WBEZ | Chicago City Council

Pregnancy tests? Pigeon poo? What Chicago aldermen really do

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 17:21:00 -0500

Chicagoan Andrea Lee had a problem.

When she looked across the street from her condo building in the city’s Noble Square neighborhood, the 35-year-old noticed that her neighbors had something she didn’t: recycling bins.

So Andrea did what many Chicagoans with neighborhood problems do: She called her local alderman, only to learn that aldermanic power (at least when it comes to refuse collection) ain’t what it used to be.

After another dead end with her alderman’s office (this time, about basement flooding), Andrea asked Curious City:

“If these are the city services that are supposed to be tackled by the aldermen, and this isn’t what they’re actually doing, then what are they doing?”

“I guess there are things that the mayor proposes that they vote on,” Andrea said when Curious City first reached out to her last month. “I don’t know what those things are. I want a little more of a window into that black box of aldermanic duties.”

(In the video above, we hear what Andrea learned during a visit to Ald. Walter Burnett’s office.)

Chicago’s 50 aldermen, it turns out, have a hodgepodge of legislative, administrative and downright strange responsibilities that fall into their laps. (Think: pigeon poop and pregnancy tests.) Some of those duties are codified in law, but some are passed down by tradition alone.

Here are the three broad categories of aldermanic duties — a list, as we learned, that is hardly exhaustive.

Chicago alderman legislate

At least on paper, Chicago aldermen comprise the legislative branch of city government.

State law puts them in charge of a host of the expected legislative duties: They introduce and pass laws, they approve budgets and mayoral appointments, and they redraw Chicago’s political boundaries every decade.

But the vast majority of stuff that moves through the City Council lacks any headline-grabbing sex appeal. Think less about foie gras bans and controversial city-wide privatization deals, and more about mundane city ephemera that happen to require approval by the entire City Council: sidewalk cafe permits, loading zones, and senior citizen sewer fee refunds.

Since Mayor Rahm Emanuel took office in May 2011, there have been 28,971 measures introduced to the City Council. Of those, only 2,030 (about seven percent) were flagged by the City Clerk’s office as being pieces of “key legislation”; that is, they were proposals that could have a potential citywide impact, such as mayoral appointments, legal settlements, or tax and fee hikes.

If this strikes you as more administrative than legislative, that’s because City Council isn’t set up as a robust watchdog-like second branch of city government, at least according to Dick Simpson, a former North Side alderman who's now a political scientist at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

“A big problem with aldermen in the city of Chicago is they don’t legislate very well,” Simpson said. “They’ll look at what comes across their desk, ask what the mayor wants, and vote ‘yes.’”

Part of the problem is that aldermen don’t have staff to exhaustively vet complicated ordinances, and the city has no equivalent to the Congressional Budget Office, Simpson said. He points to the unpopular parking meter privatization deal that was passed in 2008, which former Mayor Richard M. Daley gave aldermen just three days to review.

But the lack of legislative muscle is also cultural, said 49th Ward Ald. Joe Moore, who has represented the city’s Rogers Park neighborhood for more than two decades.

Somewhere between the Second Floor and the Fifth Floor of City Hall, there has developed a tacit understanding, Moore said: The mayor gets to drive the citywide agenda, and aldermen are left to control what goes on their wards.

“I often liken the City of Chicago [to] a feudal system, where the mayor is sort of a de facto king,” Moore said. “And each alderman is the lord — I guess, lady, for female aldermen — of their individual fiefdom.”

Chicago aldermen zone

And one of the most important lordly duties, after all, is the building of castles.

In Chicago the method of approving applications for castles — or skyscrapers, home additions, and business expansions, for that matter — is the city’s zoning process.

Zoning may sound tearfully boring, but it’s incredibly important. Simply put, the City Council’s zoning decisions determine where buildings are allowed to be built, how high they can be, and what you can do in them.

The City Council’s zoning role explains why there are no 80-story high rises vaulting out of quiet residential blocks, and why you won’t find a one-room log cabin on Michigan Avenue.

“If you wanna know why a city looks the way it does, or why it works the way it does, all private behavior in this regard is regulated by the city,” said David Schleicher, a George Mason University law professor who has studied municipal zoning.

