When Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White unveiled plans nine years ago for a North Side fieldhouse that would bear his name, he promised that his private charitable foundation and its donors would pick up the bulk of the multimillion-dollar tab.

But that’s not how things turned out. Instead, records show, taxpayers paid all but a small fraction of the cost.

White, who will be sworn in Monday for a record sixth consecutive term as secretary of state, pledged $10 million to build the athletic facility in partnership with the Chicago Park District on part of the former Cabrini-Green public housing project in White’s 27th Ward political power base.

His foundation actually ended up paying only about $650,000. The fieldhouse, originally pegged at $15 million, cost about $12.2 million. Chicago and Illinois taxpayers ended up covering $11.5 million of that.

The 29,000-square-foot facility at 410 W. Chicago Ave. opened in 2014 and, in addition to housing a park district gymnasium, provides a home for White’s famed Jesse White Tumblers and headquarters for his Jesse White Foundation, which pays the park district just $1 in annual rent. The park district covers all utility, custodial and maintenance costs, records show.

White’s groups also get exclusive use of many of the facilities for several hours after school and on Sunday mornings. And his foundation controls most of the second floor.

So why didn’t White, a Democrat who’s one of Illinois’ most popular politicians, have to put up the money he promised? He was having trouble raising the private funding he promised for the center. So elected officials, Democrats and Republicans alike, came to his rescue with tax money.

Secretary of State Jesse White was having trouble raising the money he promised for the center. Elected officials came to his rescue with tax money. | Ashlee Rezin / Sun-Times

In late 2010, then-Mayor Richard Daley got the Chicago City Council’s approval to underwrite the project with $5 million in so-called tax-increment financing diverted from property tax collections. Within months, the TIF funding was doubled to $10 million with help from a push by Ald. Walter Burnett (27th), a political protégé of White who’s also a volunteer Tumblers coach.

Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, on his first day in office in 2015, had frozen all discretionary state grant spending. But Rauner made an exception and greenlighted a $1.5 million grant for the Chicago Park District. The grant agreement didn’t specifically mention White’s foundation. But records show the park district used the money to bail out the foundation for a construction loan it owed on the center.

In addition to Daley, Burnett and Rauner, the politicians who helped ensure taxpayers would pay for most of the White center included Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, former Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn, Ald. Edward Burke (14th) and two Democratic state lawmakers whose districts include the fieldhouse — Sen. Patricia Van Pelt and Rep. Arthur Turner Jr.

Neither White nor parks officials responded specifically to questions about the center’s financing. In written statements, they praised the project, with White calling it a “gold-standard model of a public-private initiative” and a parks spokesman saying it offers “unprecedented recreational opportunities to children and families” in the neighborhood.

White, 84, might be as well known for the Jesse White Tumblers program he started six decades ago as for political success. The secretary of state’s office’s website says more than 17,500 students have been involved with the gymnastics teams that perform in Chicago and around the world.

The community center was approved by the park district board in February 2010. A staff outline prepared for the board and signed by top parks officials said White’s foundation “has pledged $10 million towards the $15 million development budget.”

The fieldhouse opened in 2014. At a ceremony, Burnett recalled how he got a promise from Emanuel “on Day 1” that the new mayor would continue to support the project his predecessor had backed. After that, Burnett said, “Everything was pushed through for the tumbling team without any hesitation.”

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White had endorsed Emanuel in the crowded field for mayor in 2011.

Emanuel spokesperson Jennifer Martinez says the mayor considered the fieldhouse an “important recreational asset.

“This was absolutely the right decision since today it serves as a tremendous community asset,” Martinez says.

In a written statement, Burnett says: “The Jesse White Field House and Community Center is a public facility that was paid for with public and private funds. I applaud Jesse White, city and state leaders, and private, concerned citizens for bringing this fabulous facility to the Near North Side.”

At the 2014 ribbon-cutting, White cited people he said had been instrumental in moving the project along, including Burke, who now faces a corruption charge but at the time was the longtime chairman of the council’s finance committee, with a life-or-death grip on city spending. White said then that Burke was “helpful in coming forward with the dollars that we needed.”

Burke resigned as finance committee chairman earlier this month after being charged by federal prosecutors with shaking down a Burger King franchise owner in his ward in an effort to get legal work for the alderman’s law firm.

White also praised Jill Takiff Hirsh, then a board member of White’s foundation and chairman of the First Bank of Highland Park, which provided a $1.5 million lifeline when the foundation was short of cash to complete the project in 2014.

Paperwork for a bank line of credit to White’s foundation was completed on May 27, 2014, the day Madigan introduced a budget bill in the House that included an appropriation for unspecified capital projects sponsored by lawmakers. One $1.5 million grant carved out of that ended up going to the park district and was used to repay the bank loan to White’s foundation.

State records list Van Pelt and Turner as sponsors of the grant. Van Pelt first won election in 2012 after White endorsed her in the Democratic primary over an incumbent.

Madigan’s budget bill also gave White an opportunity to do a favor for the speaker. With a budget crisis looming, it insulated $35 million earmarked for school construction projects, including one in Madigan’s Southwest Side house district, from future cuts.

The money was put into the budget for White’s office. That’s how it escaped the freeze on state grants that Rauner imposed the following year.

State House Speaker Michael Madigan’s budget bill insulated $35 million earmarked for school construction projects, including one in Madigan’s Southwest Side district, from future cuts by placing the money into the budget for Secretary of State Jesse White’s office. | The State Journal-Register via AP

Madigan spokesman Steve Brown says the parks grant that ultimately went to the White center was unrelated to the school-funding issue, an attempt to address “serious overcrowding.”

Maneuvering over financing for the White fieldhouse continued even after its opened in the fall of 2014. Quinn, whose re-election campaign got $75,000 from White, lost to Rauner that November. Before leaving office, Quinn’s staff rushed to complete paperwork for the grant.

“THIS IS A PRIORITY PROJECT PER THE GOV. PLEASE CALL AND SEND SURVEY TODAY,” read an email in all capital letters written to Quinn staffers on Dec. 29, 2014, by Mary Feagans, a lobbyist for the state Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, which handled the grant.

A Quinn spokesman says the former governor didn’t get involved in details of individual grants.

The money wasn’t dispensed before Rauner took office and imposed the grant freeze. But the White foundation needed the money to pay back Hirsh’s bank. In February 2015, Feagans and Rauner budget officials began getting inquiries about the status of the grant, state emails show. Within a month, the hold on the grant was lifted.

“Please consider this email approval to move forward with the $1.5 million grant to the Chicago Park District for the Jesse White Community Center as these costs have been incurred for the project,” a Rauner budget official wrote Feagans.

Of dozens of grants suspended by Rauner, the White center grant was one of only two the new governor agreed to let through.

White’s foundation received another financial boost related to the center in 2015. The state grant had cut the foundation’s total cost to $1.3 million. But records show that it got about half of that amount from an escrow fund that held unspent money for the project. That dropped the final cost to Whites foundation to about $650,000.

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Chuck Neubauer and Sandy Bergo are reporters for the Better Government Association.

For 10 years, Sterling Bay, one of Chicago’s biggest developers, used Ald. Edward M. Burke’s law firm Klafter & Burke to seek property tax cuts. But not anymore.

The firm behind the massive Lincoln Yards development proposed for the North Side has cut ties with Burke now that the alderman faces a corruption charge that threatens to send him to prison and end the reign of Chicago’s longest-tenured and most powerful City Council member.

“Klafter & Burke does not currently work on any property in our portfolio,” according to Sarah Hamilton, a spokeswoman for Sterling Bay, which also is heavily involved in the bustling Fulton Market area west of the Loop. “We have worked with Klafter & Burke in the past, and the firm had some involvement on a limited number of our properties.

“But given recent events, we have terminated the use of their services. Currently, Klafter & Burke has no work with Sterling Bay.”

Another big developer, Related Midwest, which is partners in plans to develop 62 acres in the South Loop, also has dumped Burke as its property tax lawyer.

“The company is no longer engaged with the firm Klafter & Burke,” says a Related spokeswoman, who downplays the Burke firm’s role, calling it “one of many firms that worked on this project.”

Burke’s four-person law firm specializes in handling property tax appeals. It does that largely by seeking reductions in the property assessments that heavily determine the amount of those taxes.

Its clients have long included companies that do business with or need a variety of approvals from City Hall.

Burke, 75, has been alderman of the 14th ward on the Southwest Side for 50 years. Now seeking re-election next month, he’s battling for his political life after being charged by federal authorities earlier this month with attempted extortion.

Burke faces a single federal charge that accuses him of stalling the approval of city permits that a Burger King franchisee was seeking in his ward while pushing the fast-food operator to hire his law firm to handle property tax appeals for its restaurants.

After Burke was charged, Mayor Rahm Emanuel forced him to step down as chairman of the City Council Committee on Finance, which would need to approve an $800 million taxpayer-funded subsidy for Lincoln Yards that the developer is seeking. Burke also was dumped from the Chicago Plan Commission that’s expected to vote on Lincoln Yards later this month.

As part of the ongoing federal investigation, a judge gave the FBI permission to secretly wiretap Burke’s cellphone from the spring of 2017 through November 2018, when his City Hall and ward offices were raided.

Federal agents eavesdropped on 9,794 conversations during the first nine months of that time, court records show. They continued to secretly listen to him for another 10 months after that, though they haven’t disclosed how many more conversations they heard.

During the time agents were monitoring his conversations, county records show Burke’s law firm filed 1,598 property tax appeals with then-Cook County Assessor Joseph Berrios and 915 with the Cook County Board of Review, which hears appeals of the assessor’s decisions. Most of those appeals were unsuccessful, failing to result in a tax cut.

A federal agent carries out a computer from Ald. Ed Burke’s 14th Ward office in November. | Mark Brown / Sun-Times

Sterling Bay was among Klafter & Burke’s tax clients during the time federal agents were listening in. It hired the alderman’s firm to handle appeals on real estate holdings that include vacant land that’s part of the proposed Lincoln Yards development.

In 2017 alone, Klafter & Burke filed 29 appeals for Sterling Bay, records show. In addition to the sprawling Lincoln Yards project straddling the Chicago River between Lincoln Park and Bucktown, those appeals included property in Fulton Market on the Near West Side.

Burke’s firm convinced Berrios or the Board of Review to lower their estimations of the values of Sterling Bay’s properties in seven of those cases. That cut Sterling Bay’s taxes on those properties by a total of 28 percent, saving the developer $328,272 in property taxes paid last year, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis found.

Burke’s firm filed five more appeals for Sterling Bay last year, getting Berrios to reduce the property values in four of those cases, including acres of vacant land in the Lincoln Yards property. Just how much that ends up saving the developer can’t be calculated until the next real estate tax bills are finalized this summer.

Asked how Sterling Bay came to hire Burke’s firm, Hamilton says the company “was introduced to Klafter & Burke by mutual friends.”

Andy Gloor (center), Sterling Bay’s managing principal, was joined by Chicago first lady Amy Rule and Ald. Walter Burnett Jr. (27th) to cut a ribbon Thursday marking the opening of a new West Loop branch library. Ald. Edward Burke handled property tax appeals on the property for Sterling Bay. | Troy Closson / Sun-Times

Roosevelt/Clark Partners LLC was another Burke client during the time the feds were listening.

That group, which includes Related Midwest, has been trying to develop a long-vacant 62-acre former rail yard along the Chicago River in the South Loop that’s owned by Nadhmi Auchi, an Iraqi businessman living in England. Auchi was once partners on that property with Tony Rezko, the onetime friend of and political fixer for former Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Rezko went to prison after being convicted in 2008 of crimes that included shaking down companies that were seeking state business.

Now, Auchi is partners with Related Midwest in the massive South Loop development south of Roosevelt Road that they’ve dubbed “The 78” — because they say it would become the city’s 78th neighborhood.

The developers — who are planning residential, commercial and entertainment components for the property — also are seeking a taxpayer subsidy of millions of dollars from City Hall.

Burke’s firm unsuccessfully tried to convince Berrios to cut the value his staff placed on the vacant land.

Law firms typically collect either a percentage of any property tax cuts they win for clients or a flat fee.

Other tax clients Klafter & Burke represented during the course of the federal investigation included:

• Medline Industries, a medical supply company that owns the former Michael Reese Hospital site on the south lakefront.

Burke got Berrios to reduce the property assessment for Medline’s headquarters in Northfield. That cut the company’s property tax bill last year by 18.6 percent, saving it $546,598 — the biggest tax break Burke’s firm won in 2017, which was reflected in last year’s tax bill.

City Planning Commissioner David Reifman (foreground) at the former Michael Reese Hospital site in 2017. | Fran Spielman / Sun-Times

Burke didn’t file any appeals over the former site of Michael Reese Hospital, which former Mayor Richard M. Daley had City Hall buy and demolish as part of his failed plan to lure the 2016 Summer Olympics to Chicago.

The Mills family who own Medline wouldn’t comment.

Under Daley, the city agreed to pay nearly $100 million over time for the property, a bill that taxpayers are still paying for.

• Meaghan Synowiecki, who worked for Burke at the finance committee, and her husband, Michael Synowiecki, a lobbyist with the law firm of Daley & Georges, which represents some city contractors who also have hired Burke to file appeals to cut their property taxes.

