Gov. JB Pritzker repaid — as promised — the $330,000 property tax break he got in part by disabling the toilets in a Gold Coast mansion he owns, a move the Cook County’s Independent Inspector General concluded was part of a “scheme to defraud” taxpayers.

Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza Monday blasted State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s office for allowing a man she caught barreling through a red light and smashing into four parked cars before fleeing the scene to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge and serve no jail time.

Aldermen brimming with fresh ideas set to take office May 20 with Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot filled conference tables at SEIU Healthcare Illinois Indiana Friday morning for an early lesson in governing.

“There’s not a handbook — which is shocking to me — on becoming a new alderman, but you do get calls from everybody,” Ald.-elect Jeanette Taylor (20) said, adding that she had heard from caucus chairs as well as representatives of the Department of Streets and Sanitation.

This group, elected with help from United Working Families, various SEIU locals or the Chicago Teachers Union, included Aldermen-elect Daniel LaSpata (1), Mike Rodriguez (22), Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25), Andre Vasquez (40), Matt Martin (47) and Maria Hadden (49).

“Part of it is coalition building, making sure to the greatest extent possible on the same page as progressive incoming aldermen, but also learning from folks like John Arena, Scott Waguespack, Sue Garza… to hit the ground running,” Martin said.

“Buckle your seatbelts, motherf***ers.” - Ald. @SSadlowskiGarza to incoming aldermen at @UWFIllinois #GoverningSchool

— Emma Tai (@emmachungming) April 12, 2019



Many said the group became close during months of campaigning, and “we were out closing down La Salle Street the other day and it showed a lot of solidarity amongst the new incoming aldermen-elect,” Rodriguez said, referring to protests against the subsidies for Lincoln Yards and The 78 from two newly created tax-increment financing districts.

Some of Chicago’s newest aldermen were united Friday by a vision to redirect investment to neighborhoods — and disappointment that the TIF agreements passed City Council Wednesday instead of after May 20.

While new crop has garnered significant press for their ability to swing the Council leftward and force Lightfoot to the table more often than Mayor Rahm Emanuel, no members were crowing Friday.

“If I remember high school correctly, the freshmen don’t really call the shots, right? I’m not under any illusion of what that is going in,” Ald.-elect Andre Vasquez (40) said. “If you don’t build a relationship with the 50 you don’t get nowhere.”

“All signs point towards coalition building. All signs point towards unity,” Ald.-elect Mike Rodriguez (22) said. “To get to 26, you’re going to have to bring together various caucuses… I could see an interesting alignment between the Progressive, Latino and Black Caucus to move stuff, and that’s where my hope is.”

Ald. Marty Quinn (13) — who will likely be on the other side of many fights the group plans on picking — also spoke to the group, describing his practice of going door-to-door in his Southwest Side ward for four hours each weekday afternoon and using his aldermanic expense budget to buy garbage carts.

The group learned about how to draft ordinances, how to get on committees and a bit about Robert’s Rules of Order, which governs the operations of the City Council.

Veteran aldermen passed out copies of the rules and shared ward office “horror stories,” phones “blowing up with requests,” and zoning debates.

There were “a lot of folks coming into this with big visions for what’s going to happen at City Hall, for me it was a very correct reminder of what it means to be a good alderman has a very specific definition for most folks in Chicago, and it’s not about ordinances,” UWF Executive Director Emma Tai said, adding that residents care about ward services.

“There’s a steep learning curve. Today was a good first step, there’s a lot to do and not a lot of time and money and staff to do it. There were 11 aldermen who came through [Friday]. We’re still 15 short of 26. It’s an ongoing strategic puzzle to figure out how you get there.”

Vasquez and others are working on finding ward offices, hiring staff and connecting with neighboring aldermen. Both Vasquez and Taylor hired their campaign managers to serve as chiefs of staff. Vasquez’ is Jessica Peters, Taylor’s is Candis Castillo. Anthony Driver, a fellow 20th Ward candidate, will also be on Taylor’s staff. Ald.-elect Matt Martin (47) said he’s likely to move into outgoing Ald. Ameya Pawar’s (47) ward office.

The group is still constructing their vision, but took little time comparing it to Lightfoot’s on Friday, Tai said.

