Feds Seize Files, Computers As City Legislative Inspector General's Office Shuts Down
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Keyboard with no computer anymore, piles of shredded papers, big black garbage bags filled up and in general chaos. So what's going on in the office of the legislative inspector general, where the sole job is to keep aldermen honest?
It has essentially closed down. CBS 2's Mike Parker talked to the watchdog who has had his last bark.
Faisal Khan was hired by the City Council to investigate wrongdoing by members of the City Council.
"The fundamental flaw with our system here Mike, is that we, this office, ultimately reports back to the people that we oversee," Khan said. "That's the equivalent of the inmates running the asylum."
So the City Council decreed that today was Khan's last day on the job. He and his staff were clearing out everything that wasn't seized Friday by federal agents armed with a subpoena. The feds may very well continue Khan's unfinished cases.
"We took no pleasure in trying to catch an alderman in doing something wrong," Khan said.
Asked to rate Khan's tenure, Andy Shaw of the Better Government Association says, "He was a toothless tiger and as a result, he was a worthless watchdog. He meant well but the council deliberately neutered him from the get go."
Khan says his office was "without question" programmed to fail.
"This office was unfortunately rigged, the deck was rigged and we were never meant to succeed," he said. "The funding was inadequate, we had no institutional support from both the City Council and from the mayor's office."
Today, Mayor Rahm Emanuel pledged that there will be a new legislative inspector general and that a new oversight era is required.
And there are increasingly noisy rumblings from some aldermen that a new ethics boss, whoever it is, must have powers that Khan did not.
