After city Inspector General Deborah Witzburg complained publicly last month about City Hall interference with her investigations, the city’s top lawyer countered with a rebuke.

Corporation Counsel Mary Richardson-Lowry at a news conference said requirements for timely compliance with records requests would remove “30 years of guardrails” that protect city workers. City lawyers need to sit in on the IG’s investigative interviews of city workers, Richardson-Lowry claimed, because an attorney-client relationship exists between the workers and the city’s Law Department.

Well, not so fast. 

The policy arm of my organization, the Better Government Association, issued a statement by our outside counsel, who found no legal merit in Richardson-Lowry’s claims. And former Gov. Pat Quinn has drafted a petition to address the corporation counsel’s conflict of interest — by making the corporation counsel an elected office and no longer a tool of Chicago’s mayor.

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