Chicago

The education of Jane Byrne

MAYOR JANE BYRNE has now passed the midpoint of her four-year term as the City of Chicago's chief executive. Like all elected politicians, her eyes are fixed on the next election. Many, if not most, of her exertions from now until the 1983 election will be directed toward winning a second term.

Mayor Byrne has undergone something of a metamorphosis over the past two-and-one-half years as Chicago's mayor. She came to the mayoralty essentially as a City Hall politician whose adminsitrative background was limited to a position as the commissioner of a minor city department. She had no involvement in major public policy issues and decisions during the Daley years and had little experience with the city's budgetary requirements or processes. She had, however, a keen intelligence, a capacity to learn quickly, and a flair for seizing on issues and dramatizing them for the media.

Byrne also had had almost no experience in dealing with governors and the General Assembly in Springfield, or with presidents, senators and congressmen in Washington. She had some understanding of and familiarity with Chicago's City Council, but little experience in formulating policies and guiding them through that body. The major assets she brought to office — intelligence and talent in dealing with the media — coupled with the unshakable conviction of one of Eric Hoffer's "True Believers" in the purity of her cause and mission led to the media dubbing her "Jane of Arc." The appellation, gained in the early months of her term, was indicative of the media's recognition of that deep-seated characteristic in Chicago's first lady mayor.

Although Mayor Byrne has changed somewhat in style and substance, she has remained true to her ideals and goals. She was burned politically in her initial dealings with Gov. James R. Thompson and his Republican cohorts in Springfield. In the 1979 transportation deal, she gave up Mayor Richard J. Daley's long-planned Crosstown Expressway and Franklin Street feeder subway system in return for an ephemeral $8 billion package which was supposed to solve Chicago's public transportation problems permanently, as well as Thompson's road program; the plan collapsed. The money from Washington has not materialized. In the same deal, she traded away a state subsidy for the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) for an extra local sales tax in Chicago and its suburbs. The city is still without adequate transportation funds. In the 1980 Chicago school financial crisis, she chose to have the city assume almost the entire burden of attempting to guarantee the school system's financial stability. Thompson deftly passed her the buck.

Twice burned, Byrne rejected Thompson's importunities and has refused to make a deal in the current CTA crisis. She has chosen to go it alone in her attempts to salvage the CTA from financial disaster, and she seems, at least temporarily, to have outmaneuvered Thompson. The governor has received the brunt of the blame from both Chicagoans and suburbanites.

Coming over the horizon like ghosts returning to a favorite haunt are the financial difficulties of Chicago's schools, which Gov. Thompson has indicated a singular lack of interest in laying to rest. In addition, there may be serious legal difficulties in Byrne's projected financing and control package for the CTA.

There is, of course, some political advantage for Byrne, at least on a short-term basis, in taking over the CTA; there would be an estimated $100 million annual income from the new taxes on services, which would shore up the city's financial status, under the guise of possibly using some of that money initially to rescue the be-leagured CTA. But the whole package could turn out to be a house of cards: the component parts may fold up in lawsuits and an uncertain bond market. And there is always the possibility of a taxpayer revolt in the city.

Jane Byrne has changed. In attempting to deal with the city's problems and in trying to formulate public policies, she has been transformed from a City Hall politician to the mayor of the nation's second-largest city. And she has developed some skills in dealing with Thompson and Springfield. But there are still some large questions to be answered about the feasibility of her solutions, the merit of her substantive program and the ability of her team.

September 1981 | Illinois Issues | 37