CHICAGO — Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s inner circle worked with outside lobbyists who were not registered to lobby on behalf of the city in the Illinois General Assembly, a practice his office defended after repeated inquiries into the makeup of his intergovernmental affairs team in Springfield.

Email records and Springfield sources indicate that three lobbyists — Lakeisha Purchase, Frank Bass and Vincent Williams — coordinated with top Johnson officials during the most recent session. But they did not update their state registration to show the city among their lobbying clients before the Illinois General Assembly adjourned June 1.

In an interview Friday, the mayor’s new lead Springfield IGA director, John Arena, argued those lobbyists did not need to register because their contracts with the city were still “pending.” In the meantime, Purchase was only “helping facilitate” lobbying, while Bass was coordinating with the city’s team in his capacity as a lobbyist for the Chicago Teachers Union and Williams as one for the Chicago Transit Authority, Arena said.

“We couldn’t have them declare that they were under contract with the city if the contracts weren’t finally approved,” Arena said. “So it was kind of a Catch-22, but because they were already under contract with a client ... we were going to exchange information that was relevant to those particular fields.”

Though Arena maintained that use of these lobbyists without registration was above board, if state officials were to find the three did not properly disclose their representation of the city’s interests, they could be in violation of the law.

The lack of clarity over the extent of the group’s work directly for the Johnson administration makes it more challenging to discern whether the lobbyists are following ethics rules, Alisa Kaplan, executive director of government transparency advocate Reform for Illinois and a registered lobbyist herself, said in an email. The Illinois State Capitol is notorious for backroom wheeling-and-dealing and has some of the weakest lobbying rules in the country.

But if Purchase, Bass or Williams did advocate for the city — regardless of their contract status — they should have registered, she told the Chicago Tribune in an email.

“The point of requiring lobbyists to register is to let the public know who’s getting paid to influence their representatives. And we should have that information while it’s happening, not after the fact,” she said. “If someone is lobbying elected officials on behalf of the City and either getting paid or expecting to get paid for it, they need to disclose that. Delays in getting a contract approved are no excuse. Otherwise, a whole legislative session could go by while a contract goes through the approval process, and the public would be in the dark about who’s lobbying for whom.”

Purchase registered the city as her lobbying client the afternoon of June 23, hours after the Tribune asked Johnson’s press office for details about his lobbyists. Arena said he did not direct her to do that, and he believes she only did so because she was being “proactive” in anticipation of her contract with the city’s IGA team being finalized.

Although two veteran lawmakers said on condition of anonymity that they believed Purchase, Bass and Williams to indeed be the mayor’s new contract lobbyists, Arena said that was a misconception.

Ethics questions aside, multiple lawmakers told the Tribune that Johnson’s government affairs team had a bigger problem: Their efforts this session were ineffective.

“This is the most, I would say, emaciated I’ve seen a lobbying team for a mayor of the city of Chicago in Springfield,” said state Rep. Curtis Tarver, a Chicago Democrat and an assistant majority leader in the Illinois House. “They’ve not had a comprehensive agenda. It’s hodgepodge.”

Arena said the city “had a very coherent message” that it shared with the governor and legislators, including Tarver, but kept its requests modest, given the state’s budget limitations.

The use of contract lobbyists in and of itself is not unusual, even without a finalized contract, as the city’s procurement process is famously convoluted. Longtime lobbyist Derek Blaida did properly register the city as one of his clients this year, along with Chicago Public Schools, the Chicago Park District and the city’s Board of Elections.

Purchase, who has lobbied the state since 2023, is also a current Springfield alderwoman. She recently bought a bar a short distance from the Capitol building, according to the Springfield Business Journal, which she said would also host events and provide “rental space for legislators and associations to host events.”

Purchase was previously faulted for “abusing” government time when she held a job at the Illinois Department of Transportation.

Bass is registered as a lobbyist for the CTU — the biggest donor in Johnson’s 2023 election — and was a paid consultant for Johnson’s mayoral and Cook County Board campaigns, state board of election records show.