Burke got Berrios to drop the assessment on the Synowieckis’ house by 7.8 percent. How much that will save them won’t be known until new tax bills are finalized this summer.

Meaghan Synowiecki is a great-niece of Illinois Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke, Burke’s wife. According to the criminal complaint against the alderman, he directed Meaghan Synowiecki to find out the names of the property tax lawyers the Burger King was using. She hasn’t been charged with any crime.

Michael Synowiecki represents James Bracken, who’s the owner of Brackenbox, which has been supplying dumpsters for city construction work and street sweeping since Daley shut down City Hall’s scandal-plagued Hired Truck Program more than a decade ago in the wake of a Sun-Times investigation.

Bracken and his companies are among city contractors that have turned to Burke’s law firm to seek property tax cuts. Klafter & Burke unsuccessfully tried to get lower property assessments for Bracken’s home and businesses during the past two years.

Michael Synowiecki declined to comment. His wife didn’t return a call.

• Trump International Hotel & Tower Chicago, the downtown riverfront skyscraper built and partially owned by President Donald Trump.

Over the past two years, Berrios and the Board of Review rejected Burke’s law firm’s efforts to lower the taxes on the commercial spaces at Trump Tower owned by the president, as well as the residential units.

Burke’s firm’s representation of the president’s property ended last May.

That was a few weeks after the alderman’s brother Daniel Burke lost a primary election to continue representing a largely Hispanic district in the Illinois House. That defeat largely was blamed on the $14 million in tax cuts the alderman’s firm had won for Trump, whose immigration policies have angered many Latinos.

While working for Sterling Bay, Burke won several tax cuts — including one for 35 percent on a commercial building at 1324 W. Fulton St. that saved the developer $178,330 last year.

Klafter & Burke saved Sterling Bay another $62,206.24 in taxes when Berrios agreed to slash the assessment on the fortress-like former home of the Excalibur nightclub at 640 N. Dearborn St. that Sterling Bay is renovating.

Burke couldn’t get tax breaks for Sterling Bay in 2017 on several other properties, including the Lincoln Yards land and the former West Loop home of Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Studios, where the developer built the new corporate headquarters for McDonald’s Corp.

Sterling Bay has two registered lobbyists for the Lincoln Yards project: Richard Klawiter, a zoning attorney with the firm DLA Piper, where Emanuel’s planning commissioner David Reifman was a zoning lawyer before moving to City Hall in 2015, and Tim Dart, brother of Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart and a friend and political ally of Burke.

Klawiter contributed $500 toward the unsuccessful 2011 mayoral run of Burke ally Gery Chico, a longtime Burke friend. Chico again is running for mayor and got Burke’s endorsement before the alderman was charged.

Ald. Edward Burke also backed Gery Chico during his 2011 mayoral campaign. l Sun-Times files

Also during the 2011 race, Klawiter contributed $1,500 to Emanuel, who decided not to seek reelection this year.

Reifman gave $1,250 to Chico and $1,500 to Emanuel for the 2011 election. He says his past role at DLA Piper will play no part in how he handles Sterling Bay’s proposal for Lincoln Yards.

“I have had no conversations with Ald. Burke about Lincoln Yards,” Reifman says, nor about tax-increment financing that would fund the project. “I am completely disassociated from DLA and have no ongoing interest in the firm. I represent only the city’s and taxpayers’ interests for each and every project.”

DLA Piper for years has been a campaign contributor to Burke and other politicians. It gave $1,500 to Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd) in a contribution reported last June. Lincoln Yards is in Hopkins’ ward, so he has a key say in the approvals it needs from City Hall.

Hopkins says DLA Piper has made campaign contributions to him since “long before Lincoln Yards existed as an entity” and that its latest contribution has “nothing to do with this particular development.”

Hopkins says that, with Lincoln Yards on the table, he told Sterling Bay he didn’t want any campaign contributions from the developer or its subsidiaries and hasn’t gotten any since then.

Hopkins says he didn’t know Burke’s firm had worked on tax appeals involving property in Lincoln Yards. “He’s had zero involvement in this project. None of this has ever been before his committee. He’s never weighed in . . . I was unaware he’d done tax work.”

Ald. Brian Hopkins. | Sun-Times files

Dart’s lobbying firm Nicolay & Dart gave $500 to Burke’s brother Dan Burke’s campaign fund last year, records show.

During the time that federal agents were monitoring Ed Burke’s phone calls, records show his three campaign funds and two others benefitting his wife and his brother took in a total of more than $3 million.

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Dan Burke is gone from the Illinois General Assembly after losing his 2018 reelection bid in embarrassing fashion and then resigning before his term was up, days before a criminal complaint was unsealed against his brother, Ald. Edward M. Burke.

But Chicago and Illinois taxpayers are continuing to financially support Dan Burke. He’s now collecting two taxpayer-subsidized pensions that are expected to pay him a total this year of nearly $160,000, a figure expected to rise sharply in 2020, according to records and interviews.

Dan Burke, 67, worked for more than 25 years as a Chicago city employee, holding jobs that included deputy city clerk. That allowed him to start drawing retirement pay from the Municipal Employees’ Annuity and Benefit Fund of Chicago in 2004 when he was 52.

His yearly payout from his city pension at first was around $58,000. But, with regular increases for members of the plan, he’s set to get about $86,000 this year, records show.

Dan Burke has gotten more than $1 million so far from that pension fund, according to records that show that, during his working years, about $103,000 was deducted from his paychecks to go toward his pension.

He also was an elected state representative for nearly 30 years before losing the March 2018 Democratic primary to political newcomer Aaron Ortiz, who coasted on to victory in the November 2018 general election with no Republican opponent.

Ortiz took office Jan. 9.

But Dan Burke resigned from the post, which paid him $85,902 in 2018, on Dec. 30. That meant his second government pension, through the General Assembly Retirement System, took effect Jan. 1, records show. That pension will pay him just over $73,000 this year. He should be getting his first monthly check any day.

His yearly legislative pension payout will shoot up by 27 percent in 2020 — to more than $92,000, about $6,000 more than he made because of rules that reward legislators with more than 20 years in office.

First elected to the Legislature in 1990, he was closely aligned with Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, who also heads the Illinois Democratic Party.

A man Dan Burke’s age can expect, on average, to live to be 84 or 85 years old, according to the Social Security Administration. If Burke lives that long, he would collect several million dollars more in pension payouts from the two retirement systems.

Dan Burke contributed about $180,000 toward his legislative pension, records show.

“I didn’t create the law, but I’m certainly very grateful to participate in it,” Burke says of his legislative pension. “I paid the dues, not only the travel” to and from Springfield “but being disassociated from my society” in Chicago.

“This is not the easiest job,” he says. “I didn’t sit in an ivory tower . . . We were, like, the grunts.”

His longtime legislative district, which includes the Southwest Side’s 14th ward represented in the Chicago City Council by his alderman-brother, has become increasingly Latino over the years.

Dan Burke’s defeat was seen, at least in part, as reflecting negative sentiment toward Edward M. Burke, whose law firm handled property tax appeals for the Loop high-rise developed by President Donald Trump, whose immigration policies have enraged many Hispanics.

The alderman, among the last of the Irish ward bosses who powered the Democratic Machine, faces a stiff challenge in his bid to keep the seat he’s held for 50 years. He’s facing at least two opponents in the Feb. 26 municipal election and a criminal complaint that charges him with attempted extortion. He’s accused of trying to hold up city approval of a Burger King renovation in his ward so the fast-food franchise operator would hire his law firm.

Dan Burke says of his brother’s situation: “This is all shocking. I have nothing to contribute to it.”

Asked whether he thinks his brother will beat the criminal case, Dan Burke says, “I don’t have an opportunity to even guess.”

The FBI monitored thousands of Edward M. Burke’s calls. Dan Burke says he’s not worried about being caught on FBI wiretaps talking about anything compromising. “I do not have those conversations,” he says.

Edward M. Burke has more than $10 million in three political campaign funds he controls.

Dan Burke’s campaign fund had $375,000 on hand at the end of 2018, which he can’t convert to personal use but can use for “committee-related” expenses, according to the Illinois State Board of Elections.

For a time, in addition to his government work, Dan Burke also was a City Hall lobbyist. But he says he’s not going back to lobbying: “I’m a private citizen.”

The Illinois Supreme Court ruled Friday against releasing statements former Mayor Richard M. Daley and his family gave a special prosecutor during the investigation that sent Daley’s nephew Richard J. “R.J.” Vanecko to jail for killing David Koschman.

The court rejected arguments by the Better Government Association that it was in the public interest to reveal what the former mayor and his family told Dan K. Webb, the court-appointed special prosecutor in the Koschman case.

It also said no to making public any emails that Webb exchanged with the Daley family, a list of witnesses interviewed by the special prosecutor’s office and subpoenas issued to City Hall.

All of the records, which the BGA sued to get, were sealed, at Webb’s request, by Cook County Circuit Judge Michael P. Toomin.

Following a Chicago Sun-Times investigation, the judge appointed Webb in 2011 to re-investigate Koschman’s death — a case the Chicago Police Department had closed without an arrest after two investigations while Daley was in office.

Vanecko ended up pleading guilty five years ago to involuntary manslaughter and did two months in jail. He had been charged as a result of the special prosecutor’s investigation.

Webb found fault with the police handling of the case but said he decided not to charge any Chicago cops for failing to arrest Vanecko in Koschman’s 2004 death because he didn’t think he had enough evidence to convict anyone of official misconduct or obstruction of justice.

Citing the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, the BGA and the Sun-Times tried to obtain records from City Hall regarding Webb’s investigation, including subpoenas it got from the grand jury. But City Hall refused, citing Toomin’s order.

The BGA sued for those records and any statements Webb got from Daley and other family members — including drafts of statements the special prosecutor allowed them to review and edit before they were presented to the grand jury. The grand jurors weren’t allowed to question Daley or his relatives.

State law protects grand jury secrecy. But BGA attorney Matthew Topic argued that doesn’t trump the FOIA law.

“We disagree with the BGA’s assertion that disclosure of the requested grand jury material was in the public interest,” Justice P. Scott Neville Jr. wrote in a 20-page opinion. “In discussing the need for maintaining secrecy of grand jury proceedings in the federal court system . . . the United States Supreme Court has held that disclosure of grand jury materials is appropriate only in cases where the need for disclosure outweighs the public interest in secrecy.”

Six justices, including Anne Burke, the wife of Ald. Edward M. Burke, concurred. Justice Bob Thomas “took no part in the decision,” court records show.

David Greising, the BGA’s president and chief executive officer, called the ruling “a setback in the fight to hold public officials accountable for their actions.”

Koschman died from injuries suffered when he and friends from Mount Prospect — out celebrating their 21st birthdays in the Rush Street area — crossed paths with Vanecko and his friends early on April 25, 2004. There was an argument, and Koschman, who was 5-feet-5 and 125 pounds, got punched in the face by the 6-feet-3, 230-pound Vanecko.

Vanecko, then 29, and a friend ran off. Koschman died 11 days later from brain injuries. The police later put Vanecko in a lineup but didn’t press charges, saying no one identified him.

The case remained unsolved until 2011, when a Sun-Times investigation led the police to re-examine the case, which they quickly closed, again without charges, concluding Vanecko hit Koschman in self-defense.

READ MORE

• The original Sun-Times investigation

David Koschman with his mother Nanci Koschman. | Provided photo

Over the past decade, attorney Brian F. Hynes has gone from being a clout-heavy lobbyist to running a business that’s making him a fortune off of unpaid bills owed by the state of Illinois.

Now, Hynes finds himself in the middle of a City Hall scandal that already has ended the political career of Ald. Danny Solis, who is his close friend as well as his legal client, and threatens to end the record 50-year Chicago City Council reign of Ald. Edward M. Burke.

The growing scandal also has touched one of Hynes’ early political mentors, Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan, D-Chicago. Madigan was caught on an FBI wiretap touting his law firm’s expertise at cutting property taxes to a Chinese developer who wanted to build a hotel in Solis’ ward.

Hynes’ name repeatedly pops up in a 2016 FBI affidavit obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times that authorities filed to win approval for search warrants for Solis’ home and offices after secretly listening in on thousands of the alderman’s cellphone calls.

The affidavit outlines a series of financial transactions an FBI agent says show that Solis was getting money from Hynes in exchange for the alderman supporting development projects — an assertion Hynes denies.

“It doesn’t surprise me that I’m mentioned there,” Hynes says in an interview with the Sun-Times. “I talked to Danny all the time. He called me and asked for advice. If there’s 20,000 phone calls, I’m probably on 3,000 of them. He was and is a friend, and I tried to help him.

“I didn’t pay Danny anything,” Hynes says, though he adds, “In 2011, my real estate company did pay Danny.”

Hynes also popped up when FBI agents reported seizing a file with his name on it during the Nov. 29 raid on Burke’s City Hall offices.

Hynes says he and Burke haven’t spoken since 2010 or 2011 and he has no idea why the alderman kept a file on him.

Ald. Edward M. Burke and Ald. Danny Solis at a City Council meeting in 2016. | Sun-Times files

Hynes has found himself in the midst of a political scandal before. He drew the attention of federal investigators for arranging for then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s wife Patti Blagojevich to receive a $40,000 commission in 2003 from a real estate deal on which she did no work, court testimony showed.

Hynes never was charged in the scandal but has a close relationship with Antoin “Tony” Rezko, the political fixer who went to prison for attempting to extort money from businessmen seeking deals including pension investments from the state.

Hynes also has had a long relationship with Solis and his family. He has given money to the alderman’s campaign funds and to allies of Solis including Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza, whose office oversees the delinquent state bills that have enriched Hynes.

Mendoza, who’s running for mayor of Chicago next month, has purged herself of more than $140,000 in campaign contributions from Solis and Hynes, giving the money to a veterans group.

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Nine years ago, Hynes went into business with Solis’ sister Patti Solis Doyle, a former campaign honcho for President Bill Clinton who later was a top adviser to Hillary Clinton. They set up a company that fronts money to vendors that are owed by the state of Illinois, collecting the interest when the state eventually pays up.

Hynes says the alderman’s sister left the company in the fall of 2016, shortly before Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election to Donald J. Trump.

Patti Solis Doyle, Brian Hynes’ former business partner and the sister of Ald. Danny Solis. | AP

Hynes, 48, divides his time between Chicago and Puerto Rico. He was raised on politics and government, growing up a block away from Madigan’s home in West Lawn on the city’s Southwest Side.

When Hynes was a teenager, his father Stephen T. Hynes landed a job running the heating and cooling systems at the state’s new Loop office building, now known as the James R. Thompson Center. With Madigan’s help, Hynes’ dad got more than 90,000 votes in a strong but losing bid in 1986 for a Cook County Board seat.

After his father’s sudden death in 1989, Hynes got degrees from the University of Illinois and Loyola University and embarked on a career as a lawyer and lobbyist, helping powerful clients land deals in the Capitol and City Hall.

Over the years, Hynes worked with the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s son Yusef Jackson in failed attempts to buy the Washington Nationals baseball team and the Sun-Times.

According to the affidavit filed against Solis, Hynes has a close relationship with developer Fred Latsko, a former driver for legendary Bears quarterback Sid Luckman. Latsko — who had a criminal record Blagojevich expunged on his final day as governor — once bounced two checks to City Hall totaling $884,509 to cover permits for two developments.

On the morning of June 26, 2015, Hynes called Solis to discuss a Latsko project that apparently had won the approval of Chicago Building Commissioner Judy Frydland.

“Yeah, so tell Fred we had, we had a really good meeting, and it will go, it will help him out with the property he owns,” Solis tells Hynes, according to the affidavit.

On Aug. 12, 2015, Solis requests that they meet with Latsko on another project, apparently in the alderman’s ward: “I got an interesting proposal I want you to look over. Maybe you and Fred. . . The one where you would trade off, uh, river [planned manufacturing district] property, um, for, uh, maybe, more inland property that, and then put commercial residential in that river PMD property. . . I’m going to set up a meeting with [Chicago Planning Commissioner] David Reifman. I’d like to talk to you and Fred about it first.”

Two days later, Hynes calls, saying he and Latsko would meet with Solis: “The thing about Fred, just so you know, he’s been paying attention to things, and so, when I talked to him about a week ago, he was, like, livid. He was reading about all these properties all these guys are buying . . . So he’s sitting on hundreds of millions in cash, and he hasn’t bought anything. So he wants to start doing stuff.”

The affidavit notes that Latsko has had several projects approved by the City Council Zoning Committee while Solis was its chairman and mentions an overnight graduation party for Solis’ son held at the Indiana farm Latsko bought from Oprah Winfrey. Latsko says he didn’t charge Solis for that.

The affidavit say bank records show Solis Enterprises, the alderman’s company, got $30,000 on Feb. 7, 2011, from Hynes’ Chicago Real Estate Consulting.

Hynes says: “In 2011, Chicago Real Estate Consulting Group, an entity that does no business with the city of Chicago, paid a legal consulting fee to Solis Enterprises for a business referral outside of the city of Chicago.”

The affidavit also talks about Solis’ support for development of land Rezko once owned with Nadhmi Auchi, an Iraqi billionaire living in Great Britain. Rezko reportedly no longer has a stake in the 62-acre site along the Chicago River at Clark Street and Roosevelt Road that Auchi wants to develop with Related Midwest. They’re seeking millions of dollars in city subsidies.

“Hynes has extended various personal benefits to Solis in 2014 and 2015, and Hynes also represents Nadhmi Auchi in a real estate development matter that Solis has taken action on in an official capacity, namely, the Roosevelt Road project,” according to the affidavit.

Ald. Danny Solis. | Sun-Times files

In a May 29, 2015, call, Solis talks about Hynes working for Auchi, saying, “The only reason that the guy from London hired him is my insistence because I need an attorney I can trust and that is representing [Auchi].”

Hynes says that’s not true: “I introduced Danny to Auchi. I have never received a contract or been paid a penny by Auchi. I don’t represent Auchi on the site. I never have. I made a communication.”

Hynes registered with City Hall in 2016 as a lobbyist for Auchi’s company but says he did so only because he was trying to verify for Solis whether Auchi was still on the U.S. government’s no-fly list, apparently the result of a fraud conviction in France.

The affidavit repeatedly cites Solis’ financial problems, including a bank foreclosing on the alderman’s Little Village home. That case was pending in 2015 when the affidavit says Hynes helped arrange a loan for Solis: “Based on intercepted conversations, Solis borrowed $160,000 from businessman Gary Fears to retire a debt on a property in a loan arranged by Brian Hynes.”

At the time Solis got the loan, the alderman owed $160,000 to a woman named Bing Tie for a condo in the River City complex in the South Loop, county records show. It’s unclear whether Solis used the loan to pay Tie, who tells the Sun-Times she was once the alderman’s girlfriend. She formerly operated a massage parlor in the building where Solis has his ward office.

Solis needed to repay the loan, and Hynes says, “I gave him the names of people who do hard-money loans. It’s a short-duration loan. I didn’t know he used Fears.”

Hynes has been a business partner with Fears, who was deputy director of the Illinois Department of Transportation under former Gov. Dan Walker. Nearly 40 years ago, Fears got a low-interest loan under former Gov. James R. Thompson to build a hotel in downstate Collinsville — a deal that cost taxpayers more than $20 million.

Fears couldn’t be reached.

Solis made a big profit when the River City complex was de-converted from condos to apartments last year. He bought his condo for $200,000 in May 2014 and sold it last year for $394,500.

Contributing: Mark Brown, Jon Seidel

The Archdiocese of Chicago is weighing whether to keep a $10,000 donation pledged by Ald. Edward M. Burke now that he’s charged with corruption.

“We are awaiting the outcome of the case before making a determination on the donation,” says Paula Waters, a spokeswoman for Cardinal Blase Cupich.

Since prosecutors announced Jan. 3 they had charged Burke with attempted extortion, other politicians have scrambled to get rid of campaign money they got from the Southwest Side alderman, who controls three campaign funds that together hold more than $10 million.

Just as Burke has been a financial backer of many of the politicians, he also has been a big contributor to charitable causes tied to the Catholic Church in Chicago. In the past three years, the three Burke political funds have reported more than 70 expenditures totaling nearly $100,000 that went to Catholic churches, schools and other groups, including payments for masses and fundraising events, as well as membership dues in Catholic organizations, campaign finance records show.

Burke, who attended a Catholic seminary for high school, gave $40,517.98 to those groups last year, including:

• The Friends of Edward M. Burke political fund reported in October having made a $10,000 pledge to the archdiocese’s major fund-raising campaign, called To Teach Who Christ Is. That’s the donation the archdiocese is considering returning.

• The same month, the fund reported giving $2,500 to Old St. Patrick’s Church in the West Loop for an “event.”

• In November, the fund reported giving $180 for masses at church-run Misericordia, which provides housing and care for people with developmental disabilities.

Burke also has given money from his campaign funds to:

• St. Joseph Seminary in Rogers Park, including $2,000 reported Aug. 15 for a “table,” apparently for a fundraiser for the priestly training ground, which Cupich recently announced will be closed.

• Brother Rice High School, an all-boys Catholic school on the Southwest Side, which has gotten $8,500 in Burke campaign money over the past three years.

• Maryville Academy, a Catholic institution in Des Plaines that provides care for troubled kids, which was given $3,500 for a fundraiser last year honoring Burke’s wife, Illinois Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke, for her role in creating the Special Olympics. For years, Anne Burke has pushed for reforms in the church in response to allegations of sex abuse by priests and cover-ups by the church’s hierarchy.

• Presence Health Foundation, which is affiliated with a Catholic hospital network that’s been a client of Burke’s law firm and got $1,000 in a payment reported last February for an “event” and another $1,500 in March for a “donation.”

• The Rev. George Clements, the well-known, now-retired Chicago priest, who got $1,000 in a donation reported in 2017. At one time publicly at odds with Burke, Clements says he and Burke are now friends and that the money was for his charity.

• The Rev. Antoni Bury, who was given $250 in 2016. Bury is pastor of St. Bruno’s Church, the Southwest Side parish where Burke attended mass on the day federal prosecutors announced the alderman had been charged with attempted extortion. Burke is accused of trying to muscle a Burger King operator into hiring his law firm — which handles property tax appeals — and, as part of that unsuccessful effort, holding up city permits for renovations at the fast-food restaurant. Also in 2016, Burke reported giving $10,000 to St. Bruno’s.

Such campaign expenditures are legal, according to the Illinois State Board of Elections.

It’s unusual, though, how much of the money Burke has spent the past few years went to church-related causes.

Between the spring of 2017 and late 2018 — the time the FBI was secretly listening in on Burke’s cellphone calls — his three campaign funds reported giving a total of under $200,000 to candidates and political groups. The three Burke campaign funds took more than $2 million in contributions during that period, records show.

In November, Burke and his wife attended a Cupich speech to the City Club of Chicago. The Burkes had been among those consulted by Cupich after his 2014 appointment by Pope Francis to oversee the church in Cook and Lake counties. And Cupich has sought their counsel on church issues.

According to Cupich spokeswoman Waters, after arriving in Chicago, the cardinal “took the initiative to both host and attend social gatherings to get to know local people . . . Alderman Ed Burke and Justice Anne Burke, who served on the U.S. bishops’ National Review Board, were among the hundreds of people he visited with.”

RELATED

• Records show feds’ investigation of Ald. Burke broader than previously known
• Ald. Edward Burke dumped as tax lawyer by developers of Lincoln Yards, ‘The 78’
• Burke’s fight to keep records secret from city watchdog has cost taxpayers $248K
• Full coverage of Ald. Edward Burke / Ald. Danny Solis investigation

In October 2016, Corey Jackson was at a used car lot in South Chicago Heights, signing the papers to buy a 2008 Buick LaCrosse.

He was excited about the leather interior, sunroof and heated seats — but he didn’t know that the used car was the subject of a safety recall because of problems with an ignition switch defect already implicated in 124 deaths nationwide.

The used car salesperson didn’t mention the recall, Jackson says.

And because the Markham man bought the car used, he never got a notice from the manufacturer, General Motors.

Seven months later, on May 16, 2017, Jackson was driving home from work at WeatherTech, the car floor liner manufacturer, when he tried to pass a car on Bluff Road in Lockport Township. He sped up but quickly abandoned the attempt because another car was coming toward him from the opposite direction on the two-lane road. Suddenly, his car veered off the road and onto the grass, crashing into a tree.

The ignition switch had failed, Jackson’s attorneys say, suddenly shutting off the engine and cutting power to the steering wheel, brakes and airbags.

Jackson was knocked unconscious in the crash. He was wearing a seat belt. But, with no inflated airbag, he slammed into the steering wheel. He lost several teeth and broke his jaw. The 37-year-old still walks with a limp from injuries to his hip and a knee and a broken ankle.

Now, Jackson is suing GM and the dealer that sold him the car, FJH Cars Inc. of South Chicago Heights, blaming them for putting him in harm’s way with a defective car that was under recall the day he bought it.

“Nothing was said, nothing about a recall,” Jackson says. “You feel deceived.”

Jackson’s crash highlights what consumer advocates say is a glaring problem with the nation’s automotive recall system: While car dealers can’t legally sell new cars that are subject to an open recall, and car rental companies can’t legally rent vehicles with open recalls, there’s nothing in the law to stop used car dealers from putting them out on the road.

Corey Jackson’s crash highlights an issue with the nation’s automotive recall system. | Max Herman / Sun-Times

Online sales listings for used vehicles with open safety recalls are common in the Chicago area, the Chicago Sun-Times found. By running the vehicle identification numbers — VINs — from the dealers’ websites through a federal government search tool, the Sun-Times found open recalls for vehicles being offered for sale including:

• A 2011 Ford Fusion S with an open recall for a defective Takata airbag inflator that can rupture and spray pieces of metal inside the car.

• A 2017 Dodge RAM 1500 Big Horn truck with open recalls for a software issue that can cause sudden acceleration without warning and a tailgate latch system problem that can cause it to flip open while driving.

