O'Hare: First battle in a long war?

By ROBERT J. McCLORY

O'Hare: First battle in a long war?

The changed balance of power between Chicago and the suburbs has been evident in Illinois' recent elections. McClory explores the changed demographic situation, citing the battle over expansion and noise of O 'Hare Airport as an example. Residents of communities near the airport want to halt expansion; the city of Chicago wants to plunge ahead. Party politics and the Washington-Vrdolyak power struggle have all played a part in reaching the present stalemate, but the situation is not stable nor is the issue settled.

THE SKIES are not so friendly around Chicago's O'Hare Airport these days. The world's busiest airport has become the subject of confrontations so loud they threaten to drown out even O'Hare's legendary noise level. The battle is being waged on three separate but intimately related fronts.

First, suburban Chicago political leaders want to block the $1.5-billion expansion of terminals and the construction of new facilities at O'Hare, claiming that the airport is already an intolerable source of noise pollution, air pollution (from aircraft exhaust) and ground traffic snarls. "Tempers are getting shorter and shorter out here," said Martin Butler, mayor of Park Ridge and chairman of the Suburban O'Hare Commission, a coalition of 16 municipalities near the airport. "If there's no relief, I'm afraid some of our nice suburban ladies will resort to direct action by blocking airport ramps or tying up the phone lines."

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Secondly, a concerted effort is underway to bring O'Hare and Midway airports and Meigs Field under the control of a regional airport authority, with representatives from the city of Chicago, Cook County and the five collar countries around Chicago. "It's only reasonable that a lