Rahm defends making IG reapply
Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Tuesday defended his decision to require Inspector General Joe Ferguson to reapply for the $161,856-a-year-job he has held for the last four years after going toe-to-toe with him for the last two.
Emanuel said his handpicked Ethics Reform Commission recommended a process for selecting the next inspector general, and he intends to follow it.
To do otherwise, the mayor said, would be to denigrate the work of two of the most prominent reformers in the history of Illinois politics.
“One of the recommendations the late Dawn Clark Netsch and Cindi Canary recommended was setting up a blue-ribbon commission to select the next IG. It was debated with a series of other reforms and adopted,” the mayor said.
“So, I’m gonna follow that process that was recommended by the late Dawn Clark Netsch, Cindi Canary and the other members of the commission. And all of those other reforms are also on the books because they’re the right type of changes for the future.”
Ferguson supporters consider it an insult to ask an inspector general whom, they believe, has been the aggressive watchdog Chicago sorely needs to reapply for the job he holds.
They point to the section of the new ethics ordinance that states that the inspector general’s four-year term “may be renewed at the discretion of the mayor” with City Council ap- proval. Emanuel doesn’t see it that way. “The insult would be to the public if we didn’t have a process for going forward. That’s where the insult exists,” he said.
“And that’s why Cindi Canary, the late Sen. Dawn Clark Netsch, one of the leaders of political reform, had made this recommendation and I’m proud the City Council . . . adopted the change.” Canary could not be reached for comment. While referring to Canary and Netsch, Emanuel made no mention of his frosty relationship with Ferguson.
It stems from Emanuel’s efforts to block Ferguson’s pursuit of unbridled subpoena power — all the way to the Illinois Supreme Court — and Ferguson’s attempts to hold Emanuel to honor his broken promises to expand the inspector general’s investigative powers to the City Council, the Public Building Commission and the Chicago Park District.
Ferguson has embarrassed the mayor with audits that question Emanuel’s bold cost-saving claims and suggesting ways the mayor can raise revenue and reduce expenses.