• A 2015 Hyundai Sonata with an open recall for a sunroof panel that can detach while driving.

• A 2010 Chevrolet Cobalt LS with an open recall for the same ignition switch problem Corey Jackson’s car had.

Rosemary Shahan, founder and president of the nonprofit organization Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety, says there’s something wrong that no federal law is in place to prevent used cars that are under safety recalls from being sold. Shahan says used car dealers could easily check a car’s recall status, “but they don’t do that. They just go ahead and sell it anyway.”

And she says, “Most people just assume that, of course, the dealer’s fixed the recall first.”

Safety recalls are issued when vehicles don’t meet safety standards or have been found to have a safety defect, which frequently isn’t spotted until consumer complaints pile up with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Most recalls are undertaken voluntarily by manufacturers with NHTSA oversight.

Once a recall is announced, the manufacturer is responsible for tracing and contacting owners of the affected vehicles.

Consumers can then take the cars in for free repairs at any authorized dealer.

Since the recall system was created in 1966, NHTSA has issued recalls over safety issues for more than 390 million vehicles.

Yet Carfax, the vehicle history service that lets consumers track a car’s background, estimates that more than 57 million vehicles are on the road today with open, unaddressed recalls.

Many are like Corey Jackson’s car — used vehicles that were sold and resold but never repaired.

“It’s an absolute shame,” says Michael Serra, one of the lawyers working on Jackson’s case. “It’s a betrayal when companies put profits over safety.”

A GM spokesman declined to comment on Jackson’s lawsuit but says that “GM has significantly improved the integrity of product recalls, reducing the number of recalls and increasing the completion rates of those that do occur.”

Efforts to reach the owner of FJH Cars Inc., now closed, were not successful.

The Sun-Times’ spot check of online used car listings found vehicles with open recalls being sold by two of the nation’s best-known used car sellers: CarMax and AutoNation.

Unlike some sellers that don’t provide any information about recalls online, CarMax and AutoNation include links in their sales listings to NHTSA’s SaferCar.gov website and its recall lookup tool. (In 2016, the Federal Trade Commission settled cases with CarMax and several other sellers requiring them to conspicuously disclose that cars may have open recalls.)

A CarMax spokeswoman said the company requires its salespeople to check for recalls and share that with buyers before they sign any sales paperwork and have each customer sign a document acknowledging this.

CarMax says it makes more sense for customers to address open recalls on their own by getting a free fix at an authorized dealer. If CarMax — a competitor to authorized dealers — tried to do that, the company contends that its repair requests would be put at the back of the line at dealer shops.

In 2015, AutoNation, the country’s largest dealership chain, announced it would stop selling used cars with open recalls. The announcement was cheered by consumer advocates.

But the company rescinded its pledge a year and a half later after struggling to find enough parts to address the widespread Takata airbag recalls and seeing that other used car sellers weren’t following suit.

Asked for comment, AutoNation declined.

In an Automotive News article published shortly after the 2016 presidential election, AutoNation’s CEO, Mike Jackson, was quoted as saying that, with Donald Trump as president, there was “no way that that issue is going to be addressed from a regulatory point of view.”

The National Independent Automobile Dealers Association, an industry group for used car sellers, says parts shortages can make it impossible to get a quick fix for certain recalls. The group’s spokesman says it advises members to check for recalls and disclose that information to consumers, but it opposes any rules that would force used car dealers to fix recalls before selling a vehicle.

Automotive expert Sean Kane of Safety Research & Strategies Inc. says the result is that unfixed vehicles with serious safety defects get put back on the road.

Kane says consumers can’t be expected to do VIN checks themselves, especially when some dealers tout their own multipoint inspection reports and leave recalls out of the conversation. That sends a “mixed message” that can minimize the importance of recalls, according to Kane, who says consumers think that, “if they can sell the car to you, it can’t be that bad.”

In some cases, people have been killed or injured in cars they didn’t know were under recall. The 2004 crash deaths of two California sisters, Jacqueline and Raechel Houck, ages 20 and 24, in a rented Chrysler PT Cruiser that was under recall led to a 2016 federal law requiring rental car companies to take recalled vehicles out of service until they are repaired.

Legislation that would have imposed similar requirements on used cars was introduced in 2017 by U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Illinois, and Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, and Edward Markey, D-Massachusetts, but failed under pressure from industry.

Schakowsky says she plans to try again to get a federal law passed.

“The best thing we can do to get recalled cars off the road is fix the problem before the car is on the road,” Schakowsky says. “It’s already illegal to sell a new car or offer for rent a car under recall. Used car buyers must have the simple assurances that known defects have been fixed before you drive the car off the lot.”

Some consumers have fared better in state courts, where they can sue under state laws that more broadly address the sale of defective products.

Corey Jackson, who couldn’t work after his accident yet still owed payments on the totaled Buick, says he wishes his recalled car had never been put out for sale.

“It cost me my lifestyle, my job — damn near my life,” Jackson says. “Just value the person and not just the sale.”

HOW TO CHECK FOR RECALLS

• Find your vehicle identification number, or VIN, on your vehicle, and enter it in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s online search lookup at https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls
• More information is available at SaferCar.gov.

When the engine shut off, so the airbag wouldn’t inflate, Corey Jackson was knocked unconscious in a crash despite wearing a seat belt. He says he was slammed into the steering wheel and lost several teeth and broke his jaw, among other injuries. | Provided photo

A Chicago police sergeant who’d been on desk duty since shortly after he was accused of touching the genitals of a teenage boy over his clothes at a Fourth of July family reunion in Michigan in 2015 has resigned.

Sgt. Eric J. Elkins, 45, had been the subject of internal affairs investigations into those allegations and separately over a beating outside a North Side bar in September.

His resignation took effect Thursday, according to Anthony Guglielmi, a Chicago Police Department spokesman.

Elkins had been charged in Michigan in 2016 with criminal sexual conduct involving a teenager between the ages of 13 and 15, as well as assault and “jostling,” a disorderly conduct offense. Those charges stemmed from the family party in rural Ogemaw County, Michigan, where he grew up.

The sex charge — which was a misdemeanor but could have resulted in a prison sentence of as much as two years — was dropped several months later, with Elkins pleading guilty to the lesser offenses and avoiding prison and sex-offender registration.

Elkins, described in police reports as “pretty intoxicated” at the time of the party, was given one year of probation and 80 hours of community service and ordered to undergo substance-abuse treatment, according to Michigan records.

As required, Elkins informed his bosses in Chicago about the case, which prompted the opening of an internal affairs investigation.

Though that investigation was still open, Chicago police internal affairs detectives didn’t interview Elkins until Chicago Sun-Times reporters asked about the case in 2018.

Until he quit as of last week, he continued to be paid a salary of more than $104,000 a year.

The department can’t take disciplinary action against Elkins now that he’s resigned.

What will come of the second internal investigation isn’t clear. The police department opened that case after an incident Sept. 29 at the @tmosphere Bar in Andersonville while Elkins was off duty.

Two men — John Sherwood and his partner Tom Stacha — were beaten so badly outside the bar they ended up in a hospital.

They sued Elkins and others who were with him at the bar, including Dwayne Jones, then an Oak Park cop who co-owns a townhouse with Elkins. Also with them were Giovanni Rodriguez and Jeffrey Rodriguez, who in court papers portrayed Elkins and Jones as the aggressors.

Elkins and Jones left before responding officers arrived, according to police reports.

Neither Elkins nor Jones has been charged in the bar beating. Neither could be reached for comment.

Sherwood has described Elkins as being in “a fit of rage” at the bar and said he was pummeled by the officer, resulting in a broken leg.

Tim Cavanagh, a lawyer who is representing Sherwood and Stacha, said his clients recently spoke with investigators from the police department and the Cook County state’s attorney’s office about what happened outside the bar.

The state’s attorney’s office wouldn’t discuss the case.

Eric J. Elkins 2016 Michigan booking mug. | Ogemaw County, Mich., sheriff’s office

Jones has resigned from the Oak Park police department, according to a village spokesman.

Previously, Elkins had been indicted by a Cook County grand jury in 2003, accused of carrying on a sexual relationship with a teenage boy who was a student at Amundsen High School in Ravenswood, where Elkins was working as a Chicago Public Schools security guard in addition to being a police officer. According to court records, they would meet at the boy’s locker and engaged in sexual acts — in one instance in a bathroom at the high school.

Elkins was found “not guilty” in 2004 by Cook County Circuit Judge Kenneth Wadas, who has said he didn’t “think the victim was credible.”

Since the Michigan incident, Elkins has gotten at least two union-mandated pay raises and continued to accrue credits toward a taxpayer-subsidized pension.

Because the allegations he was under internal investigation over involved off-duty conduct, whatever comes of them isn’t likely to cause him to lose his police pension. But his eventual retirement payouts won’t be as high as they would have been had he remained on the department through the end of this year, when he would have marked his 20-year anniversary as a Chicago cop.

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A Cook County circuit judge has barred the publishing of details from hundreds of pages of internal Chicago Public Schools records that CPS released regarding the 2017 drowning death of a 14-year-old autistic freshman in the pool at Kennedy High School on the Southwest Side.

A CPS lawyer had released the investigative files and other internal records related to Rosario Israel Gomez’s death in late January in response to a lawsuit filed by the Better Government Association.

In September 2017, the BGA and the Chicago Sun-Times had published an investigation into the boy’s death that found a series of problems at the pool the day the teenager drowned. Three CPS employees ended up being fired as a result of the drowning, including a lifeguard, and the school system instituted new rules on pool safety.

Within days after releasing the documents, CPS lawyer Ahmed Islam asked for their return, saying releasing them was a mistake.

On Monday, CPS went to court, asking Cook County Circuit Judge Peter Flynn to “claw back” the previously released records.

Flynn agreed, and Matt Topic, a lawyer representing the BGA, was back in court Wednesday, unsuccessfully arguing the judge should vacate his order, saying it was an illegal “prior restraint” on a free press.

The judge ordered the BGA not to publish what the records say until at least Feb. 20 so he could review them and determine which portions aren’t covered by privacy restrictions and can be made public.

“There is no emergency here in any meaningful way,” Flynn said at the hearing Wednesday. “I don’t think it’s a prior restraint . . . I am not going to declare World War III in the context of this report.”

Topic responded: “The fact is, your honor, to the press, any prior restraint is a declaration of World War III. You have the press, which has a highly relevant important document that they obtained through nothing illegal, and you are restraining them from publishing that document.”

Flynn said the BGA was trying to play “gotcha,” having obtained the documents through an inadvertent disclosure.

“No, they obtained it by doing nothing other than seeking the document that was given to them,” Topic said.

An appeal of the judge’s ruling is planned.

Brendan Healey, a Chicago media lawyer who was at Wednesday’s hearing on behalf of the Washington, D.C.-based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said he can’t remember any previous instance in which a prior restraint order was issued by Illinois’ courts.

“It’s a big deal,” Healey said of Flynn’s ruling.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in the past that the courts can’t order the news media not to publish a story except in cases of national security.

Healey said the Supreme Court has never upheld a prior restraint order against the news media.

“When the press is told they can’t speak about something they have lawfully obtained, that presents a serious constitutional issue, and the threshold for overcoming that is really very high,” Healey said.

Mara Warman, another CPS lawyer, was in court Wednesday and told Flynn that the school system was wrong to release student records without a judge’s order and that CPS wants only to follow the law and preserve student privacy.

David Kidwell is an investigator with the Better Government Association. Lauren FitzPatrick is a Sun-Times reporter.

Click here to read the Sun-Times / BGA September 2017 investigation.

After he was elected in 2011, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, facing budget problems and a shortage of officers on the streets, said he’d cut the bodyguard detail for Ald. Edward M. Burke (14th), paring it from four active-duty Chicago police officers to two retired cops.

So Burke began hiring former Chicago cops and getting them certified through an obscure city program, records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times show.

Since 2014, the city has certified nine “special police” officers at Burke’s request, allowing them to carry guns and make arrests.

Six of those former cops remain on the payroll of the Chicago City Council Finance Committee, even though Burke relinquished his position as head of the powerful aldermanic committee after federal prosecutors announced early last month they had charged him with attempted extortion.

But soon all of those former cops will be out of their city council jobs — casualties of Burke’s fall from power.

Ald. Patrick O’Connor (40th), who assumed Burke’s chairmanship, says two of the retired officers are being reassigned to City Hall’s finance department, working on workers’ compensation cases. Responsibility for managing that $100 million-a-year program was stripped from the finance committee after Burke was charged.

The other four retired cops on the finance committee payroll will lose their jobs, O’Connor said.

“They weren’t going to drive for me, and we didn’t need them,” said O’Connor, who does not have his own security detail.

Just what the special police officers did under Burke isn’t clear. They were given job titles that included clerk, legislative aide and investigator, but city personnel records don’t describe their duties.

Burke didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Ald. Edward M. Burke gets in to a car outside his Southwest Side home on Jan. 3. | Justin Jackson / Sun-Times

Burke began having city bodyguards in the 1980s, during his bitter “Council Wars” rivalry with the late Mayor Harold Washington. Burke’s lawyers said he needed to be protected from “irrational, unbalanced” people who were angry about his “differences” with Washington, Chicago’s first African-American mayor.