“We did not talk about the changes that are happening at the mayoral level much at all beyond what we’re expecting to change in Council as a result with different committees and leadership. In terms of Lightfoot’s governing agenda, I feel like I don’t know enough about that,” to triangulate with it or against it, Tai said.

The groups that helped form UWF — SEIU and CTU — backed Toni Preckwinkle, who finished a distant second to Lightfoot.

Nevertheless, Lightfoot will start her term as mayor after being elected by “a coalition in conflict with itself,” Tai said.

“The Republican pro-FOP Trump-y parts of the city voted with her, along with all the parts of the city aren’t like that,’ Tai said. “She has Rahm Emanuel folks, [Democratic U.S.] Rep. Chuy Garcia folks. I can only imagine it’s going to be a conflict of interest in that space. It’s an opportunity for us to break through the fuzziness of that and set out a clearer and stronger proactive vision which that’s what we’re going to be working towards.”

Despite their common vision, each alderman-elect plans to focus on different priorities on day one.

Martin described “some of the lower-hanging fruit” as community oversight of the Chicago Police Department, ethics reform, “and then also setting the stage for more progressive sorts of revenue, so that not just in this next budget but over the next several budgets, reducing our reliance on property taxes and not increasing fees as well as parking tickets as a way to continue funding our city.”

“I think we’ll probably pick up the Fair Workweek ordinance, there’s some stuff around the gang database,” Rodriguez said. “We haven’t caucused yet so I don’t want to get ahead of myself.”

“Of course it’s the CBA ordinance,” Taylor said, of a community benefits agreement for residents surrounding the Obama Presidential Center and building a model for future large developments that utilize tax dollars. Countering displacement is key, she added.

More pressing, though, is “figuring out constituent services, because the 20th Ward is without an alderman or constituent services right now,” said Taylor, who will take office two months after former Ald. Willie Cochran (20) pled guilty to one charge of wire fraud and was removed from the City Council.

“There’s things that we campaigned on that we want to move that are large — a fair elections platform is huge, you don’t get that done in 100 days,” Vasquez said. “It’s trying to figure out, for me, it’s just to figure out the inner workings of the Council, the dynamics and the relationships we need to be able to build to move legislation forward,”

Ald. John Arena (45), one of the few incumbents to fall to a more conservative candidate, said he hoped the City Council’s Progressive Caucus will team up with Ald. Michele Smith (43) and Ald. Harry Osterman (48).

The group should focus on TIF reform, police accountability, the Fair Workweek ordinance and Environmental and Social Governance standards for city investments, Arena said.

“We were able to get to 26 on a number of things,” Arena said. “Our numbers formerly in caucus were 11, now we have potential for 15 to 18 members, depending on where people end up. Yeah, it’s always a game of addition… it has to have a mission and goals, people will gravitate towards that.”

Some organizers present Friday let out a celebratory whoop when new vote totals came in showing Rossana Rodrigez-Sanchez’ up 14 votes in her contest against Ald. Deb Mell (33) on Friday. The election will be certified Tuesdat.

“Jesus, look at God,” Taylor said. “She’s got it, she’s got it. We’ve all been looking at that race. I don’t think we celebrated because we were all waiting. I can breathe. That’s what I’m talking about.”

If Rodrigez-Sanchez defeats Mell, she will join Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35), Vasquez, Taylor along with Alds.-elect Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25) and Daniel La Spata (1) as members of the City Council who are also members of the Chicago chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.

“People are watching, people are shocked about some of these races,” Taylor said. “In my space, I’m more vocal, I call out BS. That’s a threat to what’s going out there. It’s no hiding place, we can’t do business as usual in Chicago anymore. That 26 will come quicker than we think it will.”

A Portage Park businessman who transformed a long-vacant Six Corners bank building into a Binny's Beverage Depot, Culver's and gym was charged Friday with bribing Ald. Edward Burke (14).

Charles Cui, 48, an immigration lawyer whose law office is based in the former bank building at 4901 W. Irving Park Road, was charged in a four-count indictment made public Friday with federal program bribery, using interstate commerce to facilitate bribery and official misconduct.

Read the full indictment here.

According to federal prosecutors, Cui went to Burke when the city’s Department of Buildings and Ald. John Arena (45) denied his request for a large pole sign, which was not permitted under the zoning rules that cover that portion of Irving Park Road in the 45th Ward. 