Williams, a former assistant to Mayor Richard M. Daley and longtime lobbyist for local public agencies like Cook County and its Forest Preserve District, lists the Chicago Transit Authority as a current client. Williams referred questions to the city or the Illinois Secretary of State because he was “not inclined” to share “my client’s information with anybody.”

Lobbyists sometimes represent multiple sister agencies at once, as those bodies have overlapping interests and require specialized knowledge. But Kent Redfield, a retired political science professor at the University of Illinois at Springfield, said Bass’ current work for Johnson’s administration and the teachers union, “which indirectly has a contract with the city,” presents a conflict of interest even if Bass acts ethically.

“If you’ve got a current boss and a future boss, the potential is there to be in a double-bind. The interests of the city and the interests of the union are not the same,” Redfield said.

Arena said Bass’ contract with the union runs until November, and “the understanding there is that when the city contract for him is approved, then he would terminate the contract with CTU.” As far as a firewall between the two interests, Bass is responsible for “maintaining that discipline,” Arena said.

The Tribune received public records of correspondence with Johnson’s chief of staff, Cristina Pacione-Zayas, senior adviser Jason Lee and external relations deputy Kennedy Bartley that show the three lobbyists were involved in email threads about various bills introduced this spring or more general Springfield updates.

The city has provided only an email log so far, but the subject lines and attachment file names reference pensions, a disputed 911 surcharge and shell bills. Arena said Bass, who sent the lion’s share of those emails, never represented himself as the city’s lobbyist in front of him.

“Those were kind of client-level broadcasts. ... Our focus was on education with him,” Arena said. “I would get regular updates on a broad range of things. It didn’t mean that they were specifically relevant to the city, but they might have been relevant to other clients.”

Besides the CTU, Bass’ current clients include Teamsters Locals 700 and Local 743 and three suburban municipalities.

Another Freedom of Information Act response shows Bass emailed a staffer of House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch’s office about state Rep. Eva-Dina Delgado’s local transit reform bill on May 28.

“What changes if any concerning disability and paratransit services are in the bill,” Bass wrote to a senior assistant counsel for Welch. “The city of Chicago has a person who serves as ex officio capacity on the Pace board.”

A source from Welch’s office familiar with the email said the senior assistant counsel for the speaker didn’t know for which of Bass’ clients he was referencing in the email. Although no city of Chicago officials appeared to be copied on the email, the record was obtained from the mayor’s office.

Arena said he couldn’t speak to that exchange but said, “I wouldn’t have directed him to do that because that was not his role.”

One email sent by Arena on May 24 titled “IGA Team” included Pacione-Zayas, Blaida, Bass, Purchase and Williams. Arena declined to comment on the specifics, saying he didn’t recall that message.

Bass was also on a March 7 thread about “Division of Labor Discussion,” where he shared an audio recording with Pacione-Zayas and Blaida. And on March 1, Johnson’s deputy mayor for IGA Emily Melbye sent Lee an attachment titled, “Fw: municipal-contract-lobbyists-3525-agenda.pdf.”

A CTU spokesperson did not respond to questions about Bass’s lobbying work with the union.

Williams’ most notable registered lobbying client this year is the CTA, which had been pushing for more funding to address a projected $771 million fiscal cliff at the end of the year that could upend Chicago-area transit systems. Lawmakers ultimately left Springfield without resolving that issue.

A CTA spokesperson did not respond to questions about Williams’ lobbying work for the agency.

At the start of last week, Bass, Williams and Purchase all had not registered with the Illinois secretary of state’s office to lobby on behalf of the city. Purchase amended her client list June 23 to include the city, though the other two have not. She did not respond to requests for comment, nor did Bass.

Arena said Purchase — whose hiring was confirmed by the mayor’s office in March — did not lobby on behalf of the city this past session. He said she merely helped “coordinate things within Springfield” and he did not recall her going to legislators with a “specific ask.”

