Tag Archives: mayor

Gov. Bruce Rauner on Mayor Rahm Emanuel: ‘He’s got to go’

As Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Police try to calm down the city’s violence, President Trump and Governor Rauner are ratcheting up the rhetoric.

The first volley fired at Emanuel came Thursday morning, as governor Rauner called him corrupt. Speaking on a downstate radio station, Rauner claimed that Emanuel received $20 million from special interest groups.

“He’s corrupt. He’s part of the problem in Chicago,” Rauner said. “Failure on jobs. Failure on taxes. He’s got to go.”

Adam Collins, a spokesman for the mayor, said Rauner’s comments were “high praise” considering he was named the worst governor in America.

“He’s wrapping up a term in which he achieved nothing other than gridlock, and I guess desperate times call for desperate rhetoric,” Collins said.

Emanuel has faced calls to resign from Chance the Rapper and prominent Chicago pastor Reverend Gregory Livingstone.

 

Check out more at ABC7 Chicago.

Undisclosed medical condition could affect Daley testimony

(CHICAGO) Attorneys for Richard M. Daley said a medical condition could affect the former mayor’s deposition in a federal lawsuit alleging torture under former Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge.

Daley’s condition, though undisclosed, is the subject of an “Attorneys’ Eyes Only” protective order that was granted by U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve on Wednesday, the Chicago Sun-Times is reporting.

The order provides that Daley’s medical records — including his private health information, “Mental Health Communications, and/or Mental Health Records” — are to be submitted under seal, court filings show. Those records are “for no other litigation or purposes.”

Alonzo Smith filed the lawsuit against Daley and Burge in 2016, alleging that detectives working under Burge tortured him into confessing to murder in 1983. Smith spent 20 years in prison after he says detectives Peter Dignan and John Byrne beat and suffocated him with a plastic bag to force him to confess.

Daley’s deposition was set for January, but last month, Daley’s attorney Terrrence Burns said, “There is an issue relative to [Daley’s] medical condition,” according to court records.

Smith’s attorneys argued that making Daley’s medical records for “Attorneys’ Eyes Only” would prevent them from review by a health professional. A status hearing is scheduled for Monday in federal court.

“As a defendant, we are absolutely entitled to depose him,” Flint Taylor, one of Smith’s attorneys, previously told the Sun-Times. “We intend to question him about his alleged role in the extensive coverup of the racist pattern and practice of torture perpetrated under the command of Jon Burge.”

It is not the first time that Daley has been set to testify in one of the many civil rights cases rooted in allegations of torture by detectives under Burge’s command, though in previous cases the city has settled the lawsuits before Daley was questioned.

Daley’s testimony in the latest case was set up by a ruling last year by St. Eve, stating that Smith’s lawyers should be allowed to probe how much Daley knew about the alleged torture that took place while he was mayor, though the ruling found that he couldn’t be held liable for misconduct in prosecutions that took place while he was Cook County state’s attorney.

The former mayor’s health has prevented him from giving testimony in the past.

In 2014, Daley was subpoenaed to testify in the city’s lawsuit to break the sweetheart lease the Park Grill restaurant in Millennium Park was given while he was mayor.

After reviewing affidavits on Daley’s medical condition behind closed doors, the Park Grill’s operators and lawyers agreed to withdraw their subpoena to put the former mayor on the witness stand, and the case was settled last year. Before that agreement, Daley’s lawyers argued his undisclosed medical condition would make it a hardship for him to take the witness stand.

In January 2014, Sun-Times reported that Daley suffered a stroke when he was rushed to Northwestern Memorial Hospital the same day his nephew Richard J. “R.J.” Vanecko pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the death of David Koschman in 2004.

Taylor has twice sought to put Daley under oath in Burge cases, only to have the city offer a multimillion-dollar settlement his clients could not refuse. Smith’s lawsuit alleges Daley was aware of abuse by Burge’s men as far back as the early 1980s, when Daley was state’s attorney and did nothing to stop the abuse after he became mayor in 1989.

A representative for Daley could not be reached for comment.

Ottawa Mayor on tornado damage

Authorities say one person was killed Tuesday in the central Illinois city of Ottawa by a tornado spawned by a late-winter storm system. A tornado hit LaSalle County Nursing Home in Ottawa, but no serious injuries were reported to residents. Gov. Bruce Rauner plans to survey damage Wednesday.

To get the very latest, Ottawa Mayor Robert Eschbach joined John and Ray to talk about the tornadoes that hit Ottawa last night.

