By BRIGETTE FOX
Capitol News Illinois
bfox@capitolnewsillinois.com
Former Director of the Illinois Department of Public Health Dr. Ngozi Ezike, who led state health policy during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, will pay a $150,000 fine for violating a state anti-corruption law.
Ezike violated the State Officials and Employees Ethics Act’s “revolving door” provision in 2022 by accepting a job as CEO of Sinai Chicago, a hospital based on Chicago’s West side.
The state’s former top doctor admitted to state investigators she was guilty of the violation, according to a report released Friday outlining the almost three-year-long investigation by the state’s Executive Ethics Commission into her taking that job. Ezike could not be reached for comment.
Under the Ethics Act, a high-level state employee, like Ezike was, can’t take a job with an organization that was subject to certain contracts, licensing or regulatory decisions from the state within one year of leaving their government position.
Sinai Health System received $4.2 million in grants from IDPH in the year before Ezike left and was the subject of IDPH regulation.
According to a statement from her legal team in the report, Ezike sought opinions from counsel and her ethics officer at IDPH before accepting the position. That counsel told Ezike not to consider the money Sinai Chicago received in grant funding from the IDPH to be “contracts.”
“She thought she was able to accept the job,” Ezike’s legal team wrote in its filing to investigators. “Dr. Ezike accepts responsibility and appreciates the Office of the Attorney General’s role in settling this matter. She also asks the Commission to recognize the challenges for employees navigating the revolving door prohibition.”
The Executive Ethics Commission accepted the $150,000 settlement agreement between Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s office and Ezike.
However, the investigation from the Office of the Executive Inspector General found that “there was not ‘good faith’ or an honest intent to find out whether the revolving door provisions applied.”
Ezike did not disclose that she’d talked to other government employees about wanting to be hired at Sinai, according to the OEIG.
Ezike contacted the OEIG to let them know she was planning to take the job with Sinai in April 2022 after she left the IDPH in March 2022. However, the OEIG report said she had been interviewing for the position since November of the previous year.
The office reportedly told Ezike to continue consulting with legal counsel and the IDPH ethics officer during the year after her employment ended.
Editor’s note: This story has been corrected to note that Ezike sought an opinion from an ethics officer at IDPH, not the governor’s office.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
