Mendoza calls out Lightfoot administration while pushing to protect cops impacted by Covid-19
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - After her brother suffered extreme complications due to COVID-19, Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza is championing police pension reform and targeting the Lightfoot administration.
At a City Hall news conference on Tuesday, Mendoza said pension board members appointed by Mayor Lori Lightfoot denied her ailing brother duty disability benefits, even though he caught COVID while on the job as a CPD detective sergeant.
But Mayor Lightfoot responded by saying she had nothing to do with the decision, and — with one week to go before the mayoral election — calls Mendoza's timing "curious."
"Not in my wildest dreams did I imagine that his case would be denied," said Mendoza, who said her brother Joaquin — a 22-year CPD veteran — contracted COVID on the job and went downhill quickly, suffering five strokes, losing both kidneys, and now facing dialysis three times per week. But his duty disability claim, which would pay him 75 percent of his police salary and guarantee health insurance, was rejected by pension board members appointed by Mayor Lightfoot, Mendoza said.
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"You can imagine my shock, disbelief, and frankly disgust when my brother's claim for duty disability benefits was denied," she said.
Mendoza accuses the Lightfoot administration of betraying her brother and other officers who contracted COVID in the line of duty. But Lightfoot says she knew nothing about Joaquin Mendoza's case and points out that any decisions about benefits are based on pension code as defined by and voted on by the state legislature.
"What little I know about her, she cares deeply about her family," said Lightfoot. "But making up accusations and suggesting that somehow I acted inappropriately, she's not entitled to her own facts...it's not lost on me that this is a press conference at City Hall a week before the election. You can draw your own conclusions as to why that's happening."
Mendoza now champions an amendment to the pension code, which would make it easier for officers affected by the pandemic, which Mayor Lightfoot says she would also likely support, with buy-in from public health experts and doctors.
The bill is being sponsored by State Rep. Jay Hoffman, D-Swansea, and State Sen. Bill Cunningham, D-Chicago.