FOR RELEASE:
March 4, 2026
PRESS CONTACT:
Deanna Shoss, Communications, 773-478-8417
The City of Chicago Office of Inspector General (OIG) has published an Advisory on the Department of Law’s (DOL) Cooperation with Oversight of Its Employment Actions. OIG advised DOL that it had failed to meet its duty to cooperate with OIG’s statutory oversight of the City’s employment practices—derived from decades-long litigation in Shakman, et al. v. City of Chicago, et al.—by refusing to provide hiring records to which OIG is entitled. DOL declined, in part, to provide the records OIG requested because they related to a position DOL described as “high profile.” OIG recommended that, going forward, DOL comply with oversight of its employment actions.
OIG’s advisory reflects that, following DOL’s refusal to provide OIG with requested records, OIG submitted a covert and anonymous request for those records under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). DOL produced the records which it had previously declined to provide to OIG in response to that FOIA request, in a determination at odds with a suggestion that the records were so confidential as to be exempt from oversight. OIG further notes that, in the Shakman litigation, DOL itself argued before a federal court for the importance of OIG’s “free hand” in overseeing the City’s employment practices.
“DOL’s withholding of employment records from OIG is improper given the scope of OIG’s authority under the Municipal Code of Chicago, DOL’s statutory duty to cooperate with OIG, and DOL’s own legal arguments on the importance of OIG’s oversight of the City’s employment practices,” said Deborah Witzburg, Inspector General for the City of Chicago. “DOL eventually acknowledged that the very records it withheld from OIG could not properly be exempted even from public release when it produced them in response to an anonymous FOIA request covertly submitted by OIG. This fact is difficult to reconcile with a good faith rationale for refusing to provide them to OIG.”
In its response to OIG’s advisory, DOL acknowledged that OIG has authority to monitor employment actions under the City’s Employment Plan, but did not explain why employment records were withheld from OIG. The Mayor’s Office separately responded. OIG publishes both responses alongside its advisory.
Read the Advisory
Read the full advisory and departmental response, published on March 4, 2026.
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