Paul Goodrich at Center of Chicago Intern Contracting Scandal

Paul Goodrich, who served as chief operating officer under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot, allegedly used his position to secure a paid internship for his son at a city contractor and then pushed for nearly $10 million in additional taxpayer payments the company may not have deserved, according to a City Hall inspector general’s report.

The findings put Goodrich at the center of a contracting and nepotism scandal that has embarrassed both Lightfoot and her successor, Mayor Brandon Johnson.

Inspector General Deborah Witzburg released the report last week, though without naming specific individuals or their titles. The Chicago Sun-Times confirmed from sources that the unnamed city official is Goodrich and that the contractor in question is EKI-Digital, a firm run by Chicago businessman Robert Blackwell Jr.

Blackwell isn’t a political unknown. He’s a friend and campaign contributor to former President Barack Obama.

Witzburg declined to comment. Goodrich and Blackwell didn’t respond to requests for comment.

When Lightfoot hired Goodrich in 2021, City Hall put out a press release describing his role as involving “the oversight, development and implementation of strategic mayoral initiatives and policy priorities for Chicago’s infrastructure, transportation, regulatory and municipal administrative services.” Lightfoot herself was quoted in that statement: “For years, Paul dedicated his career to making businesses and organizations work more efficiently.”

Five years on, that framing looks considerably different. The inspector general’s report describes a top city official who allegedly arranged a paid internship for his son inside a company that held a city contract, then worked to steer roughly $10 million more in payments toward that same company, payments it may not have been entitled to collect from taxpayers. The sequence of events, as described in the report, cuts directly against the reform image Lightfoot spent her four years in office trying to build.

The Johnson administration confirmed some of the details. A spokesperson for Johnson said Goodrich directed Blackwell’s company to perform work in March and April 2023 that fell outside its contract with the city’s Department of Technology and Innovation. The city eventually settled with Blackwell to avoid litigation. “Consequently, the Johnson administration implemented new policies to prevent vendors from performing non-contracted work,” the spokesperson said.

That’s an acknowledgment. It isn’t a full accounting.

EKI-Digital has operated as a city contractor since the early 2000s, when Mayor Richard M. Daley ran City Hall. The firm kept its relationship with the city under Lightfoot and has continued under Johnson. City Hall records show it has remained active under a separate consulting contract with the technology department even after the unauthorized work episode came to light.

The Chicago Inspector General’s office serves as an independent watchdog with authority to investigate fraud, waste, and corruption across city government. Witzburg has issued several high-profile reports since taking office, though the decision to release findings without naming individuals has drawn scrutiny from government transparency advocates who argue that anonymized reports blunt accountability.

That tension is visible here. The report describes conduct serious enough to warrant public release, yet Chicagoans reading it last week had no way to know who was responsible without additional reporting. Goodrich’s name doesn’t appear in the official document. Neither does Blackwell’s or EKI-Digital’s.

The city’s online contract database shows EKI-Digital’s contracting history stretching back years, connecting the firm to multiple administrations across more than two decades of city government.

The scandal lands at an awkward moment for Johnson, who has faced his own political pressures in his second year at City Hall. His administration didn’t direct the unauthorized work, but it did settle with the contractor and continued paying the firm under a separate agreement, a set of decisions that will draw questions about oversight and vendor accountability at a time when Johnson can least afford more scrutiny.

Lightfoot, who left office in May 2023 after losing her reelection bid to Johnson, built her political identity around fighting the kind of insider dealing that defined the Daley years in Chicago. The Goodrich allegations undercut that narrative. Her office could not be reached for comment by publication time.

As of Wednesday, no charges had been filed in connection with the conduct described in the inspector general’s report. Whether Witzburg has referred the matter to federal or state prosecutors has not been publicly disclosed.