Former City Council colleagues credit judge with striking right balance for Burke

The day in December Ed Burke was convicted on federal corruption charges, there was sadness and pity from most of his former City Council colleagues.

That’s because there is genuine affection, admiration and respect for the former Finance Committee chairman who mentored far more colleagues than he bullied during his record 54-year reign.

Fellow alderpersons not only feared Ed Burke, they also liked him. He was generous with his time and advice, his campaign war chest, and his vast knowledge and network of government contacts. When a colleague needed help with legislation, Ed Burke helped to draft it or co-sponsored it with them.

He loaned Finance Committee staffers to colleagues or gave them money to hire additional workers, and used his $2 million-plus committee budget to ride to the rescue of colleagues in legal trouble.

After Burke on Monday was handed the two-year sentence that may spare him from dying behind bars, the prevailing emotion among his present and former colleagues was relief.

Most said U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall had found the appropriate balance between discouraging the political corruption undermining voter confidence and the mercy Burke earned from his many acts of kindness.

“Given Alderman Burke’s age and health issues, the $2 million fine plus two years in prison and then supervised release after that sends a clear signal, as Judge Kendall noted, that pay-to-play politics can’t be tolerated,” said Ald. Matt Martin (47th), chair of the Council’s Ethics Committee.

“Ald. Burke acknowledged the consequences of his actions, was contrite. … It’s appropriate for the court to take those factors into account into account. … Spending time in prison is a very, very serious thing. ”

Former Ald. Roderick Sawyer (6th) said Burke, a longtime family friend, “helped a thousand times more people than he may have intimidated.”

Sawyer’s father, Eugene Sawyer served on the Council before becoming acting mayor after the death of Harold Washington. Burke and Sawyer were “buddies” who “talked all the time." When Eugene Sawyer was on his death bed, Burke visited his hospital room every day.

The younger Sawyer considers Burke a “good guy who made a mistake. … It happens to a lot of people,” he said.

Burke turns 81 in December, and “two years is a real sentence for someone at that advanced age," Sawyer said, though he acknowledged "I can’t say it’s stiff."

Sawyer said he appreciated that Burke said he accepted responsibility for his actions.

"He’s going to do his time and I’m hoping that he’ll come out to be a better person. ... I’m not gonna be a person who abandons him in his time of trouble.”

Sentence ‘could have been a lot worse’

Former Ald. Howard Brookins (21st) said Burke has been “kind to me” and he'd rather not “see him go to prison at all."

Still, the sentence “could have been a lot worse," he said. “Judges are put in a position where they feel that they have to do something. … It is not unreasonable. It’s not outrageous. … And I don’t think that’s a life sentence for his age."

Despite the ignominious ending of Burke's storied career, Brookins said his former 14th Ward colleague would be remembered for his “body of work” and the “solid advice he gave me, like stop practicing law while I was in the City Council."

And for one more thing.

"He’ll be remembered as a kind and generous person” whose biggest mistake was “staying in City Council one term too long,” Brookins added.

Brookins saved his anger for former Aldermen-turned-FBI mole Danny Solis (25th), who agreed to wear a wire on Burke to save his neck because he faced his own potential federal charges. Brookins also criticized federal prosecutors who chose to use Solis as bait to snare the man they viewed as the biggest fish of all.

The Burke captured on the Solis wire — suggesting a recalcitrant businessman “go f--- themselves” — comes off more like a mobster than the pinstriped, genteel charmer who dazzled colleagues with his wit, musical talents and encyclopedic knowledge of Chicago history.

“What Danny did to Ed Burke just seems to be particularly egregious,” Brookins said. “I don’t know how you befriend somebody, get in their graces and then do something like that. Essentially setting him up."

The only present or former alderperson openly critical of the two-year sentence was retired Ald. Michele Smith (43rd), a former federal prosecutor who championed a host of Burke-targeted reforms while chairing the City Council’s Committee on Ethics and Government Oversight.

‘He’s not Robin Hood. He’s a felon’

Smith has said she made it a point to avoid Burke after his “voice dropped and he told me something that he could only have known if he had read my divorce file” at their first and only private meeting.

“Two years? ... Two years in jail for a lifetime of shady deals and corruption seems insufficient,” Smith said, discounting all the letters touting Burke's good works. “He’s not Robin Hood. He’s a felon. .”

In sentencing Burke, Kendall said she wanted to send a message of deterrence to elected officials who have seemed deaf to the parade of prior convictions.

But Smith said she’s not at all certain the sentence will be a deterrent for a politician she called “an old-fashioned embodiment of the old Chicago Way that, I hope, will be behind us.”

Throughout his record 54-year Council tenure, Burke was known for his arrogance and pomposity.

Humility was not part of the vocabulary for the man who relished being called “Mr. Chairman” and loved being squired around in a chauffeur-driven limousine accompanied by present and former Chicago police officers who doubled as his bodyguards and valets.

The first time Burke demonstrated humility in public was at his sentencing, when he read a statement: “I’ve been blessed with a great career. I’m sorry to see that career end like this. The blame for this is mine and mine alone.”

Regrets, he admits a few

Burke said he regretted the pain he has caused his family and friends.

“He was a very proud man. I’m sure it was difficult for him to admit wrongdoing. But the specter of [a possible] 10 years in jail forces even the most prideful of us to examine our lives,” said former Ald. Joe Moore (49th).

But as for the long-term impact of Burke’s two-year sentence, Moore said, “As long as people think they can get away with doing bad stuff, there’s only so much of a deterrent you can provide. Look at the history of the last 50 years and then some of aldermen and state legislators and governors being convicted and sent to jail. There are still people who try to push the envelope and break the law.”

Ed Burke was perhaps the biggest among them.

“I will remember him as a very complicated man. Someone who had the capacity to do great good for people and one who also at the same time succumbed to greed and a lust for power … and didn’t always listen to the better angels,” Moore said.

“Very smart people can rationalize anything."