Veteran Far South Side Ald. Carrie Austin has contracted the coronavirus, she announced Monday.
In a letter on her 34th Ward website, Austin said she has been “stricken by COVID-19? and is “currently progressing toward full recovery.”
Austin, who was appointed by then-Mayor Richard M. Daley to the City Council in 1994 to succeed her husband after his death, did not return calls seeking comment about her diagnosis.
Currently the council’s longest-serving Black alderman, Austin did not take part in the City Council meeting last month. She is Chicago’s first elected city official to announce having gotten the virus.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Monday tweeted out her support: “Keeping Alderman Carrie Austin and the rest of her family in my prayers. Alderman Austin is a fighter and I’m hoping for her to have a swift recovery.”
FBI agents raided Austin’s Far South Side ward office in June. According to a subpoena obtained by the Chicago Tribune, federal agents had been looking into the circumstances surrounding the construction and sale of a West Pullman home to Austin by a developer in the ward.
Austin, 71, has not been charged with wrongdoing.
For years under Daley and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Austin chaired the powerful City Council Budget Committee. Lightfoot removed her from that post after she took office last year, but created a new Committee on Contracting Oversight and Equity and put her in charge of that.
Twitter @_johnbyrne