Chicago city Alderman Tom Tunney has been outed for quietly keeping his restaurants open as secret Covid-19 refuges for his regular customers, in defiance of Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker’s ban on indoor dining.
After being exposed on Monday in a local blog called Second City Cop, Tunney admitted in a Chicago Sun-Times telephone interview that he had violated the governor’s order by secretly serving a few of his regular customers. “We have, on occasion, sat regular diners in the back of the restaurant,” he said. “It’s not OK. I made a mistake, and I’m owning up to it. I should not have sat regular customers in my restaurant whatsoever.”
Tunney hung up when pressed by the reporter on how many customers he had served. He later issued a statement, saying, “On a sporadic basis, we have allowed a very limited number of our regular diners to eat inside the restaurant while observing social-distancing and mask-wearing rules. This was an error in judgement and won’t happen again.”
BREAKING: Chicago Ald. Tom Tunney's restaurant, Ann Sather, was caught defying the indoor dining ban. "Someone ratted us out," an employee said. https://t.co/Ffiukg0vzg pic.twitter.com/eoD0zPcVqY
— Block Club Chicago (@BlockClubCHI) December 7, 2020
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