Shakedown City: Employers and Chicago’s corruption tax
“The name of the game in Chicago is baksheesh. That’s Arabian. It means payoff, bribe. This is the city of baksheesh.” — Chicago delicatessen owner, 1978
The criminal complaint targeting Chicago Ald. Edward Burke reads like a cliched crime novel: Influential alderman squeezes restaurant executives to benefit his law business, delicately at first, over lunch at a private wood-paneled country club. Federal agents locate the alderman via a black Crown Victoria, his ridingaround car, in the parking lot.
The alderman is known for his silver coiffure, pinstriped suits and pocket squares. His three-story brick home on the Southwest Side is landlocked by railroad tracks and industry, strip malls and bungalows — but protected by a tall wrought-iron fence with a locked gate.
He is untouchable. Until now. Burke, of Chicago’s 14th Ward, faces one count of attempted extortion. The U.S. Department of Justice accuses him of holding up city permits and slow-walking a restaurant renovation in his ward until the company agreed to hire Burke’s law firm, Klafter & Burke, for property tax work.
“And, um, we were going to talk about the real estate tax representation and you were going to have somebody get in touch with me so we can expedite your permits,” Burke is alleged to have told a restaurant executive on one occasion, though prosecutors allege several instances when pressure was applied.
“I will, I will follow up with the architect and have him reach out as soon as possible and I will have somebody from our (redacted) office reach out to you regarding the property taxes,” the exec replied. Wary of the pressure tactics, the company never gave Burke the law business, prosecutors say. But the company lost out on months of revenue during the alleged shakedown.
Burke has denied wrongdoing. His attorney told reporters the criminal complaint “does not make out an extortion or an attempt to extort.” We’ll leave it to the justice system to determine the truth.
But the complaint paints an embarrassing portrait of Chicago: The overseers of a Burger King in a working-class neighborhood who wanted to renovate their own property spent more than eight months dealing with an obstinate and clout-driven permitting process. The project got delayed and micromanaged, and at one point shut down altogether, while Burke allegedly squeezed and pressed and twisted the owners.
If true, it is a damning spectacle of what it can be like doing business in a ward run by a tin-pot dictator.
Chicago’s reputation for shaking down employers is long-standing and grossly unflattering. According to the complaint, Burke and his minions exerted influence over at least two City Hall departments to tighten the screws on the restaurant company.
Reading these accusations, why would business owners want to set up shop in “the city of baksheesh”?
How throwback, too:
In 1978, Burke was building his clout on the City Council, representing the same 14th Ward his father had served. That year, the Chicago Sun-Times published a series of stories on The Mirage, a tavern the newspaper purchased undercover to test the city’s reputation for corruption. Reporters who moonlighted as bartenders documented numerous cases where city inspectors ignored code violations at The Mirage in exchange for payoffs. State liquor inspectors shook them down. Accountants with city connections taught them how to avoid taxes. Public employees routinely expected envelopes of cash for their services.
In one story, the unnamed deli owner invoked “baksheesh.” A City Hall “fixer” who didn’t realize he was working with journalists told them, “Anyone from Chicago knows that this is the way it is. You do it to avoid complications. You people really are getting a college education, aren’t you?”
A nearby tavern owner advised the reporters, whom he believed were bar owners, to deliver kickbacks discreetly. “You never come out and ask, ‘How much is this going to cost me?’ You say, ‘Well, can’t we work this out between us?’ ”
Forty years later, the city’s most influential alderman stands accused of abusing his role as a public servant to line his pockets. The federal complaint is yet another narrative of Chicago’s enduring culture of corruption. Why do aldermen wield such control over their fiefdoms? Why do voters tolerate it?
Chicago mayors pay attention to Big Deals. To corporate honchos. To enticements from Amazon and Hollywood moguls and global bigwigs. Those swells get the red carpet. Meanwhile, for most of 2017, a fast-food joint at 40th and Pulaski could only sell burgers and fries and shakes through the drive-thru window. Why? The dining room renovation got hung up on clout.
It sure makes one wonder. Is Chicago the world-class city its mayors brag about? Or is it a land of despots? And if its public officials didn’t levy a corruption tax, how many more businesses and jobs would call this city home?