The sign would be used to advertise for Company B, "a retailer with multiple retail outlets in the Chicagoland area," according to the indictment, referring to Binny's. That request was denied in May 2017, according to the indictment.

Cui hired Burke’s private law firm, Klafter & Burke, to represent him in property tax matters in September 2017, according to the indictment, which did not say how much Cui paid the firm.

"He is a powerful broker in City Hall, and I need him now," the indictment quotes Cui as writing to his existing property tax attorney in August 2017.

Cui's attorney, Vadim A. Glozman, said the charges are "baseless" and Cui intends to prove his innocence.

"Hard to imagine how you could have a quid pro quo without anyone talking about a quid pro quo," Glozman said, noting that the indictment does not quote Burke.

Cui told the FBI in November 2018 that he hired Burke’s firm “just because he is a good tax appeal lawyer,” according to the indictment.

Cui never got the sign — which the indictment said cost him $750,000 under the terms of his firm's lease with Binny's.

Cui did not immediately return a phone message left at his office Friday.

Burke is not named in the indictment. However, the indictment refers to "Alderman A," who is identified as the 14th Ward alderman and the chairman of the Finance Committee.

Arena is not named in the indictment, nor has he been charged with wrongdoing.

"Charles [Cui] never talked to me about Ed Burke or any relationship there," Arena said.

Arena said Cui never offered him a bribe.

Arena said he refused Cui's request to change the area's pedestrian street designation, which under the city's zoning code prohibits pole signs like the one Cui wanted.

"I denied him very forcefully every time he asked," Arena said.

At Arena's request, the City Council approved stricter rules for signs and driveways for the Six Corners Shopping District, which Arena worked to revitalize during his two terms in office.

"We found a different solution for signage," Arena said, adding that the sign was approved by the tenant. "It is a successful development."

The nearly 50-year-old building, which once housed a Bank of America branch, became vacant in 2011.

In March 2016, the City Council agreed to use $2 million in funds from the area’s Tax Increment Financing District to turn the building into a Binny's Beverage Depot and gym while saving a historic 300-seat theater and creating space for nonprofit arts organizations.

However, the project has received no city money because the theater has not reopened, city officials said.

The development also included a Culver's.

The indictment levels no additional charges against Burke, who was re-elected in February after being charged in January with attempted extortion. Burke has said he is innocent be reached immediately for comment Friday.

Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot said in a statement that the "charges add more definition to the utterly corrupt way in which Alderman Ed Burke has exploited his position and power."

"I was elected 10 days ago to build a government where you don’t have to give to get—where Chicagoans can receive basic City services, and where being business owners can get signs and permits without bribes and delays," Lightfoot said. "We’re going to build a transparent and accountable city government that Chicagoans can trust to put their needs first."

Even though Wednesday was the last meeting of the City Council’s 2015-19 term, waves of proposals from aldermen rolled in before the book closed on the legislative Rahm Emanuel era at City Hall.

Chicago’s integrity issues persist despite six inspectors general overseeing the city and its various sister agencies, a nonprofit watchdog group announced Thursday, revealing the results of a months-long investigation.

In an open letter to Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot, Business and Professional People for the Public Interest characterized Chicago’s inspector general system as seriously flawed.

Approximately 95 percent of the at least 134,242 Chicagoans listed as gang members by the Chicago Police Department are Black or Latino, an audit released Thursday by the city’s watchdog found.

Inspector General Joseph Ferguson’s 158-page report on the Chicago Police Department’s use of 18 different methods to track members of Chicago’s gangs in the past 10 years found that officials were “not able to definitively account for all such information in its possession and control.”

“The coupling of a lack of controls with the absence of procedural fairness protections inhibits the department’s ability to assure the accuracy of its information, and potentially undermines public confidence in the department’s legitimacy and effectiveness in the service of its public safety mission,” the audit concluded.

Read the full report here.

Eighty-eight percent of those designations were made during street stops on the South and West Side after the person under arrest said they belonged to a gang, according to the report.

Overwhelming number of Black and Latino Chicagoans listed in the database is not evidence of racism by department officials, Ferguson said.

