Retire from Chicago politics in style.
Keep your campaign contributions.
Mayor Daley isn’t the only elected official who could retire from Chicago city government and take a pile of money in campaign cash with him.
Twenty-two of the city’s 50 aldermen also would be eligible, when they retire, to keep some or all of their campaign funds, a Chicago Sun-Times review finds. The amounts they could walk away from office with range from as little as $629 to $2.4 million.
When he retires next year, Daley can keep nearly $1.5 million or, if he chooses, do whatever he wants with the money, the Sun-Times has reported.
The amount of campaign money that the aldermen could keep is largely a matter of whether they took office — and took in campaign contributions — before June 30, 1998.
An Illinois law enacted that year barred state and local officials from converting campaign funds to personal use but also left an exception: Anyone who had money in their campaign accounts as of the 1998 date could keep the amount they had in the bank then whenever they eventually might retire.
Like Daley, four aldermen have announced they won’t run for re-election next year.
Too bad for those of us who contributed before 1998.
The numbers are incredible.