Emanuel residency may soon be determined

CHICAGO, Dec. 13 (UPI) -- Paperwork to establish Rahm Emanuel's Illinois residency in his effort to become mayor of Chicago is complicating the process, officials said.

Emanuel's lawyers filed hundreds of pages of documents ahead of a hearing Monday to prove he is eligible to run for mayor, the Chicago Tribune reported.

More than two dozen objections to Emanuel's residency have been voiced, and he has also filed an amended 2009 income tax form stating he is a resident of Illinois.

On his original 2009 Illinois tax forms, Emanuel, formerly President Obama's chief of staff and an ex-congressman from the state, checked the box "part-time resident," noting he lived in Chicago through June 2009.

The amended return is dated the same day the first formal objections against Emanuel's residency were filed with Chicago election officials, the report said.

In the tax form, Emanuel said he and his wife continued to pay Illinois taxes last year and that the "amended return makes clear that we were full-year residents of Illinois in 2009 and it reports all of our income."

The primary lawyer for those contesting Emanuel's residency, Burt Odelson, said he doesn't "know what to make" of the timing behind the amended tax filing.

Emanuel's lawyers said the former congressman always intended to return to Chicago, and said documents provided to the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners Saturday prove he meets the residency requirement, the newspaper said.