{"id":519856,"date":"2010-04-07T16:17:46","date_gmt":"2010-04-07T20:17:46","guid":{"rendered":"tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341c60fd53ef01347fb7532a970c"},"modified":"2010-04-07T16:17:46","modified_gmt":"2010-04-07T20:17:46","slug":"aldermen-spend-expense-accounts-on-cars-relatives-consultants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/519856","title":{"rendered":"Aldermen spend expense accounts on cars, relatives, consultants"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Posted by Tribune staff<\/em> at 3:15 p.m.<\/p>\n<p>While Chicago government and many of its residents struggled with a<br \/>\ntough economy, Chicago aldermen continued to pay relatives, public<br \/>\nrelations consultants and expensive car leases with their city expense<br \/>\naccounts, according to a Tribune examination of 2009 records.<br \/><\/br><br \/>\n<br \/><\/br><br \/>\nOne alderman <a href=\"http:\/\/articles.chicagotribune.com\/2009-08-21\/news\/0908200927_1_ald-rents-expense-account\">highlighted<br \/>\n last year by the Tribune<\/a> for paying rent to his family for a ward<br \/>\noffice said he is still looking for an alternate location. In the<br \/>\nmeantime, his family&#8217;s firm continues to receive taxpayer money.<br \/><\/br><br \/>\n<br \/><\/br><br \/>\nIn another case, more than $40,000 in rent payments was directed by a<br \/>\nnow convicted and ousted alderman to a company owned by a businessman<br \/>\ncharged with trying to bribe him.<br \/><\/br><br \/>\n<br \/><\/br><br \/>\nAlthough the city is trimming personnel and services to cope with<br \/>\ndeclining revenue, aldermen say they rely on the beefed-up expense<br \/>\naccounts to tend to ward needs. The accounts were more than doubled to<br \/>\n$73,280 per ward by Mayor Richard Daley and the City Council in 2008.<\/p>\n<p>To read more of the story, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chicagotribune.com\/news\/ct-met-chicago-aldermen-expenses-20100407,0,4066775.story\">please click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>To peruse the aldermanic database, <a href=\"http:\/\/councilexpenses.apps.chicagotribune.com\/\">please click here<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Posted by Tribune staff at 3:15 p.m. While Chicago government and many of its residents struggled with a tough economy, Chicago aldermen continued to pay relatives, public relations consultants and expensive car leases with their city expense accounts, according to a Tribune examination of 2009 records. One alderman highlighted last year by the Tribune for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3992,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-519856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3992"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519856\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}