{"id":539572,"date":"2010-04-22T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-22T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341c60fd53ef0133ecd9d764970b"},"modified":"2010-04-22T06:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-04-22T10:00:00","slug":"inspector-general-loses-legal-fight-with-mayors-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/539572","title":{"rendered":"Inspector general loses legal fight with mayor&#8217;s office"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Posted by Todd Lighty at <\/em>5 a.m.<\/p>\n<p>The city\u2019s watchdog agency in charge of uncovering City Hall corruption lost a court fight to force Mayor Richard Daley\u2019s administration to turn over documents relating to the awarding of a no-bid contract.<\/p>\n<p>The Inspector General\u2019s Office last fall sued Daley\u2019s top lawyer, Mara Georges, and accused her of stymieing an internal investigation into possible wrongdoing by current and former employees.<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br>After listening to oral arguments Wednesday, a Cook County Circuit Court judge dismissed the lawsuit. The judge found that the inspector general does not have the authority to sue the city\u2019s corporation counsel and that Georges had a valid attorney-client claim for not turning over some records, said Melissa Stratton, a law department spokeswoman.<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br><\/p>\n<p>Inspector General Joseph Ferguson, who took over the office after the lawsuit was filed last November, said he would not decide whether to appeal until reading the transcript of the judge&#8217;s ruling. But he said the decision\u00a0appears to put the mayor&#8217;s office in control\u00a0of how far an internal investigation can go into the administration.<\/p>\n<p>Ferguson\u2019s office is investigating whether city employees manipulated the process to award a 2006 no-bid contract to a former city worker.<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br>Court records state that Georges handed over some documents and refused to release others, citing attorney-client privilege. Records state that Georges withheld some communications among city lawyers, others between lawyers and city workers, and lawyers\u2019 notes and charts related to the investigation.<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Posted by Todd Lighty at 5 a.m. The city\u2019s watchdog agency in charge of uncovering City Hall corruption lost a court fight to force Mayor Richard Daley\u2019s administration to turn over documents relating to the awarding of a no-bid contract. The Inspector General\u2019s Office last fall sued Daley\u2019s top lawyer, Mara Georges, and accused her [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3992,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-539572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3992"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539572\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}