Corporation counsel Mara Georges works for Chicago’s taxpayers, of course. It’s pretty to think that inside City Hall keeping us happy is everybody’s job number one.
The municipal code also directs the corporation counsel to “protect the rights and interests of the city in all actions, suits and proceedings brought by or against it or any city officer, board or department.” That means Georges works for the police, to name the department whose chestnuts most frequently need to be pulled out of the fire.
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“She has this notion she’s the mayor’s lawyer,” says 49th Ward alderman Joe Moore.
On July 2 Lefkow lifted her protective order. She didn’t order either side to make the list public; she simply said they could do so if they wanted to. The city didn’t want to release the names, and Bond’s lawyer, Craig Futterman, wasn’t given an opportunity to: Georges got a brief stay from Lefkow to give the city time to file an appeal, and then a longer stay from the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals when it took up the matter.
Georges replied on September 11. “These documents are the subject of a pending appeal that seeks to maintain their confidentiality,” she explained. “And we wish to avoid any possibility that allowing them to be reviewed would affect that appeal. I hope you understand that I will, therefore, be unable to fulfill your request.”
The question came around to George Yamin, the attorney Georges had sent to the hearing to represent the city, and the transcript suggests what trouble he had shaping a reply. “You know, to represent the City of Chicago it is very ambiguous to say who are—you know, who wants—who our actual clients are. And I think it should be—we have—the relief we have asked for is not unreasonable.”
Georges attended the October 25 hearing before Lefkow, and afterward she held an impromptu news conference in the lobby of the Dirksen Building. She was asked about all those hats she wears. “It’s a balancing act,” she allowed. She was asked why she wasn’t representing the aldermen, and she said they’d chosen outside counsel—as though they’d had their chance with her but didn’t take it.
