Carmen A. Rossi, an attorney and bar owner who holds the liquor license for Lollapalooza, has agreed to pay a $5,000 fine for violating City Hall’s lobbying rules when he asked a city official to help secure business licenses to operate parking lots on Chicago Public School property.
The Chicago Sun-Times reported last year that Rossi wasn’t registered as a lobbyist for his company, Chicago Parking Solutions, when he sent an email on March 7, 2022, asking a top city official to help secure business licenses for the parking company.
The Board of Ethics found Rossi violated the lobbying rules when he sent that email to Kenneth Meyer, the city’s commissioner for the Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection, because he wasn’t registered as a lobbyist for the parking company.
Rossi, who was a campaign contributor to Mayor Lori Lightfoot, disagreed with the Board of Ethics, saying Meyer’s agency had no authority to issue the licenses Rossi needed to fulfill his contract with the Board of Education to park cars on various school playgrounds near Wrigley Field and other schools near the United Center and Guaranteed Rate Field.
Neither Rossi nor his attorney, Michael Forde, responded to calls about the settlement Monday.
Following Lightfoot’s election four years ago, Rossi and his companies donated $68,500 to her campaign fund that appeared to violate an executive order imposed more than a decade ago by then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
After the Sun-Times raised questions over Rossi’s donations to Lightfoot, the mayor agreed to return $44,500 in donations to Rossi. She kept money from other companies connected to Rossi, who maintained he didn’t own those businesses.
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