Ald. Walter Burnett Jr. (27th) can’t find any paperwork regarding $100,000 in unaccounted for campaign contributions because the records were destroyed in a “catastrophic flood” more than 20 years ago, his lawyer has told the Illinois State Board of Elections.
But William J. Cadigan, who chairs the state elections board, said the letter from Burnett attorney Michael J. Kasper “doesn’t ultimately resolve the issue: Where are the funds?”
Cadigan’s comment came Wednesday as the elections board discussed whether to ask either the Illinois attorney general’s office or the Cook County state’s attorney’s office to investigate the missing money. Instead, the elections board told staff members to continue what’s now been an eight-month investigation aiming to answer this:
What happened with $375,000 in campaign contributions that Burnett’s campaign fund has reported putting into investment accounts at banks since 1999?
Political candidates in Illinois are required to report the money they get in campaign contributions and to say what’s done with that money.
Despite being required to update state elections officials on what’s happening with the money, at some point over a yearslong span, Burnett’s campaign fund stopped making any mention of $300,000 of the contributions in his required campaign finance reports, the Sun-Times reported in November.
“Making sense of the committee’s investment reporting has been challenging because the investments cover a range of more than 23 years,” according to a report by Tim Newman, the elections board’s director of campaign disclosure. “The problems with the committee’s investment reporting did not come to light until late last year when a Chicago Sun-Times reporter began digging into the committee’s reports.”
In February, Burnett’s campaign report “submitter” General McArthur III filed amended campaign finance reports for the past six years, in which he told the state board the campaign money that was put into bank investment accounts totaled $400,000.
Burnett still couldn’t account for $165,000 of that. McArthur reported on the alderman’s behalf that $65,000 of the bank investment accounts got cashed out, then deposited back into the campaign fund. But according to elections officials, there’s no evidence this was done.
Burnett’s campaign hasn’t offered a definitive explanation regarding what happened with two $50,000 certificates of deposits, where the campaign previously reported it put $100,000 of the money. One of those CDs was at Broadway Bank, which federal regulators shut down in 2010, and another at Cole Taylor Bank, which later was taken over by another bank.
In a letter Monday to the elections board, Kasper said records regarding those CDs were destroyed when Burnett’s campaign office “experienced a catastrophic flood in 2001,” and he said the banks that took over Broadway Bank and Cole Taylor Bank don’t have any records regarding that money.