City officials tried to take away Burke’s four-officer police detail in 1986, but he successfully sued to keep it.

In early 2011, then-mayoral hopeful Emanuel threatened during his campaign that, if elected, he would strip Burke of his bodyguards and possibly his finance committee chairmanship.

Emanuel threw out that bombshell during a debate on WTTW-Channel 11. Privately, Emanuel had blamed Burke as being behind a residency challenge that nearly knocked him off the 2011 ballot, the Sun-Times reported at the time.

But once Emanuel was elected, the two political heavyweights reached an accommodation. Burke remained finance committee chairman, and he still had bodyguards, with the mayor saying the alderman would have a smaller detail of two retired cops, at city expense, and keep his police vehicle.

And then Burke quietly created his own tiny police force. Nine former Chicago cops were certified by the city as special police officers at Burke’s request between 2014 and 2016, records show.

Chicago’s police superintendents were responsible for certifying the special officers.

“The members of that detail were mostly former police officers given arrest powers and appointed as special police because that allowed them the ability to take limited police action in the event of a physical threat to the chairman,” says Anthony Guglielmi, chief spokesman for police Supt. Eddie Johnson.

Johnson certified three special police officers for Burke in 2016. Johnson’s predecessor, Garry McCarthy, certified six other ex-Chicago cops as special police officers for Burke in 2014, records show. McCarthy, now running for mayor, says he doesn’t recall signing off on them.

In 2018, the yearly salaries of the six retired officers currently working for the finance committee totaled about $308,000, plus benefits.

In 2009, the city had spent almost $600,000 on Burke’s detail of four active-duty cops, according to the watchdog group the Better Government Association.

Three other retired Chicago cops also were certified as special police officers for Burke, but they left their finance committee jobs in 2014, 2016 and 2017, city personnel records show.

Guglielmi says the city’s special police program has been discontinued as of January — the month prosecutors announced they’d charged Burke with attempted extortion and he lost his committee chairmanship.

The certifications for Burke’s special police officers expired at the end of 2017, according to Guglielmi.

MORE FROM THE WATCHDOGS

• Burke’s breaks: Embattled alderman got tax cuts on home, office just by asking

• ‘They failed my son,’ Chicago schools to pay $4M in special ed. teen’s drowning

• Much of $100 million from sale of Holy Name lot to go to church sex-abuse debts

Someone was at the bottom of the pool at Kennedy High School, not moving. At least three students told that to the Chicago Public Schools lifeguard on duty.

But the lifeguard ignored them, according to records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times and the Better Government Association that CPS officials released but then went to court in a failed effort to keep them secret.

It’s probably just a kid practicing holding his breath, the lifeguard told them.

Yet another student alerted one of the two gym teachers overseeing the crowded swim session at the Southwest Side school pool. But he was on his computer and ignored her.

Finally, after about five minutes, another adult on duty at the pool spotted what the girls had seen. But it was too late. Rosario Israel Gomez — a 14-year-old freshman with autism, a boy who couldn’t swim and wasn’t supposed to have been left alone — already was unconscious.

He was given CPR for 20 minutes, first by three CPS employees including the school principal, then by paramedics. But the boy his family called Israel couldn’t be revived. About an hour later, at 2:18 p.m. on Jan. 25, 2017, he was pronounced dead at MacNeal Hospital in Berwyn.

Now, two years after Israel’s mother sent him to school never to see him alive again, the Chicago Board of Education has agreed to pay $4 million to settle the wrongful death lawsuit she filed against CPS.

Speaking publicly for the first time about her son’s death, Yolanda Juarez was mortified to read through new details about what happened to him — and angry that CPS tried to hide its failures.

“I trusted these people,” Juarez says. “I trusted, and they failed me. They failed my son.

“There was no responsibility there. They did a horrible job. And they don’t want this to get out there.”

Once the settlement is approved by a Cook County judge, it will be the biggest payout CPS has made since 2011, the year Mayor Rahm Emanuel took office. It’s more than Chicago school board members have given victims of sex abuse by school employees and $1 million more than the settlement with the family of a student who died in 2010 after being inadvertently given food she was allergic to at a school party.

The Sun-Times and the BGA reported in September 2017 that six school employees — two P.E. teachers, a special education classroom assistant, a substitute special ed. classroom assistant, an instructional assistant and the lifeguard — were on duty. But somehow none noticed that Israel no longer was in the shallow end of the pool.

That was among a series of problems at the Kennedy pool as the teenager was one of 70 students enjoying an unstructured “fun day” session complete with “blaring” music, records show.

It was minutes after seventh period began, around 1:10 p.m., when Israel, who wasn’t wearing a life jacket and had trouble communicating, slipped unnoticed into the deep end.

The newly obtained records — 313 pages CPS went to court to “claw back,” saying they “inadvertently” released them and getting a Cook County judge to initially order reporters not to publish stories based on them — reveal that other errors also played a part in the death of the special education student.

Key among them was that the lifeguard, Calvin Carter, ignored warnings from three girls at the pool, according to the records.

The records — which CPS fought for nearly two years to keep secret — show another student told investigators for the school system one of those girls “looked visibly shaken” after failing to get the attention of Carter about the boy at the bottom of the deep end. Busy with swimming instruction, the lifeguard “blew her off” twice, saying he was “probably diving and practicing holding his breath.”

Click here to read the Sun-Times / BGA September 2017 investigation.

Among other findings from CPS’ investigation of how Israel died:

• Carter — an hourly employee with no benefits who worked at the school seven hours a day, from 7:45 a.m. until 2:45 p.m. — told investigators that the scene at the crowded, noisy Kennedy pool was “mayhem.”

• Kurt Kerrigan — one of the two physical education teachers there — was sitting at a table, working on his laptop computer. He said it would have been hard to see students in the deep end but that he “saw visually all the students with special needs in the shallow end and the next minute I look up and R.G. is underneath.” Kerrigan told CPS investigators he was recording students’ attendance when Israel disappeared, and he emailed his principal that afternoon, saying, “I wasn’t at my desk for more than 2 minutes max.” School officials, though, found that Kerrigan didn’t make his first entry into CPS’ online Gradebook attendance system until 1:48 p.m. — more than half an hour after the boy was discovered. Records from disciplinary proceedings that resulted in Kerrigan’s firing show that, later that afternoon, he deleted his computer’s browser history.

• A student who saw Carter dive in said she told Kerrigan, “I think there’s something wrong there” but that Kerrigan “didn’t move.”

• The other P.E. teacher said that once another adult finally spotted Israel, she started running toward that end of the pool to try to help him and yelled Kerrigan’s name. She said Kerrigan “looked up for a moment and then turned his attention back to his laptop.”

• One of the two special education classroom assistants who were present — a regular substitute named Julia Williams — was supposed to be in charge of looking after Israel and several other students with special needs at the pool. Williams was sitting near the shallow end of the pool “to watch and keep track of time,” according to the CPS records.

• Williams told CPS investigators she wasn’t used to seeing the boy she called Rosario in the pool because he never even brought a swimsuit to school. “I didn’t even know Rosario was in the water,” she told investigators. “I didn’t pay attention.”

• It wasn’t until an aide for the other gym class noticed Israel in the water and got Carter’s attention that the lifeguard jumped in to pull the boy from the pool.

• Israel wasn’t given a life jacket to wear around the pool, even though he had failed a swim test — though life jackets were given to at least one other kid that day. CPS didn’t require teachers to make sure non-swimmers had life jackets.

• Investigators were told Israel “knew how to stay in the shallow end” of the pool, which deepened gradually from a low of three feet to five feet deep, then dropped off sharply to 12 feet deep.

• And maybe worst of all, he was supposed to have “adult supervision at all times,” according to the records. But no plans had been made to have someone monitor him at the pool even though Kerrigan, the P.E. teacher, was listed as part of the school team that drew up the special education student’s support plan at Kennedy, 6325 W. 56th St., in October 2016.

The pool at Kennedy High School where Rosario Israel Gomez drowned. | Chicago Police Department

Israel’s mother says school officials wouldn’t allow her to attend that 2016 meeting in person, instead calling her on the phone. She says no one told her a thing about her son going to the pool at school.

“They just told me about the gym but never about the pool,” says Juarez, who read through the CPS files that Sun-Times and BGA reporters showed her. “He needed somebody there to be by his side in the pool.”

Though CPS officials say they went to court because they shouldn’t have released their full investigative file and that the privacy restrictions are meant to protect children and their families, Juarez and her lawyer say they want the world to know what happened.

She’s appalled at the findings CPS documented, especially about the lifeguard ignoring warnings.

“He didn’t believe her, huh?” Juarez says of the girl’s initial warning. “She alerted a second time? Oh, my God. He blew her off again? That is depressing.”

School staffers were supposed to keep her son safe, she says.

“They didn’t pay attention. They ignored my son,” Juarez says. “They are not supposed to let the kids just go loose, you know what I mean, in the swimming pool?”

Rosario Israel Gomez on his graduation day from Adlai Stevenson Elementary School. | Family photo

The teenager’s death came as CPS and then-Chicago schools chief Forrest Claypool — facing a serious financial crunch worsened by a years-long budget standoff in Springfield under former Gov. Bruce Rauner — were under fire from parents and advocacy groups over cuts in services provided to special education students.

As a result, the Illinois State Board of Education assigned a monitor last year to oversee the city’s special education programs after finding that the nation’s third-largest school system had illegally “delayed and denied” services in violation of state and federal laws. The monitor is supposed to get CPS in compliance with the laws and recommend fixes.

Similar problems regarding special ed. services have lingered under Claypool’s successor, Janice Jackson.

In October, the Sun-Times reported that, under a privatization move begun under Claypool, some CPS students with special needs that included medical issues weren’t being provided the nursing care they need during the school day. Soon after, one student highlighted in that report was given a CPS-paid nurse able to provide the care he needs to attend kindergarten.

In November, disabilities rights advocates complained that, even with the state monitor, CPS was doing too little to ensure that special education students are given the services they’re entitled to.

After Israel’s death, top CPS officials insisted an “appropriate staffing plan was in place” at Kennedy that day.

Within months, though, they told principals citywide they were instituting a series of moves to upgrade safety policies for schools with swimming pools. Those included doing away with unsupervised “fun days,” banning electronic devices from school pools and making teachers take attendance outside the pool area.

Then, last year, the Board of Ed. formalized requirements that aides for special ed. students must remain within reaching distance of their students and that they have to have gotten a water safety certificate. Also, school lifeguards’ duties were restricted so they no longer are allowed to teach swimming. Their sole responsibility now is to watch the kids at their pool. And the ratio of one lifeguard per 100 kids was increased to one for every 50 kids.

CPS also spelled out that extra care needs to be taken with special ed. kids, requiring gym teachers and aides to ensure the students have the support they need in the pool, whether that means wearing a life jacket or always having someone by their side.

This past week, CPS officials wouldn’t answer questions about the settlement, about their findings regarding Israel’s death or about whether they still believe the staffing at Kennedy was “appropriate.”

They pointed to the changes that subsequently were made “to prevent another tragedy in the future” and said: “The incident that occurred was a horrible tragedy, and the district remains heartbroken for the student’s family.”

Rosario Gomez. | GoFundMe

In addition to firing Kerrigan, who was Israel’s assigned P.E. teacher, CPS fired Carter, the lifeguard, and Williams, the substitute special ed. aide.

Two other adults in the pool got written disciplinary warnings. One aide wasn’t disciplined.

Through his lawyer, Carter declined to comment. Kerrigan would say only the information in the CPS files was “not accurate.” The other current and former staffers didn’t return calls.

Carter and Williams previously told the BGA/Sun-Times they were wrongly blamed.

“Does this seem right to you? To have that many kids in a pool, from three to 12 feet, with one lifeguard? And two classes, with special ed, with one lifeguard? Come on. Would you have your child in that situation if you knew it?” Carter said in an interview in 2017. “That’s a disaster waiting to happen. And, in this case, it did.”

CPS wouldn’t release any details of its proposed settlement with Israel’s family.

In October 2018, lawyers for the school system said in court papers that if the case went to trial, they would “contest only the amount of damages of this case and . . . not contest liability or causation.”

Kennedy High School. | Chicago Public Schools

Initially, CPS refused to release reports from its internal investigation into Israel’s death, which the BGA requested under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act. The BGA then sued to get them.

A day after the school board approved the proposed $4 million payout, a CPS lawyer handed over 313 pages of evidence.

Four days later, the CPS lawyer who released them said he wanted the documents back. He said he’d erred in handing them over before a judge issued an order to do so.

On Monday, the same lawyer asked Cook County Circuit Judge Peter Flynn to “claw back” the reports, saying, ”I’m concerned about privacy.”

At a hearing Wednesday, Flynn agreed the records should remain private for two more weeks so he could review what should be released — an unusual instance of prior restraint on publication that the BGA fought.

On Thursday, after being presented with written consent from Israel’s family to make the findings public, Flynn agreed to do so.

Katie Drews is a reporter for the Better Government Association. Lauren FitzPatrick is a Sun-Times reporter.

