Last month Bill Beavers was found guilty of using his campaign funds as a personal piggy bank – of plunking down vast amounts of cash at slot machines and not reporting it as income. Until that conviction in federal court, the former South Side alderman and Cook County commissioner wasn’t regarded so much a crook as a character.
After all, he was as “old school” as they come, favoring patronage and nepotism, and reveling in backroom deals and salty language.
But while some in the media have treated the allegations against Beavers lightly, the self-described “hog with the big nuts” was a heavy when it came to furthering cynicism of local government and politics.
In other words, he ill-served the public no matter how you look at things.
In that vain, two words come to mind: Todd Stroger.
We shouldn’t forget that Beavers was instrumental in getting him on the ballot for Cook County Board president, and then elected. And Todd Stroger, if you may recall, was perhaps the biggest train wreck local government has ever seen.
In way over his head, he seemingly bumbled at every turn, raising taxes defiantly, and bloating his budget and workforce to serve his own self-interests.
Beavers was always there, to support Stroger, to force through his agenda, to defend.
In this most recent dilemma for Beavers, he also was there to, in effect, defend Cook County Commissioner John Daley, the ex-mayor’s brother. The feds supposedly tried to squeeze Beavers into wearing a wire on John Daley, and Beavers said he proudly refused. We’re not saying John Daley did something illegal, but if the FBI thinks he might have, how “stand up” is it to decline helping out?
Getting back to Beavers’ campaign spending habits, another thing left largely unsaid is how wasteful he was.
RELATED STORY: Grand Jury Investigating Cook County Commissioner William Beavers
Beavers reportedly blew almost $500,000 at slot machines over several years (mostly in Indiana, so the money didn’t even stay in Illinois.)
Think of how much good that money could have done in his own ward, where there’s no shortage of poverty, crime and despair.
A lot of politicians use their campaign funds to help fundraising efforts by churches and community groups in their areas. Beavers has done some of this, but clearly not enough.
Or perhaps he could have spent less time at casinos and more in service of his now-former constituents.
That would have been a better bet, and one that probably wouldn’t have landed him in federal court and, soon enough, prison.
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