Morgan Stanley,Chicago Alderman Ed Burke,and Chicago Clout

The Chicago Sun-Times reports on how things are done in Chicago:

When you want to do business with City Hall, it helps to have clout.

And could it get much better than having Mayor Daley's nephew on your payroll?


Mayoral nephew William Daley Jr. is an investment banker with Morgan Stanley, the investment banking giant that has gotten a string of deals from City Hall, including a 99-year lease to operate four underground parking garages for an upfront payment of $563 million.

Morgan Stanley says it doesn't use the nephew to strike deals with City Hall. The firm says it gets those City Hall deals with help from a lifelong Republican named William D. Mack.

Mack is a 39-year-old lawyer who got his start in 1991, when his father, a former campaign manager for the late Gov. Richard Ogilvie, got him an entry-level patronage job helping then-Secretary of State George Ryan fill license plate requests. Mack quickly became Ryan's travel assistant, then scheduler.

Mack made headlines five years ago as a federal witness with immunity from prosecution. He testified about the four hours he spent in September 1998 directing other state employees to shred documents that their bosses -- Ryan and his campaign manager Scott Fawell -- feared could be seized in a widening federal investigation. Mack helped send Fawell to prison, and Fawell then helped put Ryan behind bars.

Morgan Stanley didn't want to talk about Mack -- who had no investment banking experience when the firm hired him eight years ago.

Mack couldn't be reached for comment.

Mack is the lead banker on a deal Morgan Stanley has struck with the CTA to issue $1.3 billion in bonds to bail out the CTA's financially strapped pension fund.

Mack and the mayor's nephew are among the investment bankers Morgan Stanley employs to obtain government business in Illinois. The only Morgan Stanley employee who's registered to lobby at City Hall is Mack, who declared on his most recent lobbyist registration form that he would be contacting the mayor's Finance Department and the City Council.

So whom does Mack lobby at City Hall?

"Our best recollection is that we haven't seen him in more than a couple years,'' says a spokesman for Ald. Edward M. Burke, chairman of the City Council Finance Committee, which has to approve any deals with Morgan Stanley.

The city's Finance Department didn't respond to written questions about Mack.

You'll want to read the whole article.For more on Alderman Burke's rise to power,click on this.