Corruption cases like Ed Burke's can spark ethics reforms. Let's get to it, Chicago.
When Mayor Richard J. Daley was first elected 70 years ago, Ald. Paddy Bauler asked, "Is Chicago Ready for Reform?" As a corrupt political machine boss with his 43rd Ward patronage army, he was sure it wasn’t.
This past week, former Ald. Ed Burke was sentenced to two years in prison, one year supervised release and $2 million in fines. We are again faced with Bauler’s question.
Big corruption cases and the outrage that follows can lead to ethics reforms. When Rod Blagojevich was sentenced to 14 years in prison, his successor Pat Quinn appointed an ethics commission. A number of its recommendations were adopted and not a single governor after Blago has even been accused of corruption.
Unfortunately, however, Blagojevich was the fourth Illinois governor to serve prison time. Forty alderpersons and in total, over 2,100 public officials and their cronies in Illinois, have gone to prison since 1972.
Reformers have been fighting to get ethics reforms. The first ethics ordinance in the history of Chicago wasn’t passed until 1987 under Mayor Harold Washington. Since then, we have made incremental progress, creating a Chicago Board of Ethics to administer Chicago’s governmental ethics and campaign financing ordinances. The City Council has an active Chicago Ethics Committee. We have strengthened inspector generals across all branches of government. And the federal courts continue to send corrupt officials like Burke to prison.
Now we can take the next step forward with the momentum of the Burke conviction. Two ethics ordinances are pending in the City Council and should be passed immediately. The first would ban lobbyists from giving any contribution to mayoral candidates or more than $1,500 to aldermanic candidates. It would allow the Board of Ethics to enforce these prohibitions. It should be passed and gradually extended to city contractors and lobbyists contributing to any candidate for city office.
The second proposed ordinance would allow public funding of aldermanic campaigns. Aldermanic campaign contributions from developers, businesses, wealthy individuals and special interest groups are often just bribes to buy alderpersons.
Small donor matching funds for campaigns
Alderpersons have little choice. The average winning aldermanic campaign costs more than $250,000, and in the 43rd Ward where I live, they cost over $1 million. These sums can rarely be raised by just small contributions from people in the ward. Businesses and wealthy individuals in my ward and even people from suburbs like Winnetka supply the big bucks.
The ordinance is simple. Small donors of $25 would have their donations matched 12-1, and small donors over $25 and up to $150 would be matched 9-1. There are, of course, rules governing this, such as requiring that candidates receive at least $17,500 in small donations from 100 people, of whom at least 60 come from their ward.
The cost to do this would be only $10 million, and we would not be reinventing the wheel. Chicago prides itself on being innovative and being No. 1. In this case, we are the last large city in America to do this. Many other cities and states, like New York and Los Angeles, adopted public funding more than a decade ago.
Alderpersons do not have the excuse they don’t know what their constituents want. The advisory referendum on public funding of campaigns passed with 80% support in 2015.
Of course, there is opposition. The public funding ordinance was sent to the Rules Committee when it was introduced earlier this month. This was to kill the ordinance. But the Burke conviction and public outcry can blast it out of committee.
Mayor Brandon Johnson campaigned on public funding. Now these ordinances need his support. He ran on a platform or good government and progressive reforms. He has delivered progressive reforms but not yet good government reforms.
Every alderperson who spends much of their four years in office raising money for their reelection rather faithfully representing their constituents should vote for these ordinances. Every potential good candidate who has been discouraged from running because they can’t raise the big bucks required to win should demand their alderperson support them.
After Burke’s conviction, it is time to say: "Yes, Chicago is ready for reform."
Dick Simpson is a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois Chicago and a former alderman. His latest book is “Chicago’s Modern Mayors: From Harold Washington to Lori Lightfoot.”
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