Federal agents showed up unannounced at the City Hall office of Finance Committee Chairman Ed Burke, kicked everyone out and papered over the windows Thursday morning.
The nature of their visit was not known, but Ald. Burke (14th) has dodged dozens of federal investigations over five decades in Chicago politics.
A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment. A call to the FBI office in Chicago was not immediately returned.
He has been targeted for defeat by Congressman-elect Jesus “Chuy” Garcia because of his property-tax appeal work on the riverfront tower that bears the name of President Donald Trump.
Colleagues have been wondering aloud why Burke even is running for re-election when he risks losing his powerful seat in the City Council.
Over the years, Burke also has come under fire for representing clients doing business with the city, requiring him to abstain from many votes.
He also has come under scrutiny for the $100 million city worker-compensation fund operated out of his committee. That fund also was walled off from the jurisdiction of the city inspector general even as the inspector general was given power to investigate aldermen.
Burke has amassed a considerable campaign war chest which could be used for legal expenses.
In 50 years as ward committeeman and 49 years as alderman of a now-majority Hispanic ward once represented by his father, Burke has survived numerous threats to depose him as chairman of the City Council’s Finance Committee by mayors with whom he subsequently reached political accommodation.
He has survived federal investigations that threatened to undercut his power base, once even by blaming a dead man for ghost-payrolling irregularities on his committee payroll.
He’s been in the public spotlight for having taxpayer-funded bodyguards drive him to and from City Hall — and for how quickly city snowplows clear the pavement on his Southwest Side block.
A Democrat, he’s shrugged off criticism regarding his law firm’s business relationship with one of Republican President Donald Trump’s companies. Burke’s firm, Klafter & Burke, repeatedly has sought to reduce the property taxes that Trump Tower and other commercial properties have to pay — a lucrative business that’s also enriched Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan, D-Chicago.
Burke also has managed to overcome his own political extremism during the Council Wars power struggle that thwarted then-Mayor Harold Washington’s every move to the point where an entire generation of Chicagoans doesn’t even remember the old Ed Burke.
01-All No Sub,02-Pol,19-Legal,26-Delivered
Politics
via Chicago – Chicago Sun-Times https://ift.tt/2xAxGgE
November 29, 2018 at 10:38AM
Illinois Delivered 