As Chicago’s ward remap battle rages on, attorneys and consultants are cashing in
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Negotiations between Black and Latino aldermen over redrawing Chicago’s ward boundaries have resulted in more performative name-calling than compromises, but the city’s cash register keeps ringing for private specialists hired by each side.
Powerful attorneys, map consultants and others working for the City Council’s Black and Latino caucuses, as well as the council Rules Committee that is supposed to be mediating the debate, have so far billed Chicagoans more than $720,000, according to invoices the Tribune received from the city through an open records request.
That dollar figure will undoubtedly get bigger because some consultants and attorneys have only billed through the end of 2021. But the remap cost to taxpayers may skyrocket. If at least 41 aldermen can’t agree on a map by mid-May, Chicago voters could be asked to choose a map in a ballot referendum as part of the June 28 primary election. The last time a map referendum happened, it spurred a lawsuit that cost $20 million.
The possibility of a referendum became more real last week when 33 aldermen, among them 19 Black council members who are trying to protect the votes they have on the council, filed paperwork to have their proposed map included as a referendum question. The Latino coalition, which is looking to expand its power by drawing boundaries that would add more Latino-majority wards, did the same a few months ago.
So far, the two sides have bickered more than negotiated. Last fall, Northwest Side Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, 35th, accused Rules Committee Chair Ald. Michelle Harris, 8th, of “gaslighting” Latinos when she said they weren’t negotiating in good faith, while earlier this year Harris said some Latino aldermen were “getting hoodwinked” by their colleagues who are convincing them they can win a citywide ballot referendum on the maps.
The battle between the two caucuses echoes previous dust-ups that have occurred during the once-a-decade ward remap process, which on the surface may seem of interest to only political insiders yet has real-world implications for Chicago’s 2.7 million residents. Anyone who has tried to build support for a playground renovation near the borders of several wards or attempted to get help dealing with a problem building that sits in a ward represented by a neighboring alderman can attest to the importance of where those lines get drawn.
Inside the City Council, the alliances also have significant consequences, with remap decisions tilting the scale for which aldermen have more influence both within and outside their wards, including how hundreds of millions of local and federal tax dollars are allocated.
And in order to win, both sides have sought the assistance of high-powered attorneys with deep ties to some of Chicago’s biggest power brokers. That includes former Mayors Richard M. Daley and Rahm Emanuel and former Speaker of the House Michael Madigan, who was recently indicted on federal racketeering charges tied to the Commonwealth Edison bribes-for-favors scandal.
Topping the list is attorney Michael Kasper, who has been working for the council’s Rules Committee. The committee has proposed a map supported by 33 aldermen, including most of the Black Caucus and many white aldermen. On the other side, representing the Latino Caucus coalition, are attorneys Victor Reyes and Burt Odelson.
Kasper — who, like the other attorneys, charges $295 an hour, the highest rate allowed for city contracts — billed the city $228,659 for map services he provided through the end of 2021, according to the invoices from the city’s Finance Department.
Kasper garnered a reputation as the election enforcer for Madigan while Madigan was speaker and also while he headed the Democratic Party of Illinois. Kasper also helped defend Emanuel in a 2010 residency challenge when Emanuel left the White House before he ran for Chicago mayor.
Opposing Kasper, just as he did 12 years ago when he led the unsuccessful charge to boot Emanuel off the ballot in that residency case, is veteran election attorney Odelson. He has turned in invoices related to the map process totaling $146,847 for work through last November, according to the city.
Joining Odelson on the Latino Caucus payroll is Reyes’ law firm, Reyes Kurson, which billed the city $146,219 for remap work from late May 2021 to the end of November, according to the invoices.
Reyes’ ties go in several directions. He has been mentioned in the legal case against Madigan, with federal investigators alleging an associate of the powerful House speaker interceded with ComEd to restore legal work with Reyes’ Madigan-favored law firm that the utility sought to reduce. Reyes has not been charged.
Reyes also was the leader of the Hispanic Democratic Organization, the Daley-backed patronage army that fell from power following a federal investigation into HDO members and others getting city jobs in exchange for political work.
Others being paid include attorney Homero Tristan, working for the Latino Caucus, who has billed the city $46,933, and attorney Clinton Davis, representing the Black Caucus, who has invoiced for $69,913 so far.
BoycePossley, a public relations firm representing the Rules Committee, has billed $28,000, while a Michigan redistricting adviser charged the city $49,833 last year for work he said he did with the Black Caucus to help them ensure proposed ward boundaries were fair and complied with the federal Voting Rights Act. Interpreters and court reporters have billed smaller amounts over the past several months, according to records.
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Latino Caucus Chair Ald. Gilbert Villegas, 36th, defended the cost of the Latino Caucus lawyers.
“Voting rights are under attack, in Washington and across the U.S.,” he said. “I won’t put a price on making sure people in this city have the best chance possible to make sure their votes count.”
Villegas, who’s running for Congress to represent a new district on the Northwest Side and nearby suburbs that was designed to give Illinois’ growing Latino population a chance to send another representative to Washington, has repeatedly hammered Kasper’s history with Madigan, and questioned his motives in the remap process.
“They’ve sought to sow divisions in the council, and it has worked. (Kasper) has absolutely been behind that,” Villegas said.
Harris countered that Kasper is simply trying to help aldermen agree on a map, and said supporters of the Latino Caucus map and their lawyers have largely refused to take part in that process. And she noted Reyes is the one whose firm appeared as “Law Firm A” in the Madigan indictment, which the Tribune has also reported.
“How can they talk so much, when they hired ‘Lawyer A’?” Harris asked. “They’re paying a lot of money to ‘Lawyer A’ in the indictment. If I was him, I would tell everyone to be quiet about talking about other people, and I would want to be operating quietly in the background.”
The remap fight has dragged on since the early fall, highlighting and deepening the conflicts that have long simmered among aldermen of different ethnicities.
Some Latino aldermen are still smarting from the remap following the 2010 census, believing they should have gotten more majority-Latino wards then.
Black aldermen argue the Latinos are in danger of overextending themselves by creating more Latino wards than they can consistently win.
The argument has taken on a new dimension in the new year, as the two sides can’t even agree on how many Latino-majority wards the council created when it finally passed the last map in early 2012 with the bare minimum 41 votes needed to preempt a referendum.
The Latino caucus says it was 14 wards then, meaning the Black Caucus’ current offer of 14 Latino-majority wards doesn’t improve their situation on the council after the census found that in the last 10 years Latinos surpassed Blacks as Chicago’s biggest minority population. Black council veterans say the Latino Caucus got 13 wards last time.
While the Rules Committee map proposal has been endorsed by 33 aldermen, if they can’t reach the 41-aldermanic threshold the issue will go to a referendum question. If the situation plays out like it did 30 years ago and spurs a lawsuit, Harris has estimated that cost could reach up to $40 million this time around.
The city set aside $2 million in the 2022 budget to pay for costs associated with the remap.
“It’s an awful lot of money. It’s a shame we’re footing the bill for the lawyers,” Harris said. “I wish we could get some of our colleagues to sit down and reach an agreement.”
