former federal prosecutor Joseph Ferguson, who just this week went public with his attempt to audit the city’s costly workers compensation and duty-disability programs.

Workers comp is the exclusive fiefdom of The Most Powerful Alderman In The World, Ed Burke, who has held dominion over the 14th Ward on the city’s Southwest Side forever. He controls the city council’s all-powerful Finance Committee, an entity of government more impenetrable than the CIA. It is through that utterly opaque committee that he also controls the city’s $100-million-a-year workers comp program for civilian employees.

That’s something the Chicago Sun-Times took a hard look at five years ago, discovering that, based on the enormous sums we pay out in disability, a civilian city worker in Chicago surely must have the most dangerous job in America.

Imagine.

Add to that this month’s Sun-Times’ series on what appear to be disability abuses by some Chicago Police and Fire Department personnel and you can understand why Ferguson is so interested in how taxpayer money is being spent.

And why Burke’s workers comp database is so essential to understanding those costs. (By the way, does anyone else think it’s strange that an alderman and not the executive branch controls the data? Just asking.)

Back when he was running for mayor, Rahm Emanuel promised that if elected he would actually expand Ferguson’s jurisdiction.

He didn’t.

He also seemed intent on curbing Burke’s power.

He hasn’t.

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