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• Burke’s breaks: Embattled alderman got tax cuts on home, office just by asking

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Ald. Edward M. Burke — who’s in the re-election fight of his life as he faces a criminal charge that he tried to extort a fast-food franchise owner — got property tax breaks on his house and political offices that saved him nearly 6 percent of what he otherwise would have had to pay last year.

How did he do it? Just by asking.

Then-Cook County Assessor Joseph Berrios responded by cutting the value his staff had placed on the alderman’s Southwest Side home and 14th Ward offices, saving Burke nearly $1,511.58 in taxes last year, records show.

Usually, people appealing will produce an appraisal to try to persuade the county assessor’s office it overvalued a property. Or they’ll argue comparable properties were given lower values.

The alderman’s law firm, Klafter & Burke, didn’t offer any appraisals when it filed appeals with Berrios in October 2017 on Burke’s home on West 51st Street near Pulaski Road and ward offices in the 2600 block of West 51st.

It offered no comparables on the offices. And the three homes it said were comparable to Burke’s home — all townhomes and much smaller — aren’t comparable at all, according to staffers for Fritz Kaegi, who succeeded Berrios after beating him in last year’s Democratic primary.

Kaegi’s office says there’s nothing in county files to show why his predecessor cut the value of Burke’s properties, lowering his tax bills.

“We don’t have any information about why the previous administration lowered this assessment,” says Scott Smith, Kaegi’s spokesman. “It does not make any sense to us why it was lowered.”

Sources say it wasn’t unusual for former Cook County Assessor Joe Berrios (right) to cut assessments even when property owners filed appeals with no evidence to support a reduction. “It does not make any sense to us why it was lowered,” a spokesman for Berrios’ successor Fritz Kaegi (left) says of Ed Burke’s tax breaks. | Sun-Times files

Thomas Jaconetty, Berrios’ former top deputy, says he can’t explain why Burke got the breaks.

“I’m no longer in the office, so I no longer have access to the records,” Jaconetty says. “I’m not going to comment on that.”

Burke also had sought tax breaks on his home and office the two previous years, but Berrios said no.

Burke is facing an increase in taxes on his home this summer, when the next property tax bills are calculated and mailed to Cook County property owners, because the assessor’s office has reevaluated the property, determining it’s worth $860,510, up from $730,510. But he’s likely to get a further tax cut on his ward office because the assessor has lowered its estimation of the value of that building, to $368,777 from $462,470.

Burke — whose firm specializes in property tax appeals — couldn’t be reached.

His law firm filed the appeals in October 2017. That was during the period FBI agents were secretly recording his cellphone calls — between the spring of 2017 and November 2018, when they raided his City Hall and ward offices.

When Burke filed the appeal on his home, he cited what he called three comparable properties — neighboring townhouses that are less than half the size of his three-story, 5,619-square-foot home, which towers above every other home in the neighborhood.

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The alderman and his wife, Illinois Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke, often host political functions there.

Early last year, the Burkes held a fundraiser there for Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle.

And Justice Burke has performed several marriage ceremonies there — including the December 2011 wedding of then-state Rep. Susana Mendoza, who’s now state comptroller and running for mayor. The judge also officiated there for the June 2013 wedding of Kyla McCarthy, daughter of then-police Supt. Garry McCarthy, another mayoral candidate. McCarthy says the wedding was arranged by the family of his late son-in-law Timothy Smithe Jr., whose family owns the Walter E. Smithe furniture stores.

Berrios initially pegged Burke’s home’s value at $781,070, then lowered it without explanation to $730,510, records show. That 7 percent reduction saved Burke $1,089 in taxes, leaving him with a bill of $14,418 last year.

For years, Burke has gotten a significant tax break on his two-story ward office because the storefront building has apartments upstairs. So it’s classified as residential property, rather than commercial. That reduces the tax bill by 60 percent.

Berrios decided that the office building had a value of $482,100. But, after Burke filed an appeal with the assessor, he lowered that by about 4 percent, to $462,470. That saved the alderman $422.56, leaving him with a $9,955.59 tax bill.

Sources say it wasn’t unusual for Berrios to cut assessments even when property owners, typically homeowners, filed appeals without offering any evidence to support a reduction.

Burke already was scrambling to keep the office he’s held for a record 50 years when federal prosecutors announced Jan. 3 that they had charged him with attempted extortion. He’s accused of trying to get business for his law firm from a Burger King franchise owner trying to get city permits to remodel a restaurant in the alderman’s ward.

The alderman also is accused of leaning on the restaurant owner to contribute $10,000 to Preckwinkle’s campaign for county board president, money she later returned.

Burke’s attorney Charles Sklarsky has said the alderman didn’t commit any crime.

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• Much of $100 million from sale of Holy Name lot to go to church sex-abuse debts

Anticipating getting $100 million or more from the sale of a parking lot at Holy Name Cathedral, the Archdiocese of Chicago expects to spend most of that windfall repaying money that was borrowed to cover the financial costs of clergy sex abuse claims.

That’s according to a Chicago Sun-Times examination of the church’s most recent financial reports and interviews that show the archdiocese owes more than $200 million, mostly related to sex abuse claims. And the church estimates it could end up with another $100 million in costs for pending and future claims.

In October 2017, church officials, discussing plans to sell the property across from Holy Name, the seat of the archdiocese, said, “We sought a developer who shared our vision of improving the neighborhood we have been proud to call home for nearly 175 years.”

And developers unveiled plans to put up two high-rise residential towers on what’s now largely a parking lot for the cathedral — prime real estate at Chicago and State.

They hope to finalize the sale of the Holy Name lot and begin construction work within the next month or two, according to developer Jim Letchinger, who’s overseeing the project with Sterling Bay.

The church is on a good path to improve its financial footing, one source familiar with the archdiocese’s operations says — guided by an advisory finance council filled with accountants, bankers and other professionals in the business world.

But another knowledgeable source paints a more alarming picture, suggesting the church might eventually need to tap additional funding sources or have to make tough financial choices. Selling the Holy Name parking lot “would go a long way” toward attacking the sex abuse debt, “but you’re still $200 million short,” that source told the Sun-Times. “It mitigates the problem but doesn’t solve it.”

In addition to the debts directly tied to sex abuse claims, the archdiocese is confronting a shortfall in its priests’ pension fund, which helps support retired clergy but is underfunded by millions of dollars. Church officials won’t say how bad that shortfall is, but internal church records obtained by the Sun-Times show the archdiocese is trying to find ways to deal with this.

The archdiocese, the Catholic church’s arm for Cook and Lake counties, overseen by Cardinal Blase Cupich, has contemplated selling the Gold Coast “cardinal’s mansion,” the sprawling landmark building where Cupich’s predecessors lived.

The archdiocese also is in the process of closing and consolidating schools and churches, many of which have been hit by declining enrollment and mass attendance. But Cupich has portrayed the closures and mergers as motivated less by finances and more as a “spiritual revitalization.”

Victims advocates have long maintained that some Catholic dioceses hit by litigation over clergy sex abuse have cried poor, in some cases even filing for bankruptcy, as a way to scare off more people from filing lawsuits and protect their assets.

In Chicago, the archdiocese has paid off claims but said little about the long-term financial implications.

Before Cupich was sent to Chicago by Pope Francis in 2014, the archdiocese had established a practice of not using money collected from the faithful in the pews to pay for sex abuse costs. Instead, church officials said those costs would be covered by land sales and short-term borrowing.

“We use the proceeds from asset sales and borrowings to pay abuse claims,” Cupich spokeswoman Paula Waters says. “We use interim borrowings to meet obligations in advance of receiving sale proceeds.”

But all of the church’s assets ultimately trace back to donations, experts in church finances say.

The archdiocese’s borrowing has added up because it hasn’t been able to make enough money fast enough from land sales to cover abuse claims.

Government records show numerous church-owned parcels in the Chicago area have been sold or leased in recent years, including vacant land and former churches and schools.

The church won’t say which ones went toward sex abuse costs and also notes that money from some property sales reverts to individual parishes.

Cupich wouldn’t agree to an interview.

And Betsy Bohlen, his $300,000-a-year chief operating officer, would answer only certain questions and do so only by email.

Asked about future tough choices to pay off sex abuse costs, Bohlen wrote: “The archdiocese has been transparent about the financial cost of misconduct. Paying for claims does require diverting assets that could otherwise been used for the ongoing mission of the church. The archdiocese continues to evaluate the sale of land and other assets in order to meet all required obligations.”

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He doesn’t have a household name like Larry Hoover, Jeff Fort or other infamous leaders of Chicago gangs.

Lawrence “Big Law” Loggins kept a low profile — no mentions in the newspaper and no arrests since he was released from prison in 2009.

But he was the head of the Black Disciples, one of Chicago’s most notorious gangs, police say. And he was trying to consolidate power before he was shot to death Wednesday night, according to law enforcement sources.

Now, the Chicago Police Department is bracing for a potential bloodbath on the South Side in retaliation for Loggins’ murder, officials said Friday. Anthony Guglielmi, chief spokesman for the department, said investigators are working to prevent those revenge killings.

Message boards on the Internet were buzzing Friday about the possible motive for the killing. Rapper Lil Durk tweeted out “RIP Big Law.”

Loggins, 46, was shot in the head at 9:08 p.m. Wednesday as he stood near a Nissan Rogue in the 7100 block of South Union Avenue, police said. He was found face-down on the driver’s seat of the sport-utility vehicle.

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A man wounded in the shooting told police the attackers ran through an empty lot, taking off in a gray Infiniti sedan.

Loggins, who also used the last name Lee, went to prison for a 1989 gang murder in Lowe Park on the South Side, records show. He was released in 2009, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections. Unlike most gang members, he doesn’t even have an arrest photo in the police department’s computer database.

Tio Hardiman, former director of the anti-violence group CeaseFire Illinois, said Loggins approached him after he got out of prison. Hardiman, now president of Violence Interrupters Inc., said Loggins became a “violence interrupter.”

“Lawrence interrupted at least 20 conflicts that could have turned deadly” while he was with CeaseFire, Hardiman said. “Lawrence had another side — he was a peacemaker.”

But law-enforcement sources said Loggins was trying to consolidate power over the Black Disciples in the Englewood, Gresham and Grand Crossing police districts on the South Side. He wanted to return a corporate governance structure to the street gang, they said.

From the 1970s through the mid-2000s, the gang’s leaders had issued orders to lower-level members through a rigid hierarchy.

Gang experts have estimated that 15,000 people were members of the Black Disciples during that period. Low-level members who ignored orders were beaten or killed and were required to pay a “street tax” from the proceeds of their drug deals and other crimes.

Today, independent factions of the Black Disciples operate on the South Side and the younger generation of members has bristled at the idea of losing their autonomy, sources said.

On Wednesday, Loggins called junior members of the gang into a meeting and “chewed them out,” a source said. Some police officials believe he was killed as a result of that meeting.

The struggle for control over the Black Disciples has been bloody over the past year, with other members of the gang’s “old guard” also being killed, sources said.

Loggins’ 29-year-old son Lawrence “Lil’ Law” Lee is a leader of the Lamron faction of the Black Disciples, according to the police. He’s serving a 15-year prison term for attempted murder.

Lawrence Lee. | Illinois Department of Corrections

The Lamron faction’s gang territory runs along Normal Avenue from 59^th to 67^th Streets in Englewood. Lamron is Normal spelled backwards.

The rapper Chief Keef, who’s associated with the Black Disciples, has popularized the Lamron faction by mentioning it in his music.

The Black Disciples were founded in the 1960s under the leadership of David Barksdale. Jerome “Shorty” Freeman was crowned the king of the Black Disciples in 1974 after Barksdale’s death.

Freeman went to prison in 1990 on a drug conviction, and Marvel Thompson became the de facto leader of the Black Disciples on the streets, holding that role until the FBI arrested him in a sweeping drug conspiracy case in 2004, according to law enforcement authorities.

Marvel Thompson. | Illinois Department of Corrections

According to federal authorities, Thompson ran a politically connected, hierarchical and sophisticated operation. His drug workers would tune in to a Christian radio frequency that Thompson pirated, according to the FBI, using the radio frequency to warn his troops about police activity. Thompson took in millions of dollars through mortgage-fraud schemes and drug dealing, according to federal authorities.

Under Thompson, the gang had connections in the business and political worlds. One of his top lieutenants, Donnell Jehan, dated a Chicago alderman, Arenda Troutman, who later went to prison for corruption.

Thompson and his lieutenants went to prison in the federal case in 2005.

The same year, Freeman got out of prison. He said he no longer was involved in the gang, though the police didn’t believe it. Freeman died of natural causes in 2012.

Jerome “Shorty” Freeman. | Illinois Department of Corrections

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For much of Mayor Richard M. Daley’s record reign, City Hall operated an illegal hiring scheme, skewing test results so political supporters of the mayor and his allies got jobs and promotions.

Federal prosecutors proved that, with some of Daley’s top aides going to prison, including patronage boss Robert Sorich and Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Al Sanchez. Others faced disciplinary action.

