Chicago Aldermen Move Forward with Legislative Inspector General Pick

By Kevin Robinson in News on Nov 4, 2010 2:30PM

Almost six months after voting to create a watchdog post in the City Council, aldermen have finally finished establishing a commission to pick the person that will hold the post. Five people have been invited to join a panel to pick three candidates for the job. The city council will then vote on which candidate becomes the legislative IG.

"It could have been done faster," 33rd Ward Ald. Dick Mell, chair of the Rules Committee, told the Tribune. "But we wanted to get the right mix, and we think we have that now." The five people invited to join the selection committee include former Chicago Police Superintendent Terry Hillard; former Cook County federal hiring monitor Julia Nowicki; attorney David Cerda, the first Latino to serve on the Illinois Appellate Court; Warren Wolfson, a retired state appellate judge and interim dean of DePaul University Law School; and the Rev. Clay Evans of Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church.

As Mayor Daley has moved to consolidate the power of the city's inspector general to have authority over hiring and employment matters in the city, aldermen have balked at including themselves in the scope of the city IG's purview. And, while some council members have called the creation of a post to oversee Chicago's legislature dangerous and unnecessary, the council eventually caved to Daley's pressure to create such a position. Criticized as being too weak, the legislative inspector general will have to get approval from the Chicago Board of Ethics before opening an investigation.

In its 23 years of existence, the Board of Ethics has never found a single case of wrongdoing.