Chicago aldermen had a busy time at last week’s City Council meeting, overwhelmingly passing Mayor Richard Daley’s $3.64 billion budget and his $19.5 million property-tax increase. Not too busy for some good old-fashioned sniping, however.
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Alderman Joseph Moore proposed cutting $500,000 from the budget for lawyers representing aldermen who are defendants in a lawsuit over the 1990 ward remap (Moore and other antiadministration aldermen brought the suit, charging that the map deliberately reduced minority voting power). “I particularly think it’s outrageous,” Moore said directly to Daley, “since sitting right next to you is the head of the city’s law department, one of the finest law departments in the country–”
Alderman Edward Burke, one of the defendants in question, took the suggestion in the spirit it was probably intended: “First of all Mr. President, I’m sure that Mr. Solovy”–Jerold Solovy, a partner at Jenner & Block, who’s representing Burke and others in the remap case–“will be delighted to hear about Alderman Moore’s comments about lining his pockets, so that the next time Alderman Moore calls him asking for a campaign contribution he’ll keep that in mind.”
“Now I had a very, very minor radio-program guy run a show on his radio, and he suggested that you all be called, and I heard from him,” Buchanan began. “He said, ‘Well, what about this real estate tax increase?’ Well, I think it’s time that we know that the only house in my area that will pay a $15 increase will be the guy on the radio, because he’s the only guy out in my neck of the woods got a house worth a hundred thousand dollars. The only guy. My house isn’t worth a hundred [thousand]….I figure my increase’ll be fi’ dollars. Because my house is only worth a third of his house.”
