’What would you do’ – pay a fine or fight it? Gardiner asks residents at Jefferson Park meeting

by BRIAN NADIG

Alderman James Gardiner (45th), who recently was cleared in an ethics investigation, posed the following question to members of the Jefferson Park Neighborhood Association at its June 25 meeting:

“What would you do? … you’ve got a $20,000 fine and you’re told you can hire a lawyer and spend up to $160,000 to fight it … or pay a portion (in a settlement to close the case) because if you lose, we will come after you for the full amount … $20,000, and … you still have to pay your lawyer fees.”

Gardiner chose to file an appeal and hire a lawyer, and following at least four years of investigations and hearings, an administrative hearing office recently ruled that Gardiner had committed “no violations” regarding a case in which the alderman had been accused of instructing a city worker to wrongly issue citations to a resident for “weeds” on the lawn of his home. The resident had been critical of Gardiner’s performance as alderman.

It also was revealed that the Inspector General’s office withheld exculpatory evidence, which was favorable to Gardiner’s defense, from the Chicago Board of Ethics, which in 2023 levied the $20,000 fine against Gardiner.

The city worker who issued the tickets, which were eventually thrown out because the vegetation was considered native plantings and not weeds, has said that Gardiner never asked him to issue the tickets and that he had never talked to Gardiner prior to the tickets. The worker also has said that a supervisor had okayed his going over to the house and look at the “weeds,” which some residents reportedly had complained about to the ward office due to the six-foot or taller height of the vegetation.

Gardiner said that the city hired a powerful, high-priced law firm, Hinshaw & Culbertson, to fight his appeal despite city’s budgetary woes and that one of the firm’s partners handled case. Records show that that the city paid at least $200,000 to the law firm.

Gardiner told the association that he hopes a City Council committee will call for a subject matter hearing on his ordeal.

“When the truth comes out, I think what we’re going that to find (is) extremely disturbing,” Gardiner said.
He added that one of the questions that needs to be answered regarding the ethics board and the IG office is “who’s overseeing the overseers?”

A spokesperson for the ethics board said two weeks ago that the board had not seen the evidence which the IG office did not turn over and that the board does not know why the officer never submitted that material for the board’s review.

A new witness in the case recently stepped forward and reportedly would have collaborated the evidence which was not given to the ethics board.

Controversy is not new to the two-term alderman. He was the subject of an earlier ethics investigation that was sent back to the IG for further investigation but no conclusion was announced.

It included an accusation that Gardiner had city services withheld from a constituent because she supported another candidate that ran against Gardiner in 2019. The resident, who did not file the ethics complaint, has said that her requests were fulfilled in a timely manner.

He also has been the defendant in three lawsuits filed by ward residents. One was a federal First Amendment rights lawsuit which Gardiner and the city had to pay money because he blocked some critics on his aldermanic Facebook page.

In another lawsuit the city paid $100,000 to a man who claimed Gardiner had him wrongly arrested for stealing a cell phone belonging to the ward superintendent. The city chose to settle the lawsuit even though an investigation by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability determined there appeared to be probable cause to arrest the suspect.

Text messages between Gardiner and a former aide have sparked some of the alderman’s legal issues. The aide reportedly released messages after she left her position in the ward office.

Gardiner also has been at odds with former mayor Lori Lightfoot and current Mayor Brandon Johnson. Each administration hired the ward’s former alderman, John Arena, who Gardiner defeated in 2019.

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