The Chicago Sun-Times reports:
As the owner of a law firm that seeks to reduce property taxes for big business clients including companies that work for City Hall, it’s important for Chicago Ald. Edward M. Burke to have a good working relationship with the Cook County state’s attorney’s office.To recap... Alderman Burke sets the tax code in Chicago . Alderman Burke , as Chairman of the Finance Committee votes for the AT&T contract. Alderman Burke is the tax appeals lawyer for AT&T suing himself de facto in court : in front of a judge he slated . Who could forget that Alderman Ed Burke's wife is on the Illinois Supreme Court ? Any doubt on who's "the real Mayor" of Chicago ? Anyway, you'll want to read the entire article which is another great one from Tim Novak.
When Kim Foxx was running for state’s attorney, Burke hosted a fund-raiser at his home in the Southwest Side’s 14th Ward to help elect her.
At the time, the alderman’s law firm was battling the state’s attorney’s office, seeking millions of dollars in property-tax refunds for clients including Donald Trump and AT&T Corp., which has a $125 million contract to provide telecommunications services to various city agencies.
A few weeks after the fund-raising party, Foxx easily won election as state’s attorney, taking office on Dec. 1, 2016.
In August, nine months after she took office, her staff struck a deal with Burke’s firm: It settled three lawsuits, agreeing that various local governments Foxx’s office was representing would refund nearly $2 million in property taxes that AT&T had paid between 2013 and 2015 on a 105-acre campus in Hoffman Estates that now sits vacant.
That is the biggest tax settlement that Foxx’s staff has approved during her first 11 months as state’s attorney, according to a Chicago Sun-Times review of data released by her office in response to a public records request.