“More than the police, more than the schools, it is the most important thing cities do,” Schleicher said.

And it is here that Chicago aldermen enjoy a nearly unchecked power, unmatched by their city council counterparts in other American cities. The unwritten rule of “aldermanic privilege” (also called “aldermanic prerogative”) gives aldermen de facto veto power over any development project in their ward.

“You wouldn’t find that in any city code or state statute,” Ald. Moore said. “It has just been the custom and practice of the City Council for generations.”

Despite the minutiae of zoning, Moore and other aldermen defend their privilege by saying that they have an intimate knowledge of what goes on in their wards, and the extraordinary zoning power helps them shape the architectural and economic landscapes.

But Schleicher said Chicago’s “sacrosanct” aldermanic privilege has its drawbacks. He points to homeless shelters, which most people agree serve a greater good but which often fall victim to “not in my backyard” opposition when it comes time to break ground.

“The cost of aldermanic privilege is not wasting city council people’s time,” Schleicher said. “But rather, creating too parochial an attitude towards problems that are really citywide problems.”

And UIC’s Dick Simpson can point to another problem with concentrating so much power in the hands of one Chicago politician: Dozens of aldermen have found themselves on the wrong side of the law.

“Ninety percent of ‘em have gone to jail for either zoning or building bribes,” Simpson said.

Chicago aldermen deal with ‘everything else’

Zoning and legislating may look good on paper, but woe to the alderman who doesn’t make sure the ward’s trash gets picked up.

During a recent hearing, veteran 33rd Ward Ald. Dick Mell — a self-described “dinosaur” of the City Council — excoriated some aldermen who questioned Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s proposed tweaks to the city’s much-reviled parking meter privatization.

“If anybody thinks that a legislative vote is gonna cost you the election, you’re gonna lose your election,” Mell said on the City Council floor. “What’s gonna get you elected is when ... your guy comes in and says ... his next-door neighbor’s throwing dog poop in his yard, and you go over and solve it.”

Indeed, the pedestrian concerns that fall under the broad umbrella of “ward issues” range from neighborly disputes to public safety. Several elected officials said those problems occupy the bulk of an alderman’s time.

“I am so focused on potholes and sidewalks, and I just didn’t think that would be the case,” said 46th Ward Ald. James Cappleman, who was just elected to the City Council in 2011. “I’m obsessed with that, and I just didn’t think that would be the case.”

Cappleman says he’s spent a lot of time dealing with a building in his ward that suffered roof damage due to excess pigeon poop. Alderman Mell, meanwhile, bought a chainsaw for his ward office in case constituents need a tree trimmed on short notice. Alderman Moore said he once had a staffer administer a pregnancy test to a worried young woman who visited his ward office.

Why it works this way

The structure of Chicago’s curiously personal aldermanic duties has its genesis from the days of political patronage, Simpson said. Aldermen could trade city favors, such as pothole-filling and curb-cutting, for votes come election day.

While that sort of quid-pro-quo is now looked down upon, the scaffolding of the Machine ward system remains intact, allowing aldermen micro-manage their wards. Each of Chicago’s 50 aldermen only has to deal with about 55,000 constituents. Compare that to about 162,000 constituents a piece for New York’s 51 council members, and a whopping 255,000 constituents for the average Los Angeles council member.

While some newer council members are concerned with this sort of aldermanic co-dependence (“Can’t they just call 311?”), Moore said it’s one of the reasons he loves his job.

“All of humanity comes walking into my office, with all sorts of problems from the very serious to the mundane, and everything in between,” said. Ald. Moore. “They’re looking to us to help solve them.”

Alex Keefe reports on Chicago politics for WBEZ. Follow him on Twitter @akeefe

Correction: This story originally misstated Andrea Lee's age. She is 35 years of age.

Aldermanic bribery scheme pushed by government?

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 18:16:00 -0500

Defense attorneys for a former Chicago alderman on trial for bribery say it was government investigators who were really pushing a bribery scheme, not former Ald. Ambrosio Medrano. They’ll be pushing that angle in federal court again this morning as Medrano’s trial enters a second week.

