Everybody’s talking about how the $550,000 settlement in the Mammygate case is going to hurt Mayor Funkhouser’s bid for reelection. No doubt that’s true.

But what about the mayoral candidate whose actions have cost over a million – per year?

Mayoral contender Mike Burke is vice president of a law firm that represented the developer on a project that received more than $26 million in city funds that were backed by bonds. Those bonds were supposed to be repaid with “new” tax revenue generated by the project, as part of Tax-Increment Financing, or TIF. But the project was a complete bust. It brings in zilch. And now the city has to repay those bonds for 20 years at a little more than a million per.

What’s more, Burke’s firm, King Hershey, was eligible to receive $873,722 of that public money for helping put the deal together, according to documents that are readily available online.

“This is going to be his Waterloo,” one political insider told me recently. “Even people who support him for mayor are worried about how this will affect him.”

I asked Burke about all this last week. Before I go into his responses, I have to confess up front that I genuinely like him. Back when I was a reporter at The Pitch, he was one of the few establishment types who would talk to me with any kind of candor. He was the same when we reconnected this time around. Regarding this particular project, officially known as Prospect North, he said, “In a nutshell, the developer died.”

And while that’s true – the original developer did indeed die shortly after the public funding of the plan was approved, at the beginning of last decade – it doesn’t tell the whole story.

When the deal was first approved, it was for much less public money and no city-backed bonds. The sheer magnitude of the public funding ($26 million) and the bond backing came after the developer died.

And, just to add a little twist – it wasn’t Burke’s client that pushed to put the city in the position it’s in now, with a big bill for an economic development project that brought no economic development. It was the City Council, according to the City Hallers I’ve talked with.

What happened was that a group of Council members from three different districts banded together to float tens of millions in bonds for capital improvement projects in their districts – one for Prospect North, which is near Maplewoods Community College up north; the Zona Rosa shopping center; and a development area down around 75th and Prospect.

But still, all’s fair in politics, right?

A 30-second negative campaign commercial would likely ignore the nuances and go right for the sensational: Mike Burke; $26 million flop; $1 million a year; $873,722 legal bill.

Kinda makes those cries of Waterloo seem prescient.

For his part, Burke dismisses them: “It’s kind of hard to answer anonymous comments. Maybe those same people are pushing other candidates.”

He adds: “A lot of people want to paint me as ‘Mr. Development Lawyer’ and ‘Mr. TIF.’ This was the only TIF project I worked on.”

That might be true. Burke’s expertise is more in providing counsel for government agencies; in fact, he’s the attorney for the Port Authority.

But other attorneys in his firm have worked for developers seeking TIFs, and apparently continue to do so.

I recently made a Sunshine Law request for all emails between Burke and city officials, and I found several from November of this year in which an attorney from Burke’s firm wrote – in messages in which Burke himself was CC’d – that they were representing the developers of a project called Lucas Place, and “we are looking at proceeding with tax abatement through the city.”

“You represent your client to the best of your ability,” Burke told me. “That’s your role as a lawyer. As mayor, my intent will be to represent the city to the best of my ability.” So, he says he intends to resign from his position at King Hershey if he wins the election.

Again, I have to throw in some personal experience here. About five years ago, the development crowd was pushing real hard to spend some general bond money on downtown development projects instead of putting it into the citywide capital improvements fund. Burke was chair of the committee that divvies out those funds, and I watched him testify in opposition to the downtowners.

Similarly, he tells me he testified against using capital improvement funds for the Zona Rosa development. “I was beaten down in Planning and Zoning,” Burke says.

Ironically, the money to pay for the bonds used in the Prospect North project (Burke’s supposed Waterloo) are taken directly out of that citywide fund – an arrangement that was made when he was chair of that fund’s committee. But since it happened at the City Council level, and with at least the tacit backing of then-Mayor Kay Barnes, Burke had no real say in the matter.

Still, in fairness, I have to assume that if the city made good on the budgeted $873,722 in legal fees, the good folks at King Hershey happily deposited those checks.

For his part, Burke is confident that the next election for mayor – which he describes as “the most important in our lifetime” – will not be about line items on a deal that went bust. He insists the debate will be about the candidate who has the best vision for the city.

“We’ve taken some hits in terms of how people feel about city government,” he told me. “There’s great dissatisfaction with City Hall right now. But I think those things can be turned around.”