The Chicago Sun-Times reports:
The City Council’s most powerful alderman said Wednesday he doubts Mayor Daley has the votes to empower Chicago’s corruption-fighting inspector general to investigate aldermen.
Sources said Ald. Edward M. Burke (14th), chairman of the City Council’s Finance Committee, has spent the last week marshaling opposition to the mayor’s ordinance behind-the-scenes.
On Wednesday, Burke went public with his colleagues’ concerns about the impact the mayor’s plan would have on the separation of powers.
“An inspector general that investigates a legislative branch that reports to the executive branch can create a clear problem in the minds of many in the City Council,” Burke said after a luncheon address to the City Club of Chicago.
There's more:
Twenty years ago, Daley tried to give the inspector general the power to investigate the City Council, only to be shot down by aldermen concerned about political witchhunts.
Those same fears apply today — even though the 2011 election is fast approaching and voters have had their fill of political corruption.
Daley has claimed that the guilty plea by Ald. Isaac Carothers (29th) “broke the camel’s back” on the corruption front, prompting him to revive his controversial proposal.
But, Burke said, “I don’t think the Chicago City Council is any better or any worse than any other legislative body around the nation. Human nature being what it is, there’ll be occasions where people will succumb to temptation and make mistakes.”
Carothers, Daley’s most outspoken African-American supporter, was the 31st aldermen to be convicted of corruption charges since the 1970’s — and the first to follow his father to prison.
For a look at Alderman Burke's lack of concern on the subject of "separation of powers" click on
this, and
this, and putting a mobster on Chicago's
payroll. Did Alderman Burke like his guy
Pete Andrews being investigated by the Inspector General?
