CHICAGO — Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson is declining to dump one of his closest advisors even though the City Watchdog, probing potential misconduct, called on the mayor to do so.
On Wednesday, the eve of the mayor’s budget speech, an old controversy resurfaces.
The City Inspector General Deborah Witzburg recommended Johnson fire his senior advisor Jason Lee. The mayor refused.
The controversy is from two years ago during the height of the migrant emergency. Alderman Bill Conway says he reached out to Johnson’s team for help removing a homeless encampment he says had become a hotspot for crime.
“The mayor’s office was already, in fact, planning a clean out at this point and then Mr. Lee took me back into the coatroom, back here, and he said they would help me with this problem as long as a I voted to raise the real estate transfer tax on the working families on this city and raise the tip credit,” Conway said.
Conway says he refused.
“Once I didn’t do those things a clean out was canceled of this viaduct and that was unfortunate,” he said.
Conway reported his conversations to the Office of Inspector General or OIG. In her report, Witzburg does not name Lee, but Lee confirms to WGN it’s him. Witzburg writes she tried to look into the matter, but she says Lee failed to cooperate.
Witzburg says Lee asked to have a city lawyer present during an interview and that the OIG declined to interview Lee under those conditions. Instead, OIG sent Lee written questions, but Witzburg says Lee did not respond by the deadline.
“It says all we need to know when the fact that when Mr. Lee was offered to cooperate with the inspector general, he essentially said, ‘I plead the Fifth,’” Conway said.
Reached for comment, Lee pointed WGN News to this statement from the mayor’s office:
“There is no justification for imposing discipline on a staffer who has engaged in no wrongdoing and who merely asserted their right to counsel,” said the mayor’s spokesman. “Despite this considerable expenditure of investigative resources, the OIG found no evidence of any wrongdoing or misconduct of any kind…”
Johnson ally, Alderwoman Rossana Rodriquez Sanchez, says incidents like the one between Conway and Lee will help drag out budget talks this season.
“I don’t think that good faith is in abundance in City Council, I think people have their agendas,” she said.
The mayor and council are working to close a $1.15 billion budget shortall. But Alderman Jason Ervin, also close with the 5th Floor, brushed off the controversy.
“I’m not concerned about if we’re going to pass a budget. We will pass a budget, the law requires us to pass a budget,” he said.
The Mayor’s Office is hard at work preparing for Thursday’s budget speech and a spokesperson stresses the OIG’s decision not to interview Lee had no legal justification and that’s why the mayor declined to fire him.
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