“No official or employee shall make or participate in the making of any governmental decision with respect to any matter in which he has any financial interest distinguishable from that of the general public ...”
The city of Chicago has an ethics code — a quite extensive one, 50 pages long. It makes for interesting reading. Public officials are forbidden from using the city seal in photos on their personal Christmas cards, since they mustn’t include its weird symbolism — why is that naked baby on a clamshell? — in snapshots “not related to official City business.”
Given its excruciating detail, you’d think we must have the most upright officials anywhere. Government officials can’t have any financial involvement with those having business with the city, as quoted above, in section 2-156-080, “Conflicts of interest; appearance of impropriety.”
And yet they do. In 2019, when then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot suggested perhaps Chicago City Council members should be banned from “side hustles” and just do their flippin’ jobs, full time, a WTTW survey found that 10 alderfolk — 20% of the City Council — derived significant income from second gigs, the king being Ed Burke, now on trial for allegedly connecting patronage of his law firm with performing his official duties.
Follow the ethics ordinance, guys. You’ll save us all a lot of time and bother.
I, of course, cannot comment on the guilt or innocence of Burke. He’s charged with extortion — not merely violating the local code by profiting from those having business before the city but demanding a quid pro quo — patronize my law firm or I’ll block your zoning.
This is not a victimless crime. The city itself suffers in a real and significant way. Here Chicago is behind the eight ball, reeling from the double hammer blows of spiking fear of crime and COVID-stoked downtown depletion, struggling to create a strong business environment so the whole place doesn’t crater. Meanwhile, in the 14th Ward, a Burger King can’t get a permit to move a driveway, allegedly, unless they do business at Burke’s law firm?
We’ve had — anybody? — 30 alderpersons convicted of financial crimes over the last 50 years — meaning one goes down more than every other year. Sometimes in circumstances of staggering tawdriness. The informant in Burke’s case, former 25th Ward Ald. Danny Solis, remember, is a fellow accused of having “sold his soul” for free Viagra and sex at massage parlors. Imagine having that legacy.
They do pay these alderpeople, you know. Between $115,000 to $142,000 a year. Not a staggering amount, true — any first-year associate at a Loop law firm can expect to earn far more. But it isn’t as though the positions would sit vacant unless aldercreatures were allowed to also sell Mary Kay Cosmetics.
What baffles me is this carelessness, late in the game. It isn’t as if Burke were just starting out, aflame with ambition to try to scale the heights of power. He’s 79 years old. You’d think at some point, he’d dial back, collect his chips, call it a day.
My theory is that habit becomes ingrained. You keep doing what you’ve always done. This case reminds me of a lunch a colleague had with David Radler, back when the Canadian felon-to-be was publisher of this newspaper.
“David,” he said, or words to that effect, “how does a person become rich?” Radler was very rich. Fly to Montreal for lunch on your Citation X jet rich.
At that, Radler wordlessly reached over, grabbed a big handful of sugar packets, stuffed them in his pocket and never took them back out. He left the restaurant with them.
I wasn’t there, so can’t be certain whether Radler was answering the question with a dramatic display, or — more likely — was just interrupted in his customary theft of sugar with a question he deemed as too trivial to answer. He ended up in prison.
But that moment comes back when regarding Burke in the dock, someone who had it made, had already grubbed plenty of money, up the wazoo. You’d think, with the home port in sight, he would furl his sails and coast into the harbor so he wouldn’t risk spending his golden years in prison.
Force of habit. When you’ve been mingling personal and city business your entire career, it starts to seem normal. “Sooner or later,” as Bruce Springsteen sings, “it just becomes your life.”
