Final Tally: Ex-Ald. Ed Burke Spent $3.8M in Campaign Cash on Legal Fees Before Conviction – WTTW (Chicago)

But Burke, 80, has plenty of campaign cash left on hand to appeal the jury’s verdict and delay any prison sentence. His campaign account still has approximately $8 million in investments. And because the Illinois Supreme Court upheld the use of campaign funds to cover legal defense fees in March 2022, Burke did not have to dip into his annual city taxpayer-funded pension of more than $96,000.
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Isn’t Illinois Fun?
1 year ago

Now there’s a law in need of change. Campaign donors paying for the defense of the crooked alderman lawyer they knowingly hired specifically for who he was to reduce their taxes also pay for his defense. And elected officials are still allowed to have tax reduction law practices. Another Illinois and city racket the legislature and city happily permit.

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Mark Glennon on AM560’s Morning Answer: Chicago pension buyout plan mostly shifts debt rather than eliminating it, property tax surge doubles inflation over three decades

Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.

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