mayor is still technically on leave from a CPS job. Felton claimed to have raised the issue with then-Deputy Mayor of Education Jen Johnson (like the mayor, also a former Chicago Teachers Union official) four times between May and June 2023. The mayor not only declined to resign from his CPS position, he heavily involved himself in negotiations between CPS and CTU.
Appearing to leverage the nonprofit World Business Chicago as a campaign apparatus, drawing scrutiny from state Rep. Curtis Tarver, D-Chicago, among others.
On the positive side, the mayor appointed a serious watchdog, David Glockner, to lead the office of inspector general following the departure of Deborah Witzburg. And City Council did pass an ordinance strengthening the independence of the inspector general’s office in 2025, but only after the administration resisted, tried to delay, and ultimately accepted it in a weakened form.
Johnson is not unique among Chicago mayors in facing ethics controversies. What stands out among his modern peers is Johnson’s ambivalence toward passing meaningful reform.
Lori Lightfoot got City Council to unanimously pass an ethics reform package in 2019, empowering the inspector general to investigate City Council committees and banning aldermen from outside jobs that conflict with city business. Rahm Emanuel pushed through what his administration called the most comprehensive ethics reform in more than a decade in 2012, replacing the entire Board of Ethics and adding a code of conduct for all city employees and officials.
So as the 2027 mayoral race kicks off in earnest, what would a commitment to ethics reform look like today?
An anti-corruption platform to run on
The most powerful reform to make Chicago city government less prone to corruption would be in changing the administrative, parochial responsibilities granted to City Council members.1
The current ombudsmen-like system encourages the abuse of aldermanic offices for personal benefit. And the council’s lack of term limits, gerrymandered maps, and voter suppression through election timing don’t help, either.
Short of that, candidates for mayor can champion four reforms to tackle corruption:
Put all the IGs under one roof: Chicago is home to five different inspectors general, including one for the city, one for Chicago Public Schools, one for the Chicago Housing Authority, one for the Chicago Park District, and one for the City Colleges of Chicago. They all have wildly different powers, rules, and funding, which makes effective watchdog work difficult. Chicago should consolidate all those offices under one roof akin to New York City’s Department of Investigation, or DOI.
Overhaul the Board of Ethics: Chicago should overhaul its Board of Ethics in the image of New York City’s Conflict of Interest Board, which provides ethics training, fields ethics complaints, and serves as an ethics counsel. The DOI serves as the board’s investigative arm.
Elect the Corporation Counsel, or take it out of the mayor’s office: An independently elected city attorney would owe their loyalty to voters rather than the mayor. This is how Los Angeles, Columbus, San Diego and San Francisco operate. Short of making the corporation counsel an elected position, the role could report to a city administrator—a position that is already supposed to exist in Chicago. Chicago’s Municipal Code requires the mayor to appoint an administrative officer (essentially a city manager) who must be confirmed by the City Council. This position, created in 1954, is designed to “supervise the administrative management of all city departments” and provide coordination across agencies. But no mayor has bothered filling it since Jane Byrne. Reviving this long-dormant position—and having the corporation counsel report to it rather than directly to the mayor—would help create the independence necessary for real oversight.
Increase access and transparency in City Council: It’s not uncommon for City Council to vote on legislation that has not been publicly posted. The full text of all agenda items should be posted four business days in advance of any City Council meeting, as recommended by the Better Government Association, Civic Federation and the League of Women Voters of Chicago.
Mayoral candidates would be wise to remember that the success of any agenda depends on residents’ trust in city government.
That trust won’t improve on its own.
In the news
Voter suppression through election timing: The Last Ward readers know Chicago is the only major city to hold its municipal elections in February. Better Government Association President David Griesing penned a Chicago Tribune column on this topic, “If we held city elections on the same day as national elections, it would strengthen democracy.”
The disjointed election calendars have tangible negative impacts. “The actual effect is a decimated turnout at elections,” said Austin Berg, executive director of the Chicago Policy Center … “It’s not just Chicago. This is a statewide problem, and you get some turnout numbers in municipalities outside Chicago where I don’t even know if you could call them elections.”
Effingham County in southwestern Illinois saw turnout numbers of 16%, 14% and 13% over the last three municipal elections, Berg noted. And St. Clair County saw rates at 16% or lower in the last four election cycles.
But the political tide is shifting, with cities across the country switching to holding local elections when people vote for state and federal offices, too.
Food fight: Chicago Magazine joined the conversation on why you can’t start a Chicago-style hot dog in Chicago with Ed McClelland’s great piece, “Why Does Chicago Hate Food Carts?”
Our dearth of street food vendors is hardly the biggest problem facing Chicago, yet it feels emblematic of the city’s inability to get out of its own way with overburdensome regulations. “We’ve had a merchant culture in the past, like Maxwell Street,” says Austin Berg ... “The current status quo is a de facto ban. We have a political culture that emphasizes who you know, and food cart vendors are at the bottom of the economic ladder”
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The pro-immigrant sentiment that has swept Chicago in the wake of ICE raids offers an opportunity for the city to reembrace its roots. After all, as Berg of the Illinois Policy Institute points out, Vienna Beef, which he calls “the foundation of the Chicago-style hot dog,” began as a hot dog stand at the 1893 world’s fair, operated by Austro-Hungarian immigrants Emil Reichel and Samuel Ladany. Today, such an operation would be illegal.
Major housing study leaves out Chicago: Researchers from Princeton and the University of Chicago published a great new study comparing 60 major U.S. cities on their speed to permit and build new housing. But Chicago was conspicuously absent, because it couldn’t comply with the researchers’ public records requests. I asked Ald. Gil Villegas, chair of the City Council’s zoning committee, for his response:
"It's disappointing that Chicago didn't make this list due to a bureaucratic barrier. I have long championed having these routine paperwork procedures replaced with technology, so we could signal predictability to investors. I will continue to push this administration to modernize their process as to make it easier for developers to build the housing Chicago desperately needs.”
CPS downgrade threat: S&P Global Ratings revised Chicago Public Schools’ credit outlook to negative last week, citing the Chicago Teachers Union’s undue political influence over the school board and the board’s vote to assume $150 million in additional state revenue that is unlikely to appear. This means the district has at least a 1 in 3 chance of a downgrade in the next year. Here’s more on the school district’s vote to go broke on purpose.
Empty schools: WGN’s Ben Bradley completed a deep dive on the most under-enrolled schools in Chicago, finding 13 schools that are at least 80% empty. The Chicago Policy Center found in August that Frederick Douglass Academy is the emptiest big-city school in America. The solution: Convening a Blue Ribbon Commission for CPS facilities planning.
Chicago is renowned worldwide for its culture of corruption. But a flawed understanding of that corruption can lead to the wrong prescriptions for how to fix it. Here are three things worth knowing about corruption in Chicago government: 1. Chicago is probably not the most corrupt American city, based on publicly available data. But the city’s levels of corruption are still way too high; 2. Chicago City Council is likely the most corrupt big-city legislative body in America; 3. Chicago’s anti-corruption solutions have not been sufficient to deal with our corruption problem, as residents’ trust in city government remains abysmally low. Read here for more on this subject.
Brandon keeps claiming he's "the first mayor in modern history that doesn't have ties to the political machine"? Who are the folks that still buy into this schtick.....that somehow you can operate within, and profit from, the structure of the machine while still claiming your a progressive, "fighting for working people"?
Humor me, what significant thing hasn’t he failed?