“She was not directly lobbying. She was helping facilitate the work of our lobbyists,” Arena said. “She may have been at one or two meetings ... but she wasn’t speaking at the meetings. That wasn’t her role. Her role was to administrate.”

Williams also was marked as not in compliance on the secretary of state’s lobbyist registration database as of the morning of June 23, but that was fixed later that day after the Tribune’s inquiry to the mayor’s office.

The email log also shows Johnson’s political director was included on several emails from Bass about Springfield business this January, raising concerns over the separation of political and government work.

In January, Bass sent eight emails with subject lines about various Senate and House bills to Bartley and Christian Perry, who is not a city employee but a paid consultant for Johnson’s political fund. Per the subject lines, the legislation concerned topics ranging from pension reform to ranked choice voting and enhanced benefits for seniors. The log of emails do not indicate whether Bartley or Perry responded.

Perry did not respond to a Tribune inquiry. Johnson’s spokesperson Erin Connelly said he was “certainly not” part of the mayor’s lobbying team and said, “I’m not sure why Frank would do that. My assumption would be to say an error in judgment.”

Still, Redfield said the appearance of “fuzzy lines” between the political and government sides of Johnson’s administration might not have happened if Bass’ role with the city were established from the beginning. Registration and disclosure “forces people to think about what they have to write down and hopefully that makes them more careful and prudent about what they’re doing.”

A spokesperson for the Illinois secretary of state, which is tasked with investigating alleged violations of the state’s Lobbyist Registration Act via its inspector general, declined to comment on Johnson’s IGA team, citing the office’s practice of neither confirming nor denying the existence of ongoing investigations.

Lobbyists must register with the state within two business days of being employed or retained by clients if they’re representing their interests. If they are convicted of violating the act they face up to $10,000 in daily fines and are barred from lobbying the state for three years.

But the Lobbyist Registration Act provides that an alleged violator has 30 calendar days to correct the infraction after notification to be spared punishment, though that lobbyist could still be subject to various administrative late fees.

The peek behind-the-scenes of the mayor’s lobbying arm at the State Capitol comes after it has struggled over the past year.

Johnson’s intergovernmental affairs shop, which advocates for his agenda across units of government, has seen a series of shakeups. Months after his previous Springfield lobbyist exited in November, the addition of Arena was welcomed by some who believed Johnson needed to reinvigorate his presence in the General Assembly, despite the former Northwest Side alderman‘s sometimes-contentious relationships at City Hall.

But multiple Springfield insiders said the city IGA team was more disjointed than ever this past session. Though the trio of outside lobbyists had experience, lawmakers were confused at the multiple streams of communication from that group, Arena and Johnson’s inner circle of Pacione-Zayas, Lee and Bartley, sources said.

Arena sought to tamp down that criticism by noting “the mayor was down there and spoke to a set of issues that we articulated over and over again.”

“Nobody is going to be fully satisfied with our activities,” Arena said. “This was a very challenging budget year with a lot of big-ticket items that needed to be addressed. So, I appreciate their feedback. We always strive to do better. But I think we had a very coherent message.”

The mayor did come out with wins for what he had pitched as a “modest” Springfield wish list, including increasing funding for Chicago Public Schools via statewide grants, funding for the city-state shelter system for migrants and homeless people and keeping the 911 surcharge extension in Chicago.

Yet some lawmakers say these dynamics have diluted the clout behind the once-paramount question within the halls of the statehouse: “Where is the city of Chicago on this issue?”

“I hear stories from longtime members on how the fate of a bill was once dependent on the City of Chicago’s stance on it,” state Rep. Margaret Croke, a Chicago Democrat, said in a text message. “Now, we rarely get outreach from the city’s internal IGA team, let alone hear them testify in committee.”

Tarver, who used to work in Daley’s IGA office, had a blunter analysis. “At this point now, saying the city is for something, I think, is the biggest detriment to getting it passed.”

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