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A VIEW FROM THE SUBURBS

The battle over Meigs
sparks some strange alliances

by Madeleine Doubek

It was one of those images that causes a double take. There, on the television screen, was the wood- paneled press conference room in Chicago's City Hall. Mayor Richard M. Daley was blathering on about Meigs Field. Nothing new there. What caused my head to jerk back was the picture of prominent suburban mayors standing beside him.

Suburban officials appear to have tossed aside their capital with the governor by supporting Chicago's mayor.

What was going on here? There, before a herd of hungry reporters, Buffalo Grove Village President Sidney Mathias and Palatine Village President Rita Mullins were saying how wrong it is for Gov. Jim Edgar to try to take from Daley the 91-acre lakefront airport he wants for a park. Municipal officials from the staunchly Republican suburbs were siding with the city Democrat against the Republican governor on a matter involving airports. It was stunning.

But Mathias and Mullins were not edging out on that limb alone. Mathias is president of the Northwest Municipal Conference, and all 25 of its members backed a resolution supporting Daley on grounds that local government leaders should determine the use of local land. The Illinois Municipal League agrees.

"We really don't want to get involved in a dispute between the mayor and the governor, nor do we take any public position as to whether the airport should remain open or closed," Mathias said after his appearance in Chicago. "The main issue as far as the conference is concerned is local control."

OK, local control. State government leaders, or federal government leaders for that matter, shouldn't be allowed to throw their weight around. So does that mean these mayors, some of whom represent noise-deafened neighbors of O'Hare International Airport, no longer want Edgar to help prevent Daley from building new runways at the state's premier airstrip?

Not exactly, Mathias says. "The difference is that this is wholly encircled by the city," Mathias says of Meigs. "It is not a regional airport." Some of the suburban leaders in the conference and the league were among those who stood with Edgar when he first ran in 1990, in large part because he promised to use his powers to block new O'Hare runways unless those suburban leaders agreed.

Sure, the public uses both Meigs and O'Hare and both are part of the state's transportation network, but likening the two is like comparing Main Street and the Edens Expressway. "I certainly think the state has a right to determine what goes on on the Edens Expressway," Mathias says. "I don't think the state has a right to determine what goes on on my street."

Palatine's Mullins, though, is among several municipal leaders in the Northwest suburbs who believe a bustling O'Hare must be preserved in order to preserve bustling suburbs. The state does have a role to play in getting involved in some issues of a local nature, Mullins says. State officials should dig in to concerns over school funding, landfills and waste disposal, telecommunications and cable television regulations, she says. But taking control of locally owned land is another matter.

Mullins sees no difference between Edgar determining the future of Meigs and the threat of a regional airport authority to govern O'Hare. To her, both are wrong. "Why is it any different? I don't want him to get involved in either one."

Some mayors in O'Hare's flight path may find Mullins' words blasphemy. But then, with their very public display of alliance with Daley, all of the municipal officials appear to have tossed aside any political capital they had accumulated with Edgar and his transportation department aides.

Mathias says he heard from Edgar's office after the news conference, but he "truly believes" the governor understands the municipal conference view.

Mullins, on the other hand, acknowledges the mayors may pay a price. "I've never had anybody stand up next to me and support me on anything from the Republican Party, though I support Republicans," says Mullins, who once angered fellow Republicans with a challenge to an incumbent GOP legislator.

"I feel it was the right thing to do," she says of her appearance alongside Daley. "If there is retribution in the future, I'm sorry for that, but I had to do what was right." 

Madeleine Doubek is political editor for the Daily Herald, a suburban metro newspaper. She has covered politics since 1988.

Illinois Issues January 1997 / 37