However, “it does raise substantial questions that need to be asked,” Ferguson said during a news conference at City Hall.

Ferguson called on members of the Public Safety Committee to hold hearings on the police department’s use of the gang database, which he said contained “overbroad and inaccurate” information.

Ferguson said it was a “good question” whether the police department should even operate a database.

“The department’s lax approach to labeling people as gang members, without caring about the consequences, leads to further criminalization, control, and oppression of people of color in Chicago,” said Karen Sheley, the director of the ACLU of Illinois’ Police Practices Project. “The City will have a lot of work to do in cleaning up its act on this database.”

Members of the Erase the Database coalition gathered at City Hall Thursday afternoon to call the release of the audit a watershed moment that bolsters the claims members have made during their effort to shut the database down since 2017.

Reyna Wences of Organized Communities Against Deportations said the audit makes it clear that the database is “racist and is harmful.”

Veronica Rodriguez, a youth organizer with the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, said the database “encourages the criminalization and incarceration of the most vulnerable and poor communities.”

Shelia Bedi, a Northwestern University Law professor and an attorney at the MacArthur Center who has brought a class-action lawsuit against the city for its use of the database in federal court said the audit will prove her case.

Bedi said she had no confidence that the Chicago Police Department could operate a database and protect Chicagoans’ constitutional rights, given the department’s long history of racism.

Latino Caucus Chairman Ald. Gilbert Villegas (36) said he was stunned by the audit.

Villegas said in a statement that he was particularly troubled by the “lack of oversight or control of a system that can ruin people’s lives.”

“We absolutely must shut this program down until we can add oversight,” he said.

More than 500 external agencies have access to the department’s gang databases, according to the audit. According to the department, individuals can be entered into the database when they admit to gang affiliation, wear or use gang emblems, tattoos, hand signals or other symbols or are identified by an officer “with special intelligence” on gangs.

The Cook County Sheriff’s Office, which recently agreed to disable one of its own gang databases, was the outside agency that used the CPD database most frequently.

Chicago Public Schools were the third-most frequent user of the database, according to the police department’s data, Ferguson said.

However, CPS officials told the inspector general’s office that they do not use the database, Ferguson said.

A spokesman for CPS told The Daily Line the district does not use the database.

The system the department uses to track which agencies access the gang database also records which agencies review other types of data, including school safety plans, Chicago Police Department spokesman Howard Ludwig said.

"Because the tracking system is co-mingled, CPS posted high activity levels as shown in the Inspector General's report," Ludwig said in a statement. "We have no evidence of CPS accessing any gang affiliation information and have reached out to the Office of the Inspector General to determine how they came to this conclusion."

More than 32,000 queries came from four or five immigration agencies, making up less than 1 percent of the total number of queries, according to the report.

However, that is still a “meaningful” number, Ferguson said.

The ACLU of Illinois called on Chicago police to immediately stop sharing information with federal immigration officials, and echoed the audit’s call for aldermen to amend Chicago’s sanctuary city ordinance to remove exceptions for those listed in a gang database.

Ferguson’s audit focused on “gang arrest cards” completed by officers.

According to the audit, 11.3 percent of those cards do not identify which specific gang that individual belongs to and 11.7 percent do not list a reason for the gang designation.

Department officials cannot confirm those designations “are based on reliable evidence” and ensure that the data “serves a legitimate law enforcement person,” according to the audit.

In addition, while state law requires that those records be regularly destroyed, Chicago police do not purge outdated or incorrect records, according to the audit.

The youngest person designated by the Chicago Police Department was 9 years old — and has been in the database for 19 years, according to the audit. The oldest person designated as a gang member was 75 years old — and has been in the database for 10 years, according to the audit.

The median age of Chicagoans listed in the gang database is 22, Ferguson said. Most of the people listed in the database are Black and Latino men in their late teens, he added.

Ninety records kept by the Chicago Police list people with birthdates before 1901, while 80 records list individuals who have an age of zero, according to the audit.

More than 900 people were listed under multiple genders, according to the audit.

Individuals who are listed as gang members are not notified, and not given an opportunity to contest incorrect information.

“It is apparent that the lack of transparency around CPD’s ‘gang database’-related strategies, strain police-community relations,” the report said.

