The Chicago Reader reports:
The details of Isaac Carothers's recent guilty plea—how the former alderman accepted about $40,000 in home improvements from a developer in return for pushing a zoning change through the City Council—have already been splashed across the front pages.
But what hasn't been reported is the role played by our old friend, Mr. TIF.
To help Calvin Boender build Galewood Yards, a residential and commercial complex on the west side, Carothers not only put his muscle behind the zoning change but used his influence to get $5.3 million in property tax money funneled to Boender and his partners.
There's much more:
On March 14, 2006, the CDC approved the deal. Carothers was on hand to praise it. This time around there was no grandiose talk of restoring the area's industrial magnificence—no recollections about Archer Midland or Zenith or the great rail yards that had come and gone. The deal sailed on through to the City Council, which unanimously approved it on June 28, 2006. As the Sun-Times later noted, 14th Ward alderman and finance committee chairman Ed Burke didn't recuse himself from the vote despite some potential conflicts of interest—his law firm had previously worked for Boender on at least 14 tax appeals and his wife, Illinois Supreme Court justice Anne Burke, had received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the developer. But Burke said there was no conflict since the TIF subsidy was technically going to the unions.
Whoever was getting the actual money, it certainly helped Boender and his partners. They ended up selling the land on the east side of Central—the portion that could be used for residential and commercial development—for at least $6 million, according to Carothers's 2009 indictment. Single-family houses, townhomes, condominiums, and a movie theater eventually went up on the property. On the west side of the land the union built its training facility.
You'll want to read the whole article. This is the sick political operation that spawned Barack Obama, Valerie Jarrett, David Axelrod, and many more.
