Alderman Walter Burnett approves of "the way it has been done over the years"
Let’s start with some memorable quotes from Chicago politicians:
"Chicago ain't ready for reform yet" -- Mathias "Paddy" Bauler, one of Chicago's last saloon-owning alderman.
"We don't want nobody that nobody sent" -- What future federal appeals court judge and Illinois congressman Abner Mikva was told when he attempted to volunteer at a Democratic ward office.
"I've got this thing and it's f*cking golden, and, uh, uh, I'm just not giving it up for fu*ckin' nothing" -- Rod Blagojevich on the prospect of appointing someone to a vacant U.S. Senate seat.
"I have tuition to pay and casinos to visit" -- Then-CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett in an e-mail exchange about a kickbacks scheme.
Finally, last month, another infamous quote was delivered by a Chicago politician, when the Dean of the Chicago City Council, Walter Burnett Jr. of the 27th Ward, who is also the city's vice mayor, defended the $830 million "payday loan" infrastructure bond deal, which only passed after Mayor Brandon Johnson cast a tie-breaking vote. The deal is likely to cost taxpayers $2 billion. Call it, “Chicago math.”
"I don’t understand why everything we try to do the way it has been done over the years is such a big deal.”
Well, Dean of Aldermen, it's a big deal because Chicago has been financially reckless for decades. Burnett sounds like an alcoholic still in the denial stage. The good news is that nearly half of the City Council doesn't want to govern Chicago "the way it has been done over the years." The bad news is that Chicago is stuck with Johnson for two more years -- unless the few people who bother to vote re-elect him. And Chicagoans are sadly burdened with a couple of dozen financially illiterate alderman until at least 2027.
Bad municipal financial deals
Burnett, who has been an alderman since 1995, has seen some unsound financial deals. Nine years after his first electoral win, Mayor Richard M. Daley's appallingly bad 99-year lease of the Chicago Skyway was unanimously approved by the City Council. Four years after this fiasco, Daley negotiated away Chicago parking meters in a 75-year deal that was approved by the Council with a 40-5 vote, with Burnett being on the wrong side of that tally.
The 27th Ward is a gerrymandered monstrosity that only a Cubist artist, or an incumbent alderman, can admire. It covers parts of the Near West Side, Humboldt Park, East Garfield Park, Greek Town, the West Loop, and Goose Island. The United Center and the future home of the Bally casino are found in the 27th.
A troubled background
Raised in the Cabrini-Green housing project, Burnett's father, Walter Sr., was a longtime precinct captain for the 42nd Ward Regular Democratic Organization, which was run by George W. Dunne, the longtime president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners. After the elder Daley's death, Dunne succeeded him as chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party.
Walter Jr.'s life took a wrong turn in 1981 when he was 17 years old: He pleaded guilty to armed robbery. Burnett drove the getaway car used in a savings and loan heist in Kankakee — he served two years in state prison.
“And although a steady parade of aldermen had been convicted of felonies over the many years," The Chicago Sun-Times' Fran Spielman remarked to Burnett on her podcast in 2023, "you were the first convicted felon to be elected to the City Council”
Burnett, not unexpectedly, had trouble finding a job after his release from prison. But of course, dad was a precinct captain in the 42nd Ward.
In 2012 the alderman told Mick Dumke, then with the Chicago Reader, how he landed his first government job after his father arranged a meeting with Dunne.
“Mr. Dunne says, ‘So you’ve been locked up?’ I say, ‘Yes sir.’ He says, ‘OK, I want you to go here — the county highway department — tomorrow. I want you to tell them the truth. I’m not going to promise you anything — I’m going to see what happens.’”
What followed the next afternoon was unremarkable in Chicago politics: Burnett was hired as a draftsman for the Cook County Highway Department.
That conversation between Dunne and Burnett brings back memories of a passage from Mike Royko's essential biography of Richard J. Daley, Boss.
“As he [Daley] has said so often, when the subject of ex-cons on the city payroll comes up, ‘Are we to deny these men honest employment in a free society…are we to deprive them of the right to work…to become rehabilitated…’ He will forgive anything short of Republicanism.”
Burnett also attached his career to a rising star within Dunne's ward organization, Illinois State Representative Jesse White, who was later elected Cook County recorder of deeds and then, Illinois Secretary of State.
During his first run for alderman Burnett did not face a challenger, even though felons are banned from holding elected office in Illinois. His prospect for reelection in 1999 looked problematic, as a ballot eligibility challenge against Burnett seemed likely. However, through White's intervention, Governor Jim Edgar, a Republican, pardoned him.
Problem solved.
It’s important to note, in Burnett’s defense, that he has been an ardent supporter of re-integrating ex-offenders into society.
In 1998 Burnett was elected Democratic Committeeman of the 27th Ward.
