Aldermen blasted Mayor Brandon Johnson’s handling of staff abuse allegations Tuesday and demanded he change the rules governing the city’s “do not hire” list.
Johnson claimed Monday he had been unaware of allegations leveled against his now-fired communications director, Ronnie Reese, until formal complaints made against Reese were publicly released and reported by the Tribune last week. But “practically speaking,” the mayor should have known about the troubling allegations sooner, Ald. Scott Waguespack said.
“I don’t see how the mayor could not know about this,” Waguespack, a frequent mayoral critic, said at a news conference outside City Hall. “It’s pretty clear to me that the mayor knew about it, or should have known about it, and should have done something immediately.”
Texts between Johnson and Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates obtained by the Tribune via a public records request show the mayor making an apparent reference to Reese just four days before Reese was given notice of his termination.
“Ronnie!” he wrote to Davis Gates. “Call me. Message from the Elders.”
Davis Gates responded to the apparent reference to Reese, who previously worked with her and Johnson at the teachers union, with only an exclamation reaction, according to a copy of the text exchange.
The CTU president said in a phone call Monday that she did not know about the accusations surrounding Reese until the Tribune reported on them.
Her spokesperson, B. Loewe, followed up in a statement: “As Pres Davis Gates said, There isn’t more to this. She didn’t respond. The meaning would have to be asked of the mayors office.”
The Tribune’s Freedom of Information Act request on the matter was filed Oct. 25, almost a week after Johnson’s texts to Davis Gates. Why he appeared to be texting her about Reese earlier than that, however, is something the mayor’s office has declined to explain.
At their Tuesday news conference, Waguespack, 32nd, and Ald. Gilbert Villegas, 36th, called on Johnson to change the rules governing how someone can get added to the do-not-hire list allegedly used by Reese to block several former employees from future city jobs. One of the complaints made against Reese accused him of weaponizing the list to create a culture of intimidation and fear among staff. Records show Reese wrote a memo to the Department of Human Resources outlining justifications for placing his former staffers on the list in September 2023.
Four former press office staffers who were placed on the list stood behind the two aldermen as they spoke. One of them, Azhley Rodriguez, stood to the side and quietly mouthed “no” when a reporter asked if the group believed the mayor was unaware of Reese’s alleged misconduct.
Rodriguez, initially hired by then Mayor Lori Lightfoot, was fired from Johnson’s administration and placed on the do-not-hire list alongside another press office staffer in August 2023 after complaining about how Reese and Johnson senior adviser Jason Lee treated them. She was never told why she was deemed ineligible for hire at other city jobs, she said Tuesday.
The two were informed they were taken off the list Friday, but not before the daughter of two police officers spent over a year blocked from the public service work she grew up hoping to do, she said.
“It really taught me that they don’t care,” Rodriguez said.
The do-not-hire list must be reserved for only “infamous” misconduct, Villegas said.
“Not just because you’re going to get coffee or you aren’t at your desk when you walk by,” he said, adding that those were reasons Reese had given for his use of the designation in records he reviewed. Villegas successfully pushed for Josué Ortiz, another former Reese staffer, to be taken off the list before hiring Ortiz earlier this year.
Reese himself has now been added to the do-not-hire list because of his alleged misconduct, Johnson spokeswoman Erin Connelly said Tuesday.
Later Tuesday, aldermen continued to criticize Johnson’s response to the allegations and the alleged misuse of the list during a hearing on the Department of Human Resources budget.
Asked about the handling of the Reese allegations, DHR Commissioner Sandra Blakemore said she could not comment.
Ald. Marty Quinn, 13th, took a shot at the Johnson administration by asking if “peace circles” were a part of the city’s official response to alleged misconduct. Johnson chief of staff Cristina Pacione-Zayas suggested peace circles involving Reese and his staffers be used to resolve complaints after first learning of some of the abuse allegations leveled at Reese, according to one of the complaints obtained by the Tribune.
“I don’t know what a peace circle is,” Blakemore said. She repeated the answer when Ald. Brendan Reilly, 42nd, asked the same question moments later.
Blakemore defended changes made earlier this year to the city’s do-not-hire list policy. The changes require department leaders placing someone on the list to issue a memo detailing what compelled them to do so, she said.
“That reduces any capricious behavior,” she added.
But Waguespack criticized the change for blocking affected former employees from requesting to be removed from the list for a year, a move that he said could open the city up to legal action by “defaming them.” Blakemore said people wrongly placed on the list can still appeal the designation.
