Posted by Todd Lighty and Hal Dardick at 7:42 a.m.; last updated at 4:31 p.m.
Mayor Richard Daley has suspended his top ethics aide for his role in allegedly bumbling a student intern’s sexual harassment complaint.
Anthony Boswell, the $161,856-a-year executive director of the Office of Compliance, was suspended for 30 days without pay.
Daley acknowledged the suspension at a City Hall news conference to announce cost-cutting measures. The mayor made no further comment on the issue.
Meanwhile, Victoria Daniels, the city’s hiring compliance officer who worked with Boswell, has accepted a new position as a deputy commissioner in human resources, Daley spokeswoman Jodi Kawada said today. Earlier, City Hall officials said Daniels resigned.
In a recent report, Noelle Brennan, a hiring monitor appointed by the federal courts to keep tabs on city personnel practices, singled out both Boswell and Daniels for criticism. The report said the city had failed to fully comply with court orders relating to reporting potential hiring violations.
Boswell’s lawyer, Jamie Wareham, said today that Daley has been “given very poor advice” and should immediately reinstate Boswell. He said Boswell is an “apolitical outsider” who came to Chicago to help the mayor clean up City Hall.
But Boswell got caught in a power grab by the inspector general, Wareham said, and was the victim of “attempts by senior staffers in the mayor’s office to retaliate against Tony and the compliance office” for reporting hiring abuses.
Daley plucked Boswell from the private sector two years ago to head the compliance office, which the mayor created in 2007 amid hiring and contracting scandals in his administration. Daley touted the new compliance office as evidence of his commitment to run a clean, efficient city government. But this week he moved to weaken the office by shifting its oversight duties for city hiring to the Office of Inspector General.
Boswell’s tenure became rocky after the inspector general issued a scathing report Jan. 12 accusing Boswell and a top deputy of mishandling the female intern’s complaint against a 911 center boss.
The inspector general found that Boswell and Mark Meaney used poor judgment and showed favoritism toward the boss by trying to find him another city job and a new intern. Inspector General Joseph Ferguson said the two men’s conduct was particularly egregious because their duties involve judging the conduct of other city workers.
Ferguson told Daley he should suspend them for at least 30 days. Meaney, whom Boswell had brought to Chicago, resigned Jan. 29.
Boswell hired a lawyer to fight the accusations and to help negotiate an exit from Daley’s administration but the talks apparently broke down. Wareham has said his client acted appropriately at all times, adding that Boswell was caught up in a power struggle between his office and the inspector general.
The future role of the compliance office, which has a budget of $3.5 million and 39 employees, is unknown. City Council plans to hold hearings on the mayor’s proposal to realign the powers between compliance and the inspector general, including giving the IG office the authority to investigate aldermen.
The city is operating under a decades-long consent decree aimed at keeping politics out of most personnel decisions. Daley has said that he wants to end federal court involvement in hiring and took a step toward that by taking the hiring duties from Boswell, who has come under criticism in federal court for his office’s actions.
Brennan, the court-appointed monitor, has accused Boswell’s office of violating hiring regulations and misleading her about efforts to deal with hiring abuses.