Burnett is a go-along-get-along alderman. He was known to be particularly loyal to Mayor Richard M. Daley. More recently, Burnett endorsed Lori Lightfoot in the 2023 mayoral race, then he backed Paul Vallas in the runoff. Burnett appears to stand for nothing, except for himself of course, which makes his incredulity over the anger of his support of Johnson's "payday loan" bond deal quite predictable.
Campaign committee financial questions
Burnett has stayed out of legal trouble during his public office career — but he's not been free from controversy.
In 2021, Lauren FitzPatrick and Tim Novak of the Chicago Sun-Times reported that Burnett and his wife, Darlena Williams-Burnett, wrongly claimed two homeowner property tax exemptions for seven years — one for their home and the other for an investment property — when only one such deduction is allowed. Burnett claims he wasn't aware of the errors until the Sun-Times told him about them. The next day the alderman paid Cook County back, with interest, four years' worth of exemptions on the investment property. The Cook County assessor’s office is allowed to reach back only four years when correcting errors.
The following year, FitzPatrick and Novak discovered that $375,000 from the alderman's campaign committee, Friends of Walter Burnett Jr., was unaccounted for. That money was invested, and the two most recent investments were with Wintrust Bank, which also held the mortgage on his residence, the journalists learned. They also reported that Wintrust was the landlord of Burnett's ward office.
Also missing from his campaign committee disclosures were several certificates of deposit, including one, for $50,000, purchased in 1999 from Broadway Bank, which was owned by the family of Alexi Giannoulias. Giannoulias' bank was seized by federal regulators in 2010 after missing a deadline to raise $85 million in capital. Alexi succeeded Jesse White as Secretary of State in 2024 and it's rumored that he is mulling a run for mayor of Chicago in 2027. Broadway Bank, which was located in Edgewater, was a favorite of Chicago Democrats, most notably, Barack Obama.
When asked about the missing funds, Burnett responded to the reporters in a text message: “I don’t feel comfortable talking about that with you. It’s not my city business.”
Illinois is one of the few states that allow political campaign committees to invest funds.
So, you would think that these controversies would provide candidates running to replace Burnett in the 27th Ward in 2023 with ample ammunition to attack him.
Burnett, nevertheless, ran unopposed that year.
Weeks after being sworn in as alderman for the seventh time, Novak revealed that the amount of unaccounted campaign funds for Friends of Walter Burnett Jr. was down to $165,000.
Then a month after Novak's story was published, $183,000 in investments, most of that money involving Wintrust Bank, were sold by Burnett's campaign, apparently ending this controversy.
By the way: Illinois clearly needs a stronger Inspector General. And term limits as well.
Money wasted on the vice mayor’s office
Under Lori Lightfoot, Burnett was chairman of the City Council's Committee on Pedestrian and Traffic Safety, but under Johnson, socialist and automobile hater Daniel LaSpata of the 1st Ward was handed that post.
It appeared that Burnett was now locked out from power.
“Instead,” Fran Spielman wrote in 2023 in the Chicago Sun-Times, "Johnson’s reorganization plan anointed Burnett as vice mayor, with a $400,000 budget that allowed the Chicago City Council dean to retain the staff he had as chairman of the Committee on Pedestrian and Traffic Safety.”
What is that vice mayor office budget spent on?
Late last year, while a guest on Steve Dale's WGN radio show, Burnett said that one of his responsibilities as vice mayor is to “go to meetings for him [Johnson] — engagements that he's not able to make because of his busy schedule."
These appearances can only be ceremonial appearances, because, despite his budget, the vice mayor position possesses no power unless the mayor’s office becomes vacant, at which time the the vice mayor becomes acting mayor.
What about his re-assigned staffers from the Committee on Pedestrian and Traffic Safety now working for the office of the vice mayor? In the private sector, such a change at the top often leads to layoffs. New boss, new staff — it happens all the time in the real world.
"They go to events for me ahead of time," Burnett explained to Dale. "They find out who the people are, they take pictures, they do research, they write speeches”
All for $400,000 a year.
Last week, Chicago's chief procurement officer requested that municipal vendors discount their invoices by three percent because of "difficult economic times."
Whenever anyone claims that there is no money to eliminate in Chicago's budget, tell them start with Burnett’s vice mayor's office.
Wasting taxpayer money, using Burnett's words about the infrastructure bond financial sinkhole, is "the way it has been done over the years" in Chicago.
And finally, Burnett obtained some real clout last autumn.
After Johnson lost a power struggle to install neo-Marxist firebrand Byron Sigcho-Lopez of the 25th Ward as Zoning Committee chairman, Burnett was named to that post. The Zoning Committee budget is larger than that of the vice mayor's office.
Do these staffers take photographs too?
