The details of Isaac Carothers’s recent guilty plea—how the former alderman accepted about $40,000 in home improvements from a developer in return for pushing a zoning change through the City Council—have already been splashed across the front pages.
Initially the issue facing Mayor Daley and his planners was finding the best way to develop it. The owners, CMC Heartland LLP, wanted to change the zoning so they could put in a residential and commercial development, which would bring them the most money.
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If you’ve been following what TIF does, you understand that this essentially meant that any new property taxes raised within these boundaries would be sent into a bank account controlled primarily by Mayor Daley. In this case, he apparently intended to help subsidize the cost of developing factories and warehouses.
On May 11, 1999, the proposed TIF district came before the Community Development Commission, the board of mayoral appointees that signs off on new TIF districts and proposed projects within them. A planner for the city started the hearing by running through a history of the area, talking at length about how it once was home to industrial giants such as Archer Daniels Midland, Zenith Electronics, and other companies that had either relocated or closed.
But by 2004 he had changed his mind and was pressing to have the land rezoned so he could put a residential development on it.
On March 14, 2006, the CDC approved the deal. Carothers was on hand to praise it. This time around there was no grandiose talk of restoring the area’s industrial magnificence—no recollections about Archer Midland or Zenith or the great rail yards that had come and gone. The deal sailed on through to the City Council, which unanimously approved it on June 28, 2006. As the Sun-Times later noted, 14th Ward alderman and finance committee chairman Ed Burke didn’t recuse himself from the vote despite some potential conflicts of interest—his law firm had previously worked for Boender on at least 14 tax appeals and his wife, Illinois Supreme Court justice Anne Burke, had received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the developer. But Burke said there was no conflict since the TIF subsidy was technically going to the unions.
On Monday, February 1, more than ten years after the TIF district was created, Carothers pleaded guilty to bribery and tax fraud charges to get for a 28-month prison sentence. For those keeping track, he’s the 29th alderman to be convicted since 1972. His own father, former 28th Ward alderman William Carothers, was sentenced to three years in prison for trying to extract about $32,500 worth of remodeling work at his ward office from a contractor who needed city permits to work on an expansion of Bethany Hospital.
