Six months after Aurora Mayor John Laesch first proposed his campaign ethics reform package, aldermen are making little progress towards getting it across the finish line.
The proposed regulations would prevent those who are doing business with the city, or looking to, from donating more than $1,500 per year to candidates running for city office. It would also expand economic interest disclosures required of candidates, elected officials and certain city employees.
Laesch has said that the proposed package was designed to increase transparency and “reduce the influence that outside money has on city contracts.”
Campaign ethics reform was a campaign promise for Laesch, who won the mayoral seat over incumbent Richard Irvin a year ago. During the most recent campaign and in a previous unsuccessful run for mayor, Laesch claimed Irvin prioritized government contracts or incentives to those who donated to his campaign, which Irvin consistently denied.
Since Laesch formally proposed the reform package in early October, it has seen delay after delay and various changes.
Last month, the Aurora City Council spent around an hour and a half picking the proposal apart and suggesting different parts be sent back to a committee for further review. Eventually, in a split vote broken by Laesch, the City Council sent the whole thing back.
The City Council’s Rules, Administration and Procedure Committee has since discussed the ethics reform package twice, but the proposal has yet to move beyond that committee, and few changes have been made.
Although many aldermen have expressed reservations about parts of the proposal, that doesn’t mean they are against ethics reform in general, some have argued.
“We feel like we are being backed into a corner. ‘Oh, you have to approve everything as the way it is, or you are not for reform,” Ald. Daniel Barreiro, 1st Ward, said at Tuesday’s committee meeting. “That’s the farthest from the truth. I’m looking out for my family.”
He was specifically concerned with expanded economic disclosure statements that would be required of those in a city elected office, those running for a city elected office and certain city employees.
The expanded fillings would ask, among other things, if their employer has ever done work for or received any financial assistance from the city of Aurora, all real estate they own within the city’s planning area, any organizations or businesses they own, any city-funded or city-affiliated organizations they are involved with, and any gifts they’ve received from those doing business with the city or looking to.
Many of these details would also be required of immediate family members, meaning those living in the same household, who are over the age of 18.
Barreiro said at Tuesday’s committee meeting that he was concerned the disclosures would go even further, requiring him to publicly release information like his adult daughter’s workplace and his mother’s home address.
Aurora Corporation Council Yordana Wysocki said the required disclosures were designed to address concerns about undue influence over city officials, but that they were narrowed down to protect people’s privacy rights.
However, Barreiro questioned why city officials should have to disclose more than other local elected officials, who are just required to complete state-mandated disclosures.
“Why are we special and have to ask more information and pry more into our private lives?” he asked. “Who else in the state is asking for that information? Because I don’t think it’s fair to us.”
If city staff wants the ethics reform package to pass, Barreiro said, then they need to put forward a document that works for everyone.
The Rules, Administration and Procedure Committee’s chair — Ald. Edward Bugg, 9th Ward — made an effort at an earlier committee meeting to get what he called a “clean document” to work from. Several mostly minor, non-controversial changes were approved at that meeting, but so far the committee has not made any significant changes to what was presented to City Council last month.
Beyond the expanded economic disclosures, the proposed campaign ethics reform package would limit those doing business or looking to do business with the city from making over $1,500 in contributions to city candidates or elected officials per year.
Counting towards the cap would be donations made by the business itself as well as any made by parent companies or subsidiaries, and in some cases donations made by employees themselves.
Lobbyists that work with the city, or are looking to, would be completely banned from donating to city candidates or elected officials, under the current proposal.
Those who do not follow the rules would be barred from doing business with the city for up to four years.
At past meetings, more than half of the 12 aldermen have raised at least some issue with the proposed ethics reform package. Some have argued that the rules could make it harder for new candidates to run for office, while others said it would allow the city to closely control local elections.
A few aldermen have also argued against the premise of the rules altogether, disputing the assertion that the City Council is being, or could be, corrupted by outside money.
A proposal was put forward at last month’s City Council meeting to apply the ethics reforms only to the mayoral seat. Aldermen were split on the idea, and Laesch broke the tie by voting it down.
Ald. Patty Smith, 8th Ward, has said that she wants to have outside, nonpartisan legal counsel look at the proposal. Laesch was given this chance because a lawyer who previously represented him helped write it, she said, and so aldermen should get that same chance.
But Wysocki, speaking at the Rules, Administration and Procedure Committee meeting on March 18, said that aldermen are not allowed to seek an attorney in an official capacity. That falls on her office, she said.
And while Laesch’s lawyer was retained by the city to write this ethics reform proposal, Wysocki said that he was overseen during the process, and she personally rewrote nearly all of it.
rsmith@chicagotribune.com
