Mayor Brandon Johnson fires city's cultural affairs chief, building commissioner

Mayor Brandon Johnson has been slow to assemble his own team, but those efforts have picked up steam with the ouster of two more city department heads.

Cultural Affairs and Special Events Commissioner Erin Harkey and Buildings Commissioner Matthew Beaudet were fired this week. Neither could be reached for comment.

Harkey was appointed by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot in November, 2021 when the COVID-19 pandemic had shut down theater, live-music and Chicago’s myriad festivals and special events. She slowly brought those events back to life, with the annual Blues Fest returning in full last summer and a full-out Air and Water Show in 2022.

At the same time, Harkey initiated the Sueños Festival in Grant Park, a two-day Latin Reggaeton event that has become a popular staple on the music scene.

She also shortened Taste of Chicago to a bite-sized, three-day event in July in Grant Park — preceded by three neighborhood Saturdays in June — to lessen the drain on diminishing police resources and promote what she called arts equity. Under Lightfoot, she also played a role in bringing NASCAR racing to downtown Chicago.

Last year, Taste of Chicago was pushed back from the July 4^th weekend to early September to make way for NASCAR’s first street course race.

Lightfoot had initially planned to move Taste of Chicago to a park near Navy Pier and hold it on the same holiday weekend as NASCAR, but ran into a wall of opposition from downtown alderpeople.

Ald. Nick Sposato (38^th), chairman of the City Council’s Special Events Committee, was stunned to learn from the Chicago Sun-Times of Harkey’s ouster. When he called Harkey, she quickly confirmed it.

“I go, `Is it true?’ She goes, `Yeah.’ I go, `Why?’ And she goes, `I guess he just wants to put his own person in.’ I go, `Is today your last day?’ And she goes, `No. I guess there’ll be a little bit of transition time. I don’t know yet for sure what’s going on,’ “ Sposato said.

The mayor’s office had no immediate comment.

Sposato branded Harkey’s ouster a “terrible” decision with “terrible timing.”

“It’s a bad move,” Sposato said. “She’s a good person. She’s a hard worker. She does a good job. And the timing of it. A lot goes in for the summer and now, you’ve got to bring somebody new in to be running the show for all of these fests and everything we have.”

“And I’m a little pissed off that I didn’t get a heads up about it and [hear them say], `We’re going in a different direction and here’s why.’ There could be a boat-load of reasons. None would probably be good enough for me.”

Sposato predicted that Harkey’s ouster would go over like a lead balloon with his City Council colleagues.

“Especially aldermen who have fests and events in their ward — they felt they worked really well with her,” Sposato said. I wouldn’t guess. I would bet my life on it that they’re all going to be disappointed and upset about this.”

Beaudet already refers to himself as Chicago’s “former” buildings commissioner on his Linked-In page. A source close to City Hall confirmed Beaudet’s firing. A citizen of the Montauk Tribe, he was the first Native American ever to lead a city department.

He has served as commissioner of the $37 million-a-year, 295-employee Chicago Department of Buildings since October, 2020.

Before that, Beaudet had a nine-year stint as first deputy, and was tasked with streamlining the city’s arcane permitting process and implementing electronic plan review to speed permitting for everything from renovating a single-family home to building a large-scale development. Chicago became the nation’s first major city to authorize electronic processing for all permit applications requiring architectural drawings.

Beaudet also helped spearhead what was billed as the “first full rewrite” of Chicago’s building code in 70 years.

Building commissioners routinely fly under the political radar until there is a tragedy — like the bureaucratic breakdowns that culminated in 2003 with both the E2 nightclub disaster and the Lincoln Park porch collapse.

Beaudet’s tenure was equally low-key.

In June 2022, he worked with the City Council to require Chicago’s residential high-rises and senior citizen buildings to establish cooling centers in enclosed common areas to give residents refuge when the heat index reaches 80 degrees.

The ordinance championed by Far North Side Ald. Maria Hadden (49^th) was aimed at preventing a repeat of the tragedy at James Sneider Apartments, 7450 N. Rogers Ave. in Hadden’s Rogers Park ward. That’s the senior citizens building where three residents died amid another heat wave.

At the time, Beaudet said the ordinance was intended to strike the balance between protecting Chicago’s “most vulnerable” residents and confronting the “technical limitations” of the heating and cooling systems in many large buildings.