Chicago Aldermen Using Expense Accounts to Lease Luxury Cars

With Chicago having the highest retail sales tax in the nation, it's good to know that Chicago taxpayers are paying for their City Council to drive around in luxury vehicles.Fox News reports:

Maybe you can't afford a luxury car like a Lexus, Cadillac or Acura, but if you pay taxes in the city of Chicago, you own a piece of one. Fox News Chicago obtained expense reports for all fifty aldermen and found 19 are driving leased cars at taxpayer expense. It's perfectly legal since the money comes out of each alderman's ward office budget. But after approving a big tax hike last fall, Cindy Canary with the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform says, "I think that really begs the questions at a time when the city is struggling financially it really raises the questions of what's a legitimate automotive expense." Canary says it's no big deal if aldermen are driving affordable cars, which some are, but we found several aldermen spending more than six-thousand dollars a year to lease cars.

Bernie Stone tops the list spending nearly eleven-thousand dollars last year for his 2007 Lexus. Richard Mell spent eighty-four-hundred dollars for a 2007 Lincoln. Michael Zalewski spent nearly seven-thousand dollars for a Cadillac DTS. Ray Suarez also drives a Cadillac but pays for part of it out of his campaign fund.

Anthony Beale says he's on call 24 hours 7 days a week doing the "people's business." He says taxpayers are getting their money's worth when they pick up the tab for his Ford Explorer, "It's not like somebody's taking advantage of the situation we're actually doing the people's business and we're using the vehicles to do it."

Alderman Joe Moore drives a Toyota Camry and pays for it with campaign funds, not taxpayer dollars. According to Moore, "I wanted to remove any hint that I was using tax dollars for personal reasons rather than my official duties."

Powerful Ed Burke is the only alderman who gets a city-provided car and police detail. The car was provided after a threat on his life many years ago. We also found Burke billed taxpayers nearly nine-thousand dollars last year for a 2007 Chevy Tahoe. None of the money came out of his 3 1/2 million dollar campaign war chest.

For more on Chicago's unusual City Council history click on this.With 49 of 50 Aldermen being Democrats,you can see that elected Democrats want to tax people so they can live like Republicans.