Medrano did a couple years in prison in the 1990s for taking $31,000 in bribes as an alderman, and now he’s on trial for conspiring to pay a bribe to a public official in Los Angeles to win a contract.

Prosecutors have been playing secretly recorded phone calls for jurors but at times Medrano appears focused on pushing a quality product for a healthcare contract with L.A. County.

"That basically is a prescription drug program that’s being used by the county and they saved them I don’t know how many millions of dollars,” Medrano told the government’s confidential informant.

By contrast, the informant often brings the conversation around to payoffs. “I’ve been thinking now, what can we do to entice this guy,” the informant said in one recording.

Defense attorneys say the confidential informant desperately pushed the bribery scheme because he had his own legal troubles for failing to pay taxes and he was hoping to curry favor with prosecutors.

City Council enacts ‘Keep Chicago Renting’ ordinance

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 14:45:00 -0500

The Chicago City Council on Wednesday afternoon approved protections for renters whose units have entered foreclosure. The ordinance passed in a 45-4 vote after more than a year of organizing by tenant advocates.

The measure, dubbed Keep Chicago Renting, will require the foreclosing bank to provide the tenants a rent-controlled lease until selling the property or pay them a “relocation assistance” fee of $10,600 per unit. The goal is to keep renters in their homes and keep the buildings from standing vacant and breeding crime.

María Elena Sifuentes, a housing activist with the Albany Park Neighborhood Council, said she had been working for an ordinance like this for four years. The council vote left her “overwhelmed, excited, speechless,” she said. “It’s a victory for us that we got this, especially because we’re just the little people and we beat the banks.”

The aldermen casting “no” votes were Mary O’Connor (41st), Patrick O’Connor (40th), Matthew O’Shea (19th) and Michael Zalewski (23rd).

An earlier version of the proposal, introduced by Ald. Richard Mell (33rd) last July, would have prohibited post-foreclosure evictions outright except under narrow circumstances such as the tenants’ failure to pay rent.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration worried that version might not withstand legal challenges. Instead of the eviction ban, the city pushed for requiring the banks to pay the relocation fee. Negotiations between City Hall and tenant advocates dragged on for months. The sides did not finalize the amount of the fee until last week.

The council’s Housing and Real Estate Committee, chaired by Ald. Ray Suárez (31st), held two hearings on the bill last month. Before both hearings and Wednesday’s vote, tenant activists dressed in orange T-shirts rallied outside the council chambers.

Groups representing banks, landlords and realtors tried to delay the vote. They said the measure would violate Illinois statutes, including a law that bars local governments from setting up rent control. They claimed the ordinance would also discourage lending in the city. Their arguments did not gain much traction in City Hall.

After the vote, Mell said his fellow aldermen had realized something: “They’re all plagued by vacant properties where the banks have thrown the people out. The gangbangers go in. They strip the copper out of the properties and they use them for hangouts and they ruin the neighborhood. So this is one more tool, hopefully, [to] help bring our neighborhoods back.”

The ordinance could have far-reaching effects. More than 50,000 Chicago rental units went into foreclosure between 2009 and 2011, according to the Lawyers’ Committee for Better Housing, which supported the measure. Crime in abandoned buildings and vacant lots has increased nearly 48 percent since 2005, according to the committee.

Chip Mitchell is WBEZ’s West Side bureau reporter. Follow him on Twitter @ChipMitchell1 and @WBEZoutloud, and connect with him through Facebook and LinkedIn.

At midterm, Emanuel still cozy with City Council

Thu, 16 May 2013 07:32:00 -0500

As Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel hits his midterm Thursday in office, the city’s 50-member City Council is also marking a milestone: two years under a new mayor.

At his May 2011 inauguration, Emanuel promised a new dynamic between Chicago’s famously powerful mayor and the city’s famously compliant City Council.

“We don’t a rubber stamp City Council, we don’t want (a) Council War,” then-mayor-elect Emanuel said in March 2011. “I want a council that will be part of the reform agenda and be a partner in that effort.”

Emanuel has enjoyed near-unanimous support from aldermen on his key agenda issues. But some aldermen criticize his style of dealing with some especially controversial issues, such as a recent amendment to the oft-maligned parking meter privatization contract, and his plan to embark upon the largest round of public school closings in U.S. history.