 

 

Harvey mayor fined $10K for ‘fraudulent bond offerings’

(HARVEY) Harvey Mayor Eric J. Kellogg has agreed to pay a $10,000 fine and never again participate in a municipal bond offering to settle civil fraud charges stemming from a hotel development scheme.

“Through the 2008, 2009, and 2010 Bond Offerings, Harvey engaged in a scheme to divert bond proceeds for improper purposes,” according to the complaint filed by the Securities Exchange Commission. “As part of the scheme, Harvey made misrepresentations and omissions to investors about how bond proceeds would be used and the risks associated with investments in Harvey’s municipal bonds.”

The purported purpose of the bond offerings was to provide funding to develop and construct a Holiday Inn Hotel, the SEC alleges. The bonds were to be repaid from tax revenue streams dependent upon the existence of the hotel, such as Harvey’s hotel-motel tax and sales tax.

But instead of using the money raised through the bond offerings on the hotel project, city officials diverted at least $1.7 million in investors’ money into the city’s general operation accounts, including payroll, the SEC said.

“As the result of the scheme to divert bond related proceeds, the Hotel Redevelopment Project has turned into a fiasco for bond investors and Harvey residents. According to news reports, the proposed Holiday Inn hotel and conference center stands as an unfinished decrepit shell,” said the SEC court filings.

Kellogg, mayor since 2003 and an alderman from 1991 to 2003, is liable for fraud because he “exercised control over Harvey’s operations” and “signed important offering documents that Harvey used to offer and sell the bonds,” the SEC alleges. When the SEC subpoenaed the mayor to appear before commission staff to answer questions, under oath, about the hotel project, Kellogg asserted his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.

“Investors were told one thing while the city did another, and Kellogg was in a position to control the bond issuances and prevent any fraudulent use of investor money. His days of participating in muni bond offerings are over,” LeeAnn Ghazil Gaunt, chief of the SEC Enforcement Division’s Public Finance Abuse Unit, said in a statement.

In agreeing to settle the charges, Kellogg did not admit to any wrongdoing. The settlement is subject to court approval.

“This matter is now behind us and we can now move forward,” city spokesman Sean Howard said in a statement. “This was a civil suit in which the Mayor has agreed to the civil penalty. The Mayor has given his attorney the monies agreed upon. The attorney will await the process in which the SEC will detail as it relates to the delivery of the fined amount.”

Zopp Tapped as Deputy Mayor

By Bill Cameron, WLS-AM 890 News

(CHICAGO) Mayor Rahm Emanuel has appointed former Chicago Uban League president & unsuccessful Senate candidate Andrea Zopp to be a second deputy mayor for neighborhood development. Bill Cameron notes that the politics of this move are intriguing.

Emanuel is unpopular in the black community these days and so is he using Zopp as a  $185,000 a year deputy mayor to help make him more popular?  She denies it.

“I’m not here to be used, I’m hear to help continue to build our neighborhoods and our communities,” Zopp said. “I choose to be here because  I’m passionate about this work and I’ve been doing this work for a long time.”

Or is Emanuel grooming her to run for mayor in 2019 because he’s decided he can’t be re-elected?

​”Look, today I just started as the deputy mayor, I’m focused on doing that job.”

Asked directly if she would ever consider running for mayor, Zopp didn’t answer.

 

@ 2016 WLS-AM News

Police to Use Verbal Skills, Tasers

By Nick Gale, WLS News

(CHICAGO) Mayor Rahm Emanuel Wednesday afternoon announced changes in police training, including a requirement that every officer responding to service calls be equipped with a Taser.

Speaking from City Hall, Emanuel said the overhaul includes changing how officers respond to incidents and their use of force.

Interim Police Superintendent John Escalante says they looked at 15 other police departments across the country to come up with best practices.

“Our goal is to change the way officers think when they approach a critical incident by establishing time and distance to allow for more prudent thinking and physical space to promote a safer environment,” Escalante said.

He says communication and verbal skills along with talking to the individual’s involved will be part of that training. The department will also put more emphasis on calling in additional personnel who have such negotiation skills.

Under Emanuel’s plan, the taser requirement would see officers equipped and trained by June 1, 2016.

The Chicago Police Department has been under scrutiny since a police dashcam video was released last month showing Officer Jason Van Dyke shooting Laquan McDonald. The 17-year-old was shot 16 times. The release of that video has prompted protests across the city.

 

@ 2015 WLS News