Ald. Harry Osterman never was charged in the scandal, nor was he disciplined, but he played a key role in putting politics first in  employment decisions at Streets and Sanitation, a city official told a federal court monitor, according to records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.

Osterman’s role was detailed by William M. Mahon — now a $116,000-a-year Streets and San deputy commissioner in Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration who in 1997 and 1998 was “personnel liaison” for the city agency under Osterman, then the personnel director.

Mahon was interviewed Dec. 4, 2012, by a monitor appointed by a federal judge to help clean up city hiring. According to the newly obtained records, Mahon described how the names of favored job applicants passed from the mayor’s office to those doing the hiring.

“So did you ever receive names from Harry Osterman?” Mahon was asked.

“Yes,” he responded.

“And would he provide you names of individuals who were preferred candidates?” he was asked.

“Yes,” Mahon said.

Mahon told the monitor he gave those names to the people responsible for interviewing job candidates and that these preferred candidates were then “scored higher than other individuals” and thus more likely to be hired.

“When you would inform the other interview panelists of the preferred names from Harry Osterman, what would you tell them?” the federal monitor asked Mahon.

“I would say here is three candidates that downtown is interested in, and they would conduct interviews,” according to Mahon.

Mahon’s first job at City Hall, in 1989, was working for Osterman’s late mother, former Daley aide Kathy Osterman, who ran the Mayor’s Office of Special Events.

Six years later, Mahon transferred to the Department of Streets and Sanitation, which handles garbage pickup and snow plowing in Chicago and is one of the city’s biggest agencies. He worked in Streets and San’s Bureau of Traffic Services “under the personnel liaison” and in 1997 became the office’s personnel liaison, reporting to Harry Osterman.

At the end of 1998, Mahon got a promotion within the department, no longer reporting to Osterman.

Osterman left the city payroll and took office in 2000 as the state representative for a North Side district that includes Edgewater. He served in the Legislature until 2011, when he was elected alderman, and he’s on the Feb. 26 city ballot, seeking re-election.

Osterman, 51, who on his website describes himself as “a progressive, independent voice committed to serving his community,” declined Sun-Times reporters’ requests to speak with him. Nor would he say whether he was interviewed by federal authorities who prosecuted his former colleagues.

Instead, the alderman responded with a written statement, saying: “In over 30 years of public service I have never been accused by any authority; city, state, or federal; for any wrongdoing of any kind, much less any criminal behavior. I have tried, in every position I have been honored to hold as a public servant, to serve the interests of citizens to the best of my ability.

“Decades-old unsubstantiated allegations, never acted on by any legal authority, can’t change that.”

Noelle Brennan, the attorney appointed by a judge as monitor to enforce anti-patronage court orders, took steps to punish city employees who were identified as having roles in the political hiring schemes but not charged with any crime, among them Mahon.

Brennan wouldn’t discuss Osterman but said, “We didn’t investigate anyone who wasn’t a current employee.”

Mahon’s attorney Thomas Breen wouldn’t comment, other than noting the hiring scandal occurred years ago.

As a result of Brennan’s investigation, Mahon got suspended from his job for 45 days and was barred from being involved in hiring decisions.

Mahon grew up in Bridgeport, where his family was neighbors with the late Mayor Richard J. Daley. He started working at City Hall after the younger Mayor Daley was first elected to that office in 1989.

In 2006, City Hall’s inspector general’s office found that Mahon had “repeatedly engaged in personal activities” while on the clock at City Hall — including attending a White Sox game. The inspector general recommended that Mahon be fired. Instead, the Daley administration handed him a 29-day suspension.

William M. Mahon. | Facebook

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• Archdiocese: Didn’t know for years that 3 ‘order’ clerics faced sex accusations

Asked in September about whether the Archdiocese of Chicago keeps track of religious order priests who have been accused of sexual abuse, Cardinal Blase Cupich’s spokeswoman Paula Waters said, “It is done on a regular basis.”

But even amid heightened scrutiny of predator priests from the semi-autonomous orders, the cardinal’s office learned only recently that three elderly Catholic clerics with long-ago allegations of sexual misconduct that were deemed credible have been living on the Society of the Divine Word order’s grounds near Northbrook for years, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.

One of them, the Rev. Joe Fertal, had been the subject of a lawsuit church authorities in California settled after he was accused of molesting a teenage boy.

Fertal — now in his late 80s and described as “wheelchair-bound” — moved from an out-of-state care facility to the Divine Word grounds, called Techny and located on Waukegan Road north of Willow Road, in 2016 because his health was failing, and he needed more specialized care that’s available at the order’s “mother house,” according to the Rev. Quang Dinh, Divine Word’s Chicago province leader.

Rev. Joe Fertal. | Provided photo

Another cleric who’d been accused of abuse has been at Divine Word for decades, Dinh says, and the third arrived around 2005, declining to name them.

The order’s province leader says all three men are in a supervised setting, are not allowed to leave the grounds except for things like doctor appointments and have not been allowed to perform public ministry for many years.

Waters says the archdiocese was “informed of their presence” in December during an audit Cupich ordered.

That was after the Sun-Times reported in September that the Rev. Richard McGrath, an Augustinian priest who’d been investigated by Will County authorities over allegations he had a picture of a naked boy on his cellphone and had sexually abused a student while president of Providence Catholic High School in New Lenox, had moved to the St. John Stone Friary.

That’s a monastery the Augustinian order runs in Hyde Park. It’s across an alley from a preschool and around the corner from a Catholic grade school.

The archdiocese said at the time that it was informed that McGrath had moved there but didn’t notify the preschool operator or its own St. Thomas the Apostle school. After the Sun-Times published that story online, Cupich apologized to the St. Thomas community, asked the Augustinians to move McGrath and ordered a “review of all religious communities in Chicago with regard to their members residing in our diocese.”

The Techny clerics “are living in a monitored setting more than a mile from the nearest school, and, in any case, are quite elderly,” Waters says.

Waters wouldn’t say why the archdiocese wasn’t aware of the men before December. Nor would she answer other questions, saying: “We thought it better that the reply come from the order as they have direct knowledge of the men in their infirmary.”

In an email sent in response to questions, Dinh says: “When a priest arrives at Techny, he cannot begin to minister in the Archdiocese of Chicago until he receives the faculties (express written permission) of the cardinal archbishop of Chicago. This permission is requested as soon as or even before the priest arrives.

Despite promises of scrutiny, Cardinal Blase Cupich’s spokeswoman says the Chicago archdiocese learned only in December that three religious order clerics who faced credible allegations of sexual misconduct have lived for years on the Society of the Divine Word order’s Techny grounds near Northbrook. | Robert Herguth / Sun-Times

“When a brother or a priest who is elderly, infirm or unable to minister for another reason (i.e., restricted from ministry due to an allegation of sexual abuse of a minor) arrives, neither Canon Law nor the Charter for the Protection of Children approved by the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops requires that the Archdiocese be officially notified.”

In October, a month after the Sun-Times reported on McGrath, Cupich’s office “asked religious communities of men to go beyond the requirements.” Divine Word did that in December, providing information to the archdiocese at that time on Fertal and the other two men.

Waters won’t say how many priests from religious orders who were the subject of sexual misconduct claims are known to the archdiocese.

Dinh says the accusations against the three Divine Word clerics involved conduct that happened out of state. Fertal lived in the Chicago area, including at Techny, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, records show.

The archdiocese maintains a public list of priests who have faced what are deemed to be credible allegations of sexual misconduct. But it includes only those with claims that have been “substantiated” through the archdiocese’s review process.

Waters previously said that the archdiocese’s policy “is to list all diocese clergy with substantiated allegations of sexual abuse of minors” and that the cardinal “once again calls on all religious orders and dioceses to do the same, as they are the only ones who have this information and can guarantee that their lists are complete.”

Waters would not say when Cupich previously had called on religious orders — which typically have specialized ministries that span geographic boundaries — to make this information public.

Cupich is helping organize a Vatican summit this month aimed at improving accountability and transparency regarding how the Catholic church deals with abuse of minors by clergy, a scandal that’s been raging on and off since the 1980s.

His policy regarding religious orders is problematic because many religious orders have kept information regarding abuse allegations secret, current allegations as well as older ones, says Marc Pearlman, a Chicago lawyer who has represented people abused as children by Catholic priests.

“If you really care about kids, put out every frickin’ name of the order priests, diocesan priests . . . all of them,” Pearlman says. “What’s the downside if the goal is to protect children?”

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In recent months, the Jesuit order — whose priests follow the tradition of St. Ignatius and are often educators — released decades of information about members with allegations of sexual abuse.

Cupich’s office previously was aware of some of those cases in the Chicago area but didn’t include those priests in the information it has made public, interviews and records show.

Dinh says the Divine Word order — which is based in Rome and focuses on missionary work worldwide — is discussing whether to release information on clergy against whom there have been sexual misconduct accusations.

Before being appointed by Pope Francis in 2014 to head the church in Cook and Lake counties, Cupich was bishop of the Diocese of Spokane, Washington. Cupich was told by the Jesuits there that they had members who faced abuse accusations living in a residence on the grounds of the Jesuit-run Gonzaga University in Spokane — in a building where coincidentally, Cupich, often attended meetings.

An investigation by Reveal and the Northwest News Network found that some of those priests — including one who’d been accused of molesting children in Alaska — weren’t always supervised even though they were supposed to be.

As bishop in Spokane, Cupich didn’t make public those priests’ names. Nor did he inform the bishop who succeeded him in Spokane, Thomas Daly, according to church officials.

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Rahm Emanuel’s mayoral reign ends in May, but thanks to contracts he’s extended to many key agency heads, whoever replaces Emanuel will be stuck with them for years to come — or pay handsomely for the privilege of making new appointments.

A clean sweep of the heads of the Chicago Park District, City Colleges of Chicago, Chicago Public Schools and Chicago Housing Authority would cost taxpayers at least $820,000 in golden parachute salaries — and more for benefits — in addition to the salaries for the new appointees. That’s according to an analysis of those contracts by the Chicago Sun-Times.

Michael P. Kelly has run the Chicago Park District since 2011. He was among the first agency heads appointed by Emanuel. Kelly didn’t have a contract, though, until December — and it lasts until at least Dec. 31, 2022.

Kelly’s deal appears to be the most egregious example of Emanuel sticking his successor with a long-term deal. It was done just after Emanuel chose political retirement over a likely battle for a third term. And Kelly’s contract was approved at the final parks board meeting of Jesse Ruiz, the board president who then left to join Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s administration.

Emanuel has long been the number one cheerleader for the $500 million Obama Presidential Center. But while he won’t be at City Hall to see that controversial project through, Kelly would continue to oversee a controversial golf course merger tied to the Obama center project.

Kelly’s contract could extend into 2025; Ruiz could not recall the last time a Park District superintendent had a written contract. Ruiz said he offered Kelly a written deal like other agency heads to make sure Kelly wasn’t replaced “cavalierly” by a mere “political supporter” of the new mayor.

“We think they’re doing a good job, and just like certain board members that go beyond the mayor’s term — like my former term would have extended into 2020 — we wanted to make sure that management team had stability,” Ruiz said.

That’s not just for the top two parks projects, Ruiz said.

Plans to build the four-building library complex still face a federal lawsuit and a federal review tied to Jackson Park’s spot on the National Register of Historic Places. The lawsuit in particular has the potential to circumvent the project. A judge is expected to rule Tuesday on whether to let the lawsuit proceed.

Kelly has also been the driving force behind the controversial plan — one lacking both money and support — to merge the Jackson Park and South Shore golf courses into a championship-caliber course. It would be designed by a firm owned by Tiger Woods.

If at least four board members vote to get rid of Kelly — as his contract requires, if he’s done nothing wrong — taxpayers would owe Kelly eight months of his salary, plus health insurance for his family; currently, he makes $222,003 a year, but that would rise to $230,000 in 2020.

Ruiz called the payout “an additional decision point in any new mayor’s calculus … an incentive to make sure you don’t just cavalierly make changes — that’s the whole point of the contract.”

That means if the new mayor immediately did what any new mayor would do — install his or her own team of trusted advisers and campaign supporters in key positions — Chicago taxpayers would foot the bill.

Park District spokeswoman Michele Lemons would not make Kelly available for an interview.

The top leaders at the agencies typically work under contract, and Kelly’s buyback clause is hardly the most generous among them:

• City Colleges Chancellor Juan Salgado would be entitled to a full year’s salary of at least $256,250, plus health insurance for himself and his family for the duration of the contract ending June 30, 2020 — until he finds a new job with similar benefits.

• Also guaranteed a full year’s pay — $291,500 — is Chicago Housing Authority CEO Eugene Jones Jr., who’d also get six months’ health insurance for himself and his family, if he’s fired without cause. Jones’ contract lasts until Dec. 31, 2020.

• Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson is entitled to six months’ pay on her $260,000-a-year salary if she’s terminated without cause, plus six months of health insurance for herself and her family.

CPS Chief Janice Jackson is among city agency heads who have contracts that extend beyond the end of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s term. | Sun-Times files

The Chicago Transit Authority’s CEO Dorval Carter has no contract. Neither does Carina Sanchez, head of the Public Building Commission, or Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson.