Ferguson’s office recommends a “holistic evaluation” of the gang database program if it continues, as well as “comprehensive changes” including the consideration of the database’s “collateral consequences.”

The police should also require specific evidence of an individual’s gang affiliation before listing them as a gang member. Those individuals should also be notified that they have been designated a gang member, and given the opportunity to contest that designation, according to the audit.

Records should also be regularly reviewed and purged, which should be documented by regular public reports, according to the audit.


The department should also reconsider sharing this information with other law enforcement agencies, including those charged with enforcing federal immigration law, the audit says, and a “stakeholder committee” should be formed to weigh in on ongoing reforms.

In response, Chicago Police Department officials proposed creating a new system, dubbed the Criminal Enterprise Database.

It be a “single, unified system” that will include “updated and vetted” information and provide an opportunity for individuals listed to be notified and allowed to appeal their designation.

Ferguson said those proposed changes do not go far enough.

Hours after Ferguson released his audit, police officials published a draft of the order creating the new database and opened a 30-day period for members to comment on its creation and rules.

Police Supt. Eddie Johnson defended the use of the database during a City Club speech in April 2018.

“We recognize that some people may be misidentified at certain points and we are looking at processes in terms of being able to give them what they need in terms of taking them out of that particular territory,” Johnson said. "I think that it’s important for us to know who the people are in this city and in this state are committing crimes and are affiliated with gangs but we also have a responsibility to get it right.”

Todd St. Hill, an organizer with Black Youth Project 100, said he was “shocked and disgusted” by the proposal for a new database.

The current databases will remain active and available to other law-enforcement agencies, according to the audit.

The police department also rejected Ferguson’s recommendation for a stakeholder panel. Their proposed appeals process, Ferguson says, “has substantive barriers and no additional protections for juveniles.”

Officers would orally inform people they are being included in the gang database under the police department’s plan, Ferguson said. To appeal that decision, they would have to go to police headquarters between 8 a.m. and noon on a weekday, Ferguson said.

“A lot more is needed than that,” Ferguson said. “There needs to be more rigor.”

Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot has called for the gang database to be replaced and “strict guidelines” imposed to ensure “it only includes intelligence collected from real, credible police investigations and is regularly audited to make sure that the information remains relevant and credible.”

The police department should not share information with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and criteria for including individuals in the database should be determined by a public process, Lightfoot said.

Ferguson was appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel to a third, four-year term in May 2017.

A similar, but more limited gang database used at the Cook County Jail has been decommissioned, according to Sheriff Tom Dart, a move activists with the Erase the Database coalition celebrated. The county board also passed an ordinance to set guidelines for its destruction and prohibit further data-sharing and participation in external databases.

Two men have sued the Chicago Police Department alleging that federal officials targeted them for deportation because they were listed in the police database as gang members.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel presided over his last City Council as mayor on Wednesday — and one last time, the City Council bent to his wishes.

After months of bitter debate that turned deeply personal, aldermen gave final approval to $1.6 billion in city subsidies to fuel two massive developments backed by Emanuel that will transform Chicago’s landscape with 16,000 new apartments and condominiums.

Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot announced a 10-committee transition team tasked with developing a 100-days plan by May 20, when she will be inaugurated.

In 40 days, Chicago Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot will be sworn into office.

Lightfoot will spend two of those days in Springfield meeting with state leaders — including the man whom many have painted as the embodiment of the political machine Lightfoot swore to dismantle, longtime House Speaker Mike Madigan (D-Chicago).

Mayor Rahm Emanuel rode a roller coaster of emotions Wednesday as he addressed the City Council for the last time before leaving office.

Three projects funded by developer payments into the Neighborhood Opportunity Fund cleared City Council’s Budget Committee Tuesday.

A new tower at the Atrium Village apartment complex that split the Chicago Plan Commission over whether it contains enough units for low- and moderate-income Chicagoans advanced Tuesday.

Ald. Joe Moore (49) presided over one last, lengthy Housing Committee meeting Tuesday, which featured a divided vote over new agreements with county health officials to provide telepsychiatry services to the mentally ill, leases for two restaurants at the new police and fire training academy, and a land swap with the Salvation Army.

Elections officials continued counting votes cast in the April 2 runoff with two contests decided by less than two dozen votes as of Monday afternoon.