Chicago
By MILTON RAKOVE

Byrne's Chicago: shakedown or breakdown?

ONE YEAR after Jane Byrne's ascension to the mayoralty of Chicago, a steadily evolving series of financial and public policy crises have plagued the city that once worked, but which no longer seems to be working so well. A strike of CTA workers, a teachers' strike and the first firemen's strike in Chicago's history have followed each other in rapid succession. The city's bond ratings have been lowered twice by the rating services, taxes have been raised and a $29 million tax levied by the city council by mistake has been kept by Mayor Byrne to "enrich" the city's coffers. The Chicago Board of Education, in the most severe financial crisis in its history, faces continuing deep financial problems for the long term. And the threat of fiscal deterioration looms large over other local governing bodies such as the Metropolitan Sanitary District, the Chicago Park District and, indeed, possibly the City of Chicago itself.

Within the city government, the Office of the Mayor, the bureacracy and the city council have all been in a state of flux and a condition of uncertainty. In the first year of her administration, Byrne has had two deputy mayors and three press secretaries, has fired her budget director and director of revenue, lost the city comptroller through resignation, replaced her appointed patronage chief, and, is about to lose her cheif legal adviser to the Circuit Court.

At the top level of the city bureaucracy, Mayor Byrne has now replaced all but two of the department heads left over from the Daley/Bilandic era. Those two are Personnel Director Charles Pounian and Fire Commissioner Richard Albrecht, who was a late appointee of the Bilandic administration. During this past year, the city has had four police superintendents and three commissioners of the Department of Streets and Sanitation. There have also been significant changes at the second and third levels of the bureaucracy, with a major shifting of personnel, as well as a number of firings as a consequence of Byrne's feud with ward committeemen, such as state Sen. Richard M. Daley and Cook County Assessor Thomas Hynes, and because of her distrust of the bureaucrats who worked for Mayor Michael Bilandic.

Mayor Byrne's inner circle of advisers seems to consist of her husband and newly appointed press secretary Jay McMullen, former Chicago Tribune reporter William Griffin and former state Rep. Michael Brady — none of whom have had any significant administrative or policy formulating experience; Chicago Housing Authority Chairman Charles Swibel, a shadowy figure and real estate developer; and (as rumor has it) First Ward Committeeman John D'Arco.

There has been a reorganization of some departments and the creation of some new ones — investigation, housing and neighborhoods.

The city council is in a state of abeyance, performing in its normal undistinguished manner, behaving as a ratifying assembly rather than as a legislative body, taking orders from the mayor and her councilmanic leaders, Aldermen Wilson Frost, Edward Vrdolyak and Edward Burke. The liberal independents in the council are back in their accustomed role of opposition after an early but brief flirtation with Mayor Byrne, and the black aldermen are still somewhat confused as to whether they should remain silent and quiescent or represent their black constituents' more vocal leaders who now are generally opposed to Mayor Byrne's policies.

Out in the community itself, the major powerful economic elements in Chicago's body politic are also operating in a state of abeyance, somewhat confused about Byrne's objectives and uncertain of her ability to carry them out. The bankers and business leaders are holding back, cognizant of their responsibilities to their depositors and stockholders, concerned about the city's economic and financial status, and hoping that the administration will stabilize itself and provide the leadership the city needs. The labor unions are convinced that the handshake relationship of the Daley/Bilandic era is over, and they will all be demanding written contracts to protect their interests. Whether the city government can pacify them without losing control of its employees and creating serious fiscal problems is still a moot question.

In other words, what Mayor Byrne has done in this first year in office has been to bring down the political-governmental-private interest group relationships that existed in Chicago for almost a quarter of a century under Mayor Richard J. Daley, and were continued and sustained by Mayor Bilandic. But she has not yet replaced it with an effectively functioning system of her own. Her critics believe that she cannot and will not be able to do that. Her protagonists argue that now that she has replaced the old with her own "something new" that she will move forward on that front for the next three years. The greater majority of the citizenry are unsure of the future — aware that things have changed and uncertain of what those changes mean for them.

Who is right. Mayor Byrne's critics or her protagonists?

If the past year's turmoil continues, the prospects for stability and progress in the city are bleak. If Byrne's supporters are right, that the old was inadequate for the present and the future, and that her first year was the necessary prelude for creating the new in Chicago, the city could stabilize again under the Byrne regime. That argument is not supported by the history of major political and governmental change. Such change normally takes place in the early days of a new administration before the countervailing, conservative forces in a body politic assert themselves to resist change and protect their prerogatives. But Byrne is not and has never been the normal politician.

April 1980/Illinois Issues/33