Still, a recent study from the University of Illinois at Chicago shows the average alderman sided with Emanuel 93 percent of the time on divided roll call votes through February 2013. That’s compared to 88 percent during former Mayor Richard Daley’s last years in office.

And when you ask aldermen what they like about Emanuel’s style, a lot of them point to his regular calls or text messages, whether to chat or discuss policy, as one marked departure from the Daley years that has made dialogue on hot-button issues easier.

“You know, he speaks strongly and carries a big stick,” joked 12th Ward Ald. George Cardenas.

The face of Emanuel’s agenda in the council chamber is longtime North Side Ald. Pat O’Connor (40th). He is Emanuel’s unofficial floor leader – that is, his aldermanic temperature-taker, nose-counter and - when need be - arm-twister.

O’Connor held the same post under Daley, but says his job has been a lot busier since Emanuel took office two years ago.

“We are more engaged with the City Council on a number of fronts than we were previously, in terms of my role,” O’Connor said.

Daley rarely called aldermen directly, but Emanuel’s hands-on style makes rounding up votes easier, O’Connor said.

Consider a recent City Council meeting, when aldermen took up a controversial plan to change the way the city charges nonprofits and churches for city water. When his proposal looked to be in danger, Emanuel himself huddled with aldermen and religious leaders near the City Council restrooms, seconds before the vote.

In the end, the churches got their reassurance, and every alderman voted yes – even O’Connor, who vocally disagreed with the mayor’s plan.

Still, O’Connor bristles at the phrase “rubber stamp.”

“It’s much better, in my opinion, to find areas where we can agree, and exploit them, and use those areas and try and limit the areas where we don’t agree,” he said.

But University of Illinois at Chicago political scientist Dick Simpson, a former independent alderman who now researches the city government, says the result is a City Council that is even more compliant than it was at the zenith of the Democratic Machine’s power.

“Well, what we ended up with is still a rubber stamp City Council,” Simpson said.

But Simpson says that could change in the second half of Emanuel’s term, as the city faces tough issues.

“Aldermen are being caught between pressures of their communities, and going along with the mayor and having a nice chummy time at City Hall,” Simpson said. “At some point, over some issue, that may fracture the council.”

Heading into his second term, the mayor is already facing several issues that could peel away some of his City Council support.

He’s pushing an amendment to the wildly unpopular parking meter contract, trying to anticipate summer gun violence, and facing the Chicago Public Schools board vote on closing 54 schools next week.

Even some of the mayor’s City Council allies, like 27th Ward Ald. Walter Burnett, say they sometimes don’t feel listened to, especially over school closings.

“Sometimes when you go toward that target, and you just focusing, you miss all of the things on the side and in the back of you,” Burnett said, referring to Emanuel’s pursuit of school closings despite community opposition.

Simpson says the mayor will tweak his agenda if aldermen make enough noise, as they did about his initial proposal to cut library hours and his changes to protest ordinances leading up to last year’s NATO summit.

But Emanuel rarely changes direction entirely on big issues. And when it comes to opposition from everyday Chicagoans, Simpson says don’t expect a phone call.

“He’s not very good at actual democracy,” Simpson said. “He’s not good at asking people what should happen, and building a consensus. He’s good at saying, ‘This is what I did for you this week.’”

Alex Keefe is a political reporter for WBEZ. Follow him @akeefe.

Churches take ‘leap of faith’ on Emanuel water deal

Wed, 08 May 2013 18:00:00 -0500

Church leaders took a “leap of faith” Wednesday and got behind Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s compromise plan to charge non-profits for city water, after some last-second lobbying that ended with unanimous City Council approval.

The city will now charge non-profits based on a sliding scale, determined by their net assets. Groups and churches with less than $1 million in net assets will still get free water, while groups that are worth more than $250 million would pay full price.

Emanuel, aldermen and religious leaders whispered near the City Council bathrooms moments before the roll call vote - a rare scene for a legislative process where most votes are decided long before they hit the council floor.

A coalition of religious groups had objected to the plan, arguing that some old churches wouldn’t get a break because they’re situated on valuable land. Chicago’s Catholic leaders were also worried that their 200 churches and 90 schools wouldn’t qualify for any individual exemptions because they are all technically owned by one entity, the Archdiocese of Chicago.

