CHICAGO — Candidates for city office will have to stand by their campaign ads — in writing or aloud in commercials — by saying “I approve this message” as part of a set of pared-down ethics changes approved by the Chicago City Council.

But while other tweaks around “coercive” emails and use of city seals and logos also passed, a crackdown on business executive contributions was left out amid pushback from elected officials.

Ald. Matt Martin, 47th, the ordinance sponsor who had been pushing for Chicago Board of Ethics-proposed updates to the city ethics ordinance for over two years, said it was the “strongest and best” set of rules they could pass before the 2027 city campaign season picks up. The rules apply to city employees year-round and to municipal elections going forward, not the upcoming November election.

The city measure omits a key provision limiting political donations from executives of companies that do business with the city. Martin said Mayor Brandon Johnson and a majority of the council didn’t support it, suggesting opponents had concerns about how it would affect their ability to fundraise.

Johnson spokesman Griffin Krueger did not respond to questions about the mayor’s position on the executive contributions, but in an emailed statement said Johnson supported what ultimately passed.

Both New York and Los Angeles have already closed similar gaps in their political contribution laws.

The ethics board made recommendations about executive contributions in 2019, during Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s term, but they were not taken up then, either. Martin said he reminded his colleagues that his small-dollar donor matching program proposal “does seek to address campaign finance challenges in a more comprehensive and robust way.”

The changes also reinforce an ethics rule that candidates for city office are barred from using “any City property” in electioneering, including uniforms, badges, or other insignia for city offices, or using up an official or employee’s “time or efforts” on politics “when they are undertaking a task in their official capacity or at the direction of their superior.”

Several candidates have been dinged for including the city seal in political communications, or having ads that feature Chicago police or firefighters. The city’s ethics board, according to WTTW, is currently investigating mayoral candidate John Kelly’s since-deleted videos that take place at Chicago firehouses.

The ordinance also makes clear that candidates’ political committees can’t “compel, coerce or intimidate” city officials or employees into supporting or opposing a candidate. The issue became a firestorm after Lightfoot’s campaign emailed Chicago Public Schools employees about volunteer opportunities during the 2023 race. She later blamed a staffer.

Though the ethics board kicked the investigation over to the CPS inspector general, then-ethics board chairman William Conlon urged all candidates and their staff to scrub their email lists of any governmental addressees, “as emails sent to such addresses soliciting political contributions or requesting other participation in political activity may be considered coercive.”

The ordinance also attempts to close a loophole that allowed political fundraising committees that owed fines to the ethics board to close up shop before they paid. Any committee established to support the same candidate within 48 months will be on the hook for that debt.

City Council contractors are now subject to similar gift restrictions, prohibitions on political activities and limits on interest in city business as other employees under the ordinance. That means council contractors are banned from going up against the city in court.

Martin and transparency advocates have introduced other legislation to mandate new disclosures for so-called “dark money” groups and paid influencers, but any fresh changes are unlikely to pass before the upcoming city elections.

Among the proposals: super PAC-funded ads would be required to identify top donors, and paid social media influencer posts would be required to do the same.

Alisa Kaplan, executive director of the transparency advocacy group Reform for Illinois, said in a statement that “dark money undermines democracy and fuels the perception that government decisions are made by insiders in secretive backrooms. Chicagoans have a right to know who’s trying to buy their vote.”

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