When Deborah Witzburg was a student at Brown University, she made a rather ironic purchase considering the career path she eventually chose.
“I bought a ‘Free Buddy’ shirt from the Army-Navy shop on Thayer Street,” admitted Witzburg, now the inspector general for the city of Chicago, laughing at herself.
Witzburg graduated in 2005, which means she was at Brown when mayor Vincent A. “Buddy” Cianci Jr. was shipped off to federal prison for running a criminal enterprise out of Providence City Hall.
Between her time in Providence and Chicago, it’s safe to say that Witzburg has seen enough government malfeasance, corruption, and incompetence to last a lifetime, and she sees her role as inspector general to help slowly restore the public’s confidence in the country’s third largest city.
“Chicago has given no one the reason to give anyone the benefit of the doubt,” Witzburg told me this week. “Rhode Island has a similarly complicated history when it comes to corruption and misconduct in government.”
I called Witzburg out of the blue Monday on the heels of a new Salve Regina University poll that showed 73 percent of likely voters in Rhode Island say they support creating an inspector general’s office, while only 8 percent say they disapprove.
In other words, an inspector general starts with a higher approval rating than Governor Dan McKee, House Speaker Joe Shekarchi, and Senate President Dominick Ruggerio (probably combined).
Witzburg acknowledged that she doesn’t keep tabs on Rhode Island politics, but she was happy to talk about her role in Chicago — that city’s $16.6 billion budget is only a few billion larger than our $14 billion state budget.
“We have a very broad scope of authority,” Witzburg said, noting that the Chicago’s Office of Inspector General has been around in one way or another since the late 1980s, and views itself as the government’s effort to “pay down the deficit of legitimacy” the city has faced.
Sound familiar?
She said her office has three focal points: investigating misconduct, program and policy work evaluating city programs for waste or inefficiency, and promoting transparency across the government.
Oftentimes those roles intersect. Her office could, for example, be reviewing a city’s agency’s use of housing funds and learn during the course of its investigation that some form of misconduct has occurred.
And the office has shown results.
A 2023 report from Witzburg’s office outlined several investigations that produced real results, including discovering sick leave abuse by an employee, and resulting in a felony gun conviction by another employee. Both employees were placed on a “do not rehire” list kept by the city. The office also investigated an alderperson directing city employees to issue citations to a resident who was publicly critical of the alderperson, and in a separate case, it found that a building owner attempted to bribe a city building inspector.
“It doesn’t matter what flavor of problem it is,” Witzburg said. “A well-equipped inspector general’s office can hold them accountable.”
Witzburg was quick to acknowledge that an inspector general’s office can’t solve every problem, but it does function as an extra watchdog. In Rhode Island’s case, you can imagine an inspector general poking around the Department of Transportation and potentially uncovering problems that McKee and director Peter Alviti Jr. would prefer to be swept under the rug.
In contrast, we’re still waiting for McKee’s promised “day of reckoning” on failure of the Washington Bridge, and there’s no sign it’s coming anytime soon. In fact, the lawyers who McKee hired to sue outside contractors involved with the bridge have no incentive to look within the government for potential problems because Alviti’s not going to be cutting a check to the state.
An effective watchdog does take true independence, of course.
In Chicago, a selection committee appointed by the mayor and City Council is required by ordinance to conduct a national search for inspector general, and then submit a list of recommendations to the mayor. The mayor makes the ultimate appointment with confirmation of the council, and the inspector general is appointed to a four-year term (they can only serve two terms).
Witzburg, who graduated from Northwestern University’s law school, worked eight years in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, and then moved her way up in the Chicago inspector’s general office, was appointed in 2022 by then-mayor Lori Lightfoot. The current mayor, Brandon Johnson, doesn’t have the ability to replace her during the term.
The governments in both Chicago and Rhode Island are heavily dominated by Democrats, so you can imagine a scenario where Republicans criticize the selection process. But Witzburg said one way her office rises above politics is that her budget is set by ordinance, which means the mayor or the council can’t just defund the office if they don’t like the outcome of an investigation.
She said a quality inspector general’s office enjoys structural independence — the four-year terms and the budget requirements — and operational independence, which means “we don’t work for City Hall.” Reviews and investigations are initiated by the office, not the politicians.
Independence is “both the hallmark of inspector general’s work and the hardest thing about it,” Witzburg said.
So could it work in Rhode Island?
It doesn’t help that there aren’t many Democrats in the legislature who are courageous enough to support the Republicans’ perennial proposal. A GOP-led budget amendment to create the office in June was defeated in House 62-11, and the only Democrats who supported it were Representatives Greg Costantino and Enrique Sanchez.
Shekarchi and Ruggerio have repeatedly poured cold water on the idea, arguing that it would cost too much money, and that some of the work would be duplicative because the state already has an ethics commission and an auditor general.
That’s rich. To be clear, this year’s proposal to create an inspector general’s office would have budgeted $1.5 million. The state budget is nearly $14 billion. What they really mean is they don’t want any more watchdogs in government.
“Everyone should be in favor of an IG’s office, and if they aren’t they should have to explain why — publicly,” Witzburg said.
Rhode Island voters should be asking the question when politicians knock on their doors this summer.
Dan McGowan can be reached at dan.mcgowan@globe.com. Follow him @danmcgowan.