Flashback: U.S. Attorney Looks The Other Way on Chicago Political Boss

The Chicago Sun-Times reports:

Ald. Edward M. Burke, the most powerful member of Chicago’s City Council, is also Edward M. Burke, attorney at law. His specialty: getting property-tax cuts and refunds for an A-list of business clients that includes Commonwealth Edison, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Avis Rent a Car and dozens of other companies that do business with City Hall.

As alderman, Burke helped pass a measure in 2002 that sharply limited City Hall’s ability to get in the way when his law clients go before an obscure state agency appealing for refunds of property taxes they thought were too high.


Burke (14th) was hardly the only alderman to vote for the resolution, which passed 47-0 and got so little attention at the time that even the head of the state agency it affects says he was unaware of it until now.

But unlike other members of the City Council, Burke had a financial stake in his vote, a Chicago Sun-Times investigation has found.

That appears to be a violation of the city ethics code, which bars elected officials from voting on matters that financially benefit themselves, though it’s unclear whether violators face any penalty.

The man running Chicago from behind the scenes shows the world how to make a law and line your pockets off it. No comment on this story from corruption crime fighter Patrick Fitzgerald. As you can imagine Alderman Burke has more money in his campaign fund than Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Governor Pat Quinn.