The CHA’s Jones also negotiated a 2018 performance bonus of up to $35,000, according to the amended two-year contract Jones signed in July 2018, a little more than a month before Emanuel dropped the bombshell that he wouldn’t run again. That same deal awarded Jones a raise from the $275,000 a year he was paid in 2016, when he was made head of the city’s public housing. If board members want him to go, they must give two months’ warning.

The CHA also gave him a car, a parking space — and four weeks of vacation.

CPS’ Jackson locked in a 3.5-year contract through June 2021; like Kelly’s deal, Jackson’s automatically extends if the school board misses a deadline to tell her they don’t plan to renew. Jackson’s extension would be for one year (Kelly’s is for three).

She signed her contract Feb. 6, 2018, about two weeks after the school board approved her promotion, which includes a driver.

Candidates vying to replace Emanuel are divided on whether to keep his fifth schools chief — the first CPS graduate and teacher to lead the district — in place.

Jackson’s contract reads much like those of Emanuel’s first and second school chiefs, Jean-Claude Brizard and Barbara Byrd-Bennett, except she didn’t need moving expenses.

Her immediate predecessor, Forrest Claypool, forced out of CPS after an ethics scandal, had no contract while he headed the schools at the behest of Emanuel, a longtime friend. Neither did Ruiz, who rant CPS for three months after Byrd-Bennett stepped down amid a criminal probe that landed her in federal prison.

Within weeks of being announced as Emanuel’s choice, City Colleges’ Salgado signed a three-year contract that includes a $1,000-a-month car allowance.

Even as Mayor Rahm Emanuel has criticized state and federal officials for rolling back environmental protections and played up his own green credentials, City Hall has cut back sharply on environmental oversight.

That’s according to an analysis of city data by the Better Government Association and Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism that found:

• The number of citations the city of Chicago has issued for air, water and other pollution violations is down sharply since 2012, Emanuel’s first full year as mayor. Under Emanuel, City Hall issued about 3,500 environmental citations in that period — fewer than one-third the approximately 11,200 given during the previous seven years, nearly all of that under former Mayor Richard M. Daley.
• The size of the city’s environmental inspection staff was cut almost in half during Emanuel’s tenure, and the number of yearly inspections fell by more than half as a result of budget cuts and attrition.
• The numbers of inspections of hazardous materials plummeted by more than 90 percent between 2010 and 2018, of air quality plunged nearly 70 percent and of solid waste by more than 60 percent.
• The declines in inspections and enforcement actions coincided with Emanuel’s decision soon after taking office in 2011 to abolish the city’s Department of Environment, as well as shutting down a city hotline for pollution complaints. City residents instead were told to direct environmental concerns to the city’s catch-all 311 non-emergency call service, which also deals with complaints about garbage service, rodents, potholes and more.

After years of environmental staff cuts, Emanuel reversed course in his 2018 budget. Not mentioning the city’s own cuts while he was mayor, his office boasted: “Mayor Emanuel’s expansion of environmental protection staff comes at the same time state and federal officials have rolled back efforts to protect residents from pollution.”

City officials say enforcement is just part of Emanuel’s environmental agenda and that he deserves credit for other efforts to prevent pollution, for instance, by promoting clean energy and greater use of monitors to detect air pollution.

“It would be unfair to look at these numbers as our only commitment to the environment,” says Dr. Julie Morita, Emanuel’s public health commissioner.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel is flanked by city leaders from around the world at the North American Climate Summit in Chicago in 2017. | Twitter

To cut costs, Emanuel’s first city budget, for 2012, did away with the Department of Environment, which Daley created. The mayor gave its responsibilities for environmental permitting and enforcement primarily to the Department of Public Health, saying the previous setup detracted from a green focus throughout city government.

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Cheryl Johnson, a South Side environmental activist, is critical of Emanuel’s environmental efforts, saying, “I would give him a D-minus for enforcement.”

On the Far South Side, around the Altgeld Gardens public housing complex, where Johnson lives and works, there are “No dumping” signs all over, and the air is thick with the smells of chemicals, garbage and sewage. The once-flat landscape is dotted with hills that were once active landfills. The area, now a magnet for illegal dumping, is one of the most environmentally burdened neighborhoods in the city.

Johnson, executive director of People for Community Recovery, says shutting down the environment department sent a message that people are on their own to fight pollution. To address foul smells from a nearby sewage-treatment plant, residents have bypassed the city in recent years, instead complaining to the operator, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago.

“You get tired of beating on a dead horse,” says Johnson, who says the strategy has gotten better results.

Cheryl Johnson gives Emanuel a D-minus for environmental enforcement. Her South Side neighborhood is plagued by chemical, garbage and sewage odors. | Brett Chase / BGA

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In Pilsen, people have complained for years about dust from a car-shredding operation run by Sims Metal Management.

In 2012, Emanuel’s inspectors cited the business for two air-quality violations but didn’t assess any fines. This past December, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency concluded a two-year investigation of the Sims facility with a fine of $225,000 for air-quality violations.

While the EPA was looking at Sims, records show that city inspectors visited the site more than a dozen times, including at least five visits that followed complaints. But city inspectors didn’t find any violations, records show, concluding on one occasion that any smells “were not excessive or pungent.”

Sims says the odor complaints from last year were “unsubstantiated” and separate from the EPA case and that “we diligently work with regulators to ensure that we are fully current with federal, state and local regulations.”

According to Morita, the recent additions to the inspection staff came because “we identified that need.” She also points to the department’s work in recent years to strengthen city rules on handling harmful materials such as manganese and petroleum coke that posed a health threat on the Southeast Side.

The BGA-Medill analysis was based on the health department’s environmental violations database which includes enforcement actions by the old Department of Environment.

In 2010, the old environment department was budgeted for an 18-member staff to handle permits and inspections and carried out 11,571 inspections that year.

By 2014, the budgeted headcount of the permit and inspections team, by this time part of the health department, had been cut to just nine. That shrunken squad did 5,907 environmental inspections.

The budget for the inspections staff grew to 23 by 2018 after the additions. Still, the number of inspections last year was 5,469 — fewer than there’d been in 2014, when the staff was nearly one-third the size.

One cut that’s gotten a particularly bad reception has been the elimination of the environmental hotline.

“It’s hard to explain to a 311 operator who is dealing with a situation they are totally unfamiliar with,” says Peggy Salazar, director of a group called the Southeast Environmental Task Force.

Records show 311 operators sometimes rout pollution complaints to city departments that don’t handle them. For instance, there have been air-pollution complaints about the Three Brothers industrial laundry, in the 2600 block of West 19th Street in Pilsen, that got routed to the buildings department. But the buildings department doesn’t enforce outdoor air-quality issues.

City records show there were more than 600 complaints to 311 about Three Brothers Laundry in 2017, many about chemical smells and other foul odors.

Marguerita and Mark Breihan live across an alley from Three Brothers. Marguerita Breihan says the smells sometimes are so bad they’ve made her vomit. A neighbor, Bonfilio Reyes, says that when it’s bad, his face swells, he gets headaches and he has to leave his house.

Records show city inspectors have visited the laundry at least 30 times since 2016 as a result of hundreds of complaints but reported not smelling anything unusual and found no air-quality violations.

Mark Breihan says one city official asked whether he’d considered moving.

In December, U.S. EPA officials inspected Three Brothers following air-quality complaints. That review continues.

“It’s just basic soap,” Nayan Patel, Three Brothers’ general manager, says of the odor.

But the EPA inspection found that Three Brothers began a dry-cleaning operation last summer that used the chemical perchloroethylene. Exposure to the chemical, known as PCE, can cause headaches, nausea and irritation and in extreme cases can pose a cancer risk, according to U.S. health officials.

Nearly all of the big field of candidates running to succeed Emanuel as mayor have said they want to toughen environmental oversight. Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, former Chicago Police Board President Lori Lightfoot and community activist Amara Enyia have called for restoring an environment department.

Contributing: Mary Hall

Brett Chase, Madison Hopkins, Ashley Hackett and AnnMarie Hilton report for the Better Government Association. Mary Hall is a Medill student.

Click to hear Kimberly Wasserman, a Little Village community activist, on the Emanuel administration’s doing away with the city’s environmental complaints hotline.

Chicago police Sgt. Eric J. Elkins was 43 years old and on desk duty in 2017, awaiting the results of an internal affairs investigation of allegations he drunkenly fondled a teenage boy in Michigan two years earlier, but retirement was on his mind.

Elkins wasn’t old enough to retire and start drawing his taxpayer-supported pension. But he wanted to make sure that, when he was, he’d get the most money he could.

Elkins went to the Policemen’s Annuity and Benefit Fund and asked for permission to enhance his city pension by giving him credit for the four-plus years he had spent as a Cook County sheriff’s dispatcher and a forest preserve cop before joining the Chicago Police Department in 1999.

The police pension board agreed. On Oct. 26, 2017, it approved Elkins’ request. But he had to cash out his contributions to the county pension fund — money that had been taken out of his paychecks — and pay about $30,000 to the police pension fund as make-up contributions, which he did, records show.

Elkins resigned under a cloud last month. He was facing two internal investigations — one over the sex case, the other for a bar fight.

Now 45, when he turns 50, in 2024, he can start drawing a yearly pension. It’s estimated to start at $61,644, records show — far more than he would have gotten without counting his time working for the county.

If he reaches 82 — the average life expectancy for a man his age — his pension will top $80,000 a year, and he will have collected more than $2 million in retirement pay, according to a Chicago Sun-Times analysis.

About $166,000 was deducted from his pay as a Chicago cop toward his city pension, records show.

That means Chicago taxpayers and other police officers paying into the financially troubled fund would end up heavily subsidizing his golden years of a cop who quit while internal affairs was still investigating the 2015 complaint that he fondled a teenager in Michigan.

They also were investigating him over an incident last fall outside a Chicago bar that ended with two men needing hospital care after being beaten.

Elkins, who hung up on a reporter, hasn’t been charged in the beating, though, according to Sun-Times sources, he remains under investigation by the Cook County state’s attorney’s office. He also has been sued filed by the men who were beaten.

In 2016, Elkins was charged in the Michigan case with criminal sexual conduct, assault and “jostling,” a disorderly conduct offense. The sex charge was a misdemeanor but still could have sent him to prison for as much as two years. It was dropped after several months when Elkins pleaded guilty to lesser charges, avoiding prison and having to register as a sex offender.

A source told the Sun-Times that the internal affairs investigation of the Michigan incident had dragged on for years because investigators forgot about it. They didn’t interview Elkins until last year, after reporters asked about the case. A police spokesman has said there was no intentional delay. 

While under investigation in that case, Elkins was placed on desk duty, where he spent more than three years. During that time, he was paid more than $100,000 a year, which counted toward his pension service credits, records show.

But he’s not getting any pension credits for nearly 12 months he spent on “personal leave” in 2003 and 2004 while defending himself against a criminal charge that he sexually abused a male Amundsen High School student while working security there in addition to his police job. He went to trial and was found not guilty.

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A Cook County judge has signed off on the largest settlement the Chicago Public Schools system has paid in years — $4 million to the family of a special education student who drowned in Kennedy High School’s swimming pool.

And CPS has just paid more than $100,000 in back pay to a special ed. teacher who lost his job after, he says, repeatedly sounding the alarm that the Southwest Side school was violating federal rules regarding special education students.

In the months before Rosario Israel Gomez, a 14-year-old freshman with autism, drowned in the deep end of Kennedy’s pool in January 2017 despite the presence of six adults, Cyrous Hashemian says he alerted CPS officials that Kennedy was: cutting corners on federally mandated meetings to determine the needs of special ed students; wrongly relying on long-term substitutes to work with them; and had someone who was hired as a special ed aide working instead as an office clerk.

CPS officials wouldn’t comment. They previously have said Hashemian was laid off in the summer of 2016 based on low performance ratings.

An independent arbitrator found that Kennedy’s administrators didn’t evaluate him correctly and awarded him back pay of about $116,000, plus his job back.

Hashemian, who continued to email warnings to CPS officials throughout the 2016-17 school year, decided not to return to the school system.

The teenager known as Israel died Jan. 25, 2017, after slipping into the deep end of the pool without anyone noticing. He couldn’t swim and was supposed to have had someone watching him, a Chicago Sun-Times / Better Government Association investigation published in September 2017 found.

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CPS officials fired three school employees: a lifeguard found to have brushed off students’ warnings that someone was at the bottom of the pool, a gym teacher who was on his computer at the time and a substitute aide who didn’t see the boy enter the water.

Israel’s mother Yolanda Juarez filed a wrongful-death lawsuit. Cook County Circuit Judge James O’Hara approved CPS’ $4 million settlement earlier this month.

CPS officials wouldn’t discuss the deal, which the Chicago Board of Education approved last month, saying it needs to be approved by a probate judge.

Schools officials refused for nearly two years to release records of their investigation of Israel’s death. They did so only after the BGA sued and his mother said she wanted them made public, saying, “They failed my son . . . . And they don’t want this to get out.”

Lauren FitzPatrick is a Sun-Times reporter. Katie Drews is a reporter for the Better Government Association.

Click here to read the Sun-Times / BGA September 2017 investigation.