Emanuel was quick to clean up City Hall, wasn’t he?
Mayor Rahm Emanuel sure was quick to clean up Chicago’s City Hall after that Burke mess.
“An individual has to distinguish between their public life and their private business,” the mayor was quoted as saying, talking about Burke. “And they shouldn’t let those lines ever cross.”
Ald. Edward Burke, 14th, the longtime chairman of the City Council’s Finance Committee, allegedly let those lines cross.
He’s now facing federal extortion charges.
And Rahm, who never wants to let a good crisis go to waste, helped push Burke out as chairman and installed his own floor leader, Ald. Patrick O’Connor, 40th, as boss of the Finance Committee.
“You can do all of what you’re supposed to do in changing the laws, being clear about the laws of what’s black and white,” Emanuel said. “But in the area of gray, you fall upon your moral judgment and your ethical judgment . ... It doesn’t require a law to say that your public life is not supposed to be ... enriching your private life.”
Oh, sure. Your public life is not supposed to be enriching your private life?
But what if your wife’s getting rich? Then what, Rahm?
Which brings me to a fascinating series by the Chicago Tribune of a few years ago, in which Ald. O’Connor and his wife, successful real estate broker Barbara O’Connor, had a starring role.
It was called “Neighborhoods for Sale.” The gist of it was that aldermen and developers used the written (and unwritten) rules to lord over a building boom that reshaped Chicago neighborhoods. And some made good money.
One of my favorite stories from June 2008 had this headline:
“He zones. She sells. And it’s legal.” Of course it is.
The story, written by Robert Becker and Dan Mihalopoulos, detailed how Barbara O’Connor became a real estate power in her husband’s 40th Ward.
She had sold millions of dollars’ worth of houses and condos after the projects were approved by her husband. He makes developers happy, they make him happy, his wife is happy, everyone’s happy.
City ethics officials told Mihalopoulos and Becker that there wasn’t a conflict of interest because the alderman didn’t have a personal stake in his wife’s business.
Of course not. No “personal stake.” They’re just married. Who would have a personal stake in your spouse’s success? I mean, really.
Barbara O’Connor is “a private individual in a private business with her own career,” the alderman said at the time.
Yes, yes, of course. It’s all quite proper apparently. Nothing to see here, after all. Move along, chumbolones.
But then Mayor Morality had to go and make his big speech, like William Wallace just before a battle with Longshanks, and rouse us all to follow the banners of good government and ethics.
I called Barbara O’Connor, and we had a brief, yet touching, chat over the phone.
I told her my name.
She said: What?
I told her my name again.
Mrs. O’Connor didn’t even need a prompt. She got right down to it.
“I sell real estate all over the city,” she told me. “And I’ve got to go. I’m at my daughter’s wedding rehearsal.” She didn’t sound pleased.
If she sold lots of real estate all over the city before, will she sell any less now that Rahm has installed her husband, Pat, as chairman of finance?
That’s a question for ethicists like the mayor to ponder, because, well, remember, “It doesn’t require a law to say that your public life is not supposed to be ... enriching your private life.”
If we took those words and made of them an India ink stencil, it would be nice to press it against the scrubbed and glistening foreheads of Emanuel and his new finance chairman.
It could be their testament to the greater good.
But in the meantime, I’m reminded of what my grandfather would say: When the politicians speak, the donkeys break wind.
And it is just arrogant politics in Chicago, with the ruling political class continuing to show its absolute contempt for the people they govern.
They’re not even the slightest bit shamed. Emanuel can spout such nonsense installing O’Connor, talk about Burke and morality, and never blush, because either his skin is made of wood or perhaps he just thinks the people of Chicago are stupid fools.
And the ethics czars at City Hall can say that what the O’Connors do is OK, because, well, he doesn’t have a personal stake in her business. Their arrogance is stunning.
It’s rather like Burke’s arrogance, allegedly using his control of government to withhold permits and other services for business in order to compel that business to hire his law firm.
And, over all these years, did you ever hear Bill Daley condemn Burke? Or Toni Preckwinkle or Gery Chico or Susana Mendoza? They’re all part of that clique, like some beast with interchangeable heads.
They want to be mayor, don’t they? “There is a code of silence of the political class over the degrading of the city,” mayoral candidate Paul Vallas said in an interview on my podcast, “The Chicago Way.”
“This is the way the pay-to-play culture lives,” Vallas said. “It’s embedded.”
The politicians write the laws. They staff the ethics boards. They rule on the morality of things. They make speeches about ethics.
They distract you with shiny objects, like renaming an expressway after Barack Obama. Look over here. Look over there.
And they laugh at you.