Mayor Brandon Johnson accepted scores of valuable gifts “on behalf of the city” — including jewelry, alcohol, AirPods, designer handbags and size-14 men’s shoes — and failed to report those gifts while denying internal investigators access to the room where the items are purportedly stored.
That’s the bottom line of Inspector General Deborah Witzburg’s latest advisory, which raises troubling questions about apparent attempts to curry favor with Johnson and his predecessor Lori Lightfoot and the failure by both Johnson and Lightfoot to be transparent about that gift-giving.
Perhaps most troubling to the inspector general was how difficult it was to secure the information, which is supposed to be “promptly” reported to the Chicago Board of Ethics and the city comptroller so the items can be added to “an inventory of the city’s properly.”
Witzburg found every mayor since Eugene Sawyer in the late 1980’s has been exempt from those rules, based on an informal agreement with the Board of Ethics that has never been put into law. And her undercover investigators were denied access to the official gift log.
Instead, the mayor’s office directed those covert investigators to submit a Freedom of Information request. The FOI request was filed without saying it was from the inspector general’s office. According to Witzburg’s office, there was no “timely response, constituting a denial.”
Witzburg’s office then sent an “official document request” for the gift log. Only then was it produced in the form of a “spreadsheet” showing 144 gifts accepted by Lightfoot and 236 gifts received “on behalf of the city” by Johnson between Feb. 2, 2022 and March 20, 2024.
Nearly 70% of the 380 logged gifts do not identify the gift-giver.
Hugo Boss cufflinks, Givenchy handbag
Many of the more valuable gifts were given to Johnson. They include: Hugo Boss cufflinks; a personalized Mountblanc pen; a 2023 U.S. National Soccer team jersey; Airpods; designer handbags by Givenchy and Kate Spade; and Carucci size-14 burgundy men’s shoes. (The lowest-priced handbag listed on the Givenchy website Wednesday cost $450. The cheapest size-14 Carucci shoes were on sale for $69, marked down from $189. Montblanc pens start at $290, though personalization is included.)
Lightfoot’s gifts included a “Bottle of Uncle Nearest 1856 Premium Aged Whiskey.” There’s a gift listed on the spreadsheet as “Always 24k Idols Pearl and Gold Elephant” without saying where it is stored. Nearly 75% of Lightfoot’s 144 gifts have no storage location listed. Some are marked as located in “kitchen” or “upstairs.”
On Nov. 8, Witzburg’s investigators showed up to inspect the “gift room,” audit its contents and ensure that access to the room of valuables on the fifth floor of City Hall was controlled. But they were denied access by Chicago police officers.
Investigators were told to wait in the lobby, then informed they would be granted access to the room only by appointment.
The entire episode raises serious questions about attempts to curry favor with Chicago mayors.
“It’s hard to imagine how exactly size-14 shoes would be used ‘on behalf of the city.’ But they’re squirreled away in literally a windowless room at City Hall without any public reporting — in many cases, without any records of who the gifts are from or the circumstances under which they were received. That presents an enormous transparency and accountability problem,” Witzburg told the Sun-Times.
“Ever since Sawyer, the mayor’s office has not followed the rules that everybody else has to follow if they are given a gift on behalf of the city. That is that they have to be publicly reported and added to an inventory of the city’s property. That’s a transparency and accountability measure to make sure that people are not accepting things of value and putting them to personal use.”
Did gift-givers have business with the city?
That the Law Department advised the mayor’s office to refuse to make gifts that are “by definition city property” available for inspection is even more “alarming,” the inspector general said. So is the fact that the spreadsheet does not identify most gift-givers.
“We obviously would want to know whether gifts of value were being given by people doing business with the city, people seeking city contracts, people with matters pending before the city,” she said.
Lightfoot’s spokesperson, Joanna Klonsky, said that as mayor, Lightfoot “complied with standard gift reporting procedures as followed by” decades of her predecessors “with the Ethics Board’s guidance.
The mayor’s office had no immediate comment on the inspector general’s advisory.
Ald. Matt Martin (47th), Johnson’s hand-picked Ethics Committee chair, said Witzburg’s investigators should have been allowed access to the gift room.
“You shouldn’t have to give a heads-up about that. That’s something that should be open and available to anyone who needs to see that — whether it’s the inspector general or anyone else,” Martin said. “It’s hard to know what somebody’s intentions are without a really robust and publicly available log that says who gifted it and when.”
The rules already in place about gifts of value appear to be adequate, Martin added — they just have to be followed.
“There are times when people will drop off some sandwiches or desserts in my office … as a measure of thanks,” Martin said.
“We are in the habit of informing the Board of Ethics about that, but also putting that out in the public. The mayor’s office should be following the rules in the exact same way.”