Coalition leaders claim they had the City Council votes to block the mayor’s plan, but withdrew their opposition after gaining assurances that administrative rules would later be written in their favor.

“In exchange for that commitment, we have - we have said we will support the passage of the ordinance today, and we will work it out,” said Chancellor Jim Lago, with the Archdiocese of Chicago. “It’s a leap of faith, and we’re looking for the goodwill of those who will be in the room with us, and we expect that.”

Lago would not say whether he trusted Emanuel to make sure nonprofits don’t take a big hit when the rules for collecting water fees are written, but he said negotiations would continue in the coming weeks.

The mayor took heat from Chicago’s non-profit community when he first proposed taking away free water as part of his plan to balance the city budget in 2011. He backed off a bit with his compromise proposal last month, but church leaders were concerned about how the city would calculate net assets.

After Wednesday’s City Council vote, Emanuel maintained he struck a fair balance.

“I think we’ve done it in a thoughtful way, reflective of every one of the non-for profits’ and religious entities’ different roles in the community - meaning, their net value - but nonetheless ended the practice where the taxpayers were on the hook for everybody else,” Emanuel said.

During his campaign, Emanuel vowed to stop giving away city water and sewer service to nonprofits - a freebie he estimates costs the city $20 million a year.

Alex Keefe is a WBEZ political reporter. Follow him @akeefe.

Englewood residents fight for environmental safeguards during rail yard expansion

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 15:39:00 -0600

Residents in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood are demanding that railway company Norfolk Southern include environmental protections into its expansion plans for its South Side rail yard.

The company has already bought and demolished some Englewood homes over the past several years to fulfill its expansion plans. Now Norfolk Southern is on track to purchase 104 acres of city land. The yard is set to expand southward, from Garfield Boulevard to 61st Street.

John Paul Jones, the head of the nonprofit Sustainable Englewood, said residents aren’t trying to block the rail yard expansion.

“But for Englewood it could be a dramatic impact on our quality of life but also our well-being because of a host of environmental harms such a project would bring,” Jones said.

Residents worry about health impacts of truck traffic, which would increase because the yard is location where freight is transferred from rail to trucks and vice versa. Residents are particularly concerned about increased diesel-related air pollution, as the Englewood neighborhood already has some of the highest asthma rates in the city.

Jones’ group wants a community benefits agreement from Norfolk Southern, connected to the sale of the city-owned property. Sustainable Englewood is asking for: monitoring and mitigating diesel pollution; creation of green space and placement of buffer zones around homes. The hope is to lessen noise and air pollution.

Brian Urbaszewski of Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago said filters should be go on diesel engine trucks, to eliminate 90 percent of the soot that comes out of tailpipes.

At Tuesday’s city council housing and real estate committee meeting, a hearing for the sale of city land to Norfolk Southern was delayed. A Norfolk Southern spokesman said the company is meeting with environmental activists next month.

Follow Natalie on Twitter @natalieymoore

2-19-1894: Your City Council at Work

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 05:00:00 -0600

Old newspapers are a fascinating source for historical information. On this February 19^th in 1894, the Chicago Record was giving the public a lesson on how their city council did business. The story didn’t read like any civics textbook.

In 1894 Chicago had 35 wards, each represented by two aldermen. The aldermen served two-year terms. Their pay was $150 a year.

(That $150 is equivalent to about $3,700 today. To convert 1894-dollars into 2013-dollars, multiply by 25.)

According to the Record, most of the aldermen could be bribed. The paper did say there were some honest men in the council. There had even been times when the honest aldermen were in the majority. That was not the case in 1894.

Any one who needed a business permit had to pay bribes. There was a definite price schedule. If a coal company wanted to build a track connection to a freight railroad, it cost $1,000 in bribes. For the same track, a brewery had to fork over $2,500–because a brewery made more money than a coal company, the price was higher. Call it a form of graduated tax.

But this was the small-time stuff. The aldermen got their largest payoffs from granting city franchises.

A franchise was a legal monopoly. They went to transit carriers or utilities. Since any company that held a city franchise earned big bucks, the bribes were stupendous. A few years before, when a certain railroad franchise was up for renewal, four aldermen had collected $25,000 each.

If you were going to pay bribes, you had to pay each alderman individually. That way there were no witnesses. Of course, with forty or so men in on the deal, payment took some time and effort.

One businessman came up with a most efficient method. He left packages of currency marked “$1,000″ in the men’s washroom at City Hall. Then, one by one, each alderman would come in to pick up his share of the loot.

The system worked until an innocent citizen wandered into the washroom. The man found one of the discarded “$1,000″ wrappers on the floor. He chased down the alderman who had just left, gave the alderman the wrapper, and said “You lost something.”

The alderman laughed and said “Thank you.” Then he tore up the evidence.

The Chicago Record exposé gained considerable attention. It also led to permanent reform. From that day to this—a full 119 years—there has never been another case of a Chicago alderman accepting a bribe in a public washroom.

Chicago City Council approves gun ordinance

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 15:58:00 -0600

Chicago's City Council is increasing jail time for anyone who fails to report guns that have been lost, stolen or sold.

Wednesday's vote on an ordinance proposed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel is part of an effort by city and county officials to crack down on so-called straw purchasers. Those are people who legally buy weapons and then provide them to convicted felons and others who are barred from owning firearms.

Earlier this month, the Cook County Board of Commissioners approved an ordinance that imposes fines of as much as $2,000 on suburban residents who don't report when their guns are lost, stolen or transferred to someone else.

Wednesday's ordinance by the City Council doubles the maximum sentence for failing to make such a report from three months to six months

Chicago closer to settling police suits for $32M

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 17:31:00 -0600

A Chicago City Council committee preliminarily approved settlements in two police misconduct cases Tuesday that would cost the city nearly $33 million, including $22.5 million to a California woman that apparently would be the largest to a single such plaintiff in the city's history.

The full City Council is expected to sign off on the settlements Thursday.

The bigger of the two would go to the family of Christina Eilman, who will require care for the rest of her life for severe brain injuries suffered in a 2006 fall from a 7th-floor window at a Chicago housing project where she had just been raped.

The second settlement would pay $10.25 million to Alton Logan, one victim of the city's notorious police torture scandal involving officers under former Lt. John Burge. Logan spent 26 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit, and his award would be the biggest handed out in any case to stem from the investigation into the Burge unit, which framed black murder suspects and tortured many into confessing.

The aldermen voted unanimously to approve the settlements after Alderman Edward Burke said he was "embarrassed and ashamed" that the city had put Eilman's family through a such a long legal fight, and another alderman suggested the city should have paid far more to Logan, who spent more than a quarter-century behind bars before he was released in 2008.

The alderman asked few questions before voting — perhaps because police misconduct cases have become a regular occurrence in recent years. Among other crimes, officers have been convicted of robbing suspected drug dealers of hundreds of thousands of dollars and beating a man who was handcuffed to a wheelchair. In November, a federal jury awarded $850,000 to a female bartender who was beaten by a drunken off-duty police officer, concluding police adhere to a code of silence in protecting rogue officers.

In often graphic and chilling detail, Steve Patton, the city's corporation counsel, outlined the police actions or inaction that justified settling the lawsuits for so much money.

Eilman, he said, was trying to fly back to California in May 2006 after visiting Chicago but wasn't allowed to board her flight at Midway International Airport because she was acting strangely and violently. Police took her to the airport's train stop, but her odd behavior continued, as she began disrobing, danced suggestively and verbally attacked people around her, including a blind man.

Police took her to a bus stop, but the behavior continued, so they arrested her. She continued acting strangely while in custody, babbling and even smearing menstrual blood on the holding cell's walls. Her parents in California repeatedly phoned police to tell them not to release the 21-year-old college student because she was bipolar and was clearly having a breakdown. Still, Eilman was released to fend for herself near the last standing high-rise of the Robert Taylor Homes, a notorious South Side public housing complex that since has been demolished.

Patton said Eilman ended up in a vacant apartment on the high-rise's seventh floor, where a man raped her at knife point.

"She was thrown or jumped out of a seventh-story window," Patton said. Authorities still don't know exactly what happened because the fall caused massive brain injuries, leaving her with the mental capacity of a child, according to court documents.

Eilman's case was scheduled to go to federal trial next week. Patton suggested the family's case is strong, and that a jury could have awarded her family far more money than the settlement amount.

Burke, who chairs the finance committee, said he was embarrassed by the officers' behavior and ashamed he and other members didn't order the city to settle with the family, which he said should have been allowed to focus on tending to her needs instead of being put through a protracted legal fight.

Cleary angry, he read from an opinion by a federal appellate court that decided last year to allow Eilman's lawsuit to proceed.

Police didn't so much as walk her to a train station, warn her about the dangers of the neighborhood or "even return Eilman's cellphone, which she might have used to summon aid," he read. "They might as well have released her into the lions' den at the Brookfield Zoo."

Logan's lawsuit is one of several stemming from one of the darkest chapters of the Chicago Police Department's history.

Logan was arrested in 1982 in the slaying of an off-duty Cook County corrections officer, who was shot to death at a McDonald's while working as a security guard.

Logan and another man were convicted, even though there was no physical evidence linking Logan to the crime. Logan was freed in 2008, months after two attorneys representing the other man came forward with a confession from their client, a confession the attorneys did not reveal until the other man died because they were bound to honor the attorney-client privilege.

According to Patton, there were many problems with the investigation, including there being no evidence Logan even knew his co-defendant. While there was no evidence Logan was tortured by Burge's detectives, another man gave authorities information implicating Logan after being tortured. Furthermore, Patton said Burge has admitted he believed Logan was innocent. Burge has been convicted of lying under oath by testifying in another case that he never witnessed or participated in the torture of suspects.

Alderman Ray Suarez suggested the city was getting off easy with a settlement that, after attorneys' fees, will pay Logan less than $8.75 million.

"He spent $26 years in jail (and) I think $8 million is really not enough," Suarez said.

But Logan himself said the money will "bring a measure of happiness because it will allow me to live in a comfortable manner." Besides, he said at a news conference at his attorney's office Tuesday afternoon, his eyes welling with tears, "Nothing, no amount of money will ever make up for the time I lost.... I lost everything."

Sandi Jackson resigns from Chicago City Council

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 15:27:00 -0600

In a move that marks the end of a Chicago political dynasty, Ald. Sandi Jackson resigned on Friday, less than two months after her husband, Jesse Jackson Jr., stepped down from his long-time congressional seat.

Alderman Jackson, who has been representing the 7th Ward on the South Side since 2007, sent a letter to Mayor Rahm Emanuel just after 3 p.m. Friday saying “with a heavy heart” she is planning to step down on Tuesday.

“[I] am unapologetically a wife and a mother and I cannot deny my commitment to those most important personal responsibilities,” Ald. Jackson said in her resignation letter, released by the mayor’s office. “To that end, after much consideration and while dealing with very painful family health matters I have met with my family and determined that the constituents of the 7th Ward, as well as you Mr. Mayor, and my colleagues in the City Council deserve a partner who can commit all of their energies to the business of the people.”

Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. resigned his U.S. House seat the day before Thanksgiving, citing ongoing health issues and a federal investigation.

Representative Jackson had been gone from Capitol Hill for six months as he was treated for bipolar disorder. During his absence, news came out that the congressman was the target of a federal probe, reportedly relating to spending from his campaign accounts.

Subsequent news reports, citing unnamed sources, said Ald. Jackson was part of the investigation as well. The alderman didn’t mention the legal troubles in her resignation letter. Just last month, Jackson told reporters she had no plans to resign, despite the firestorm surrounding her family.

“My constituents are people who depend on me to be there for them and I will continue to work hard on their behalf,” Ald. Jackson said in December. “I intend to finish my term."

It’s unclear who will replace Jackson in the City Council. The deadline to hold a special election for her seat has passed, and it seems likely the mayor will appoint someone to finish out her term.

But in a statement Friday, Emanuel said he wouldn’t announce plans for Jackson’s succession until early next week.

“As Sandi takes this time to focus on her family, we give her our deepest thanks and support for her service to our City and the residents of her ward,” Emanuel said in a statement. “Her leadership has been greatly appreciated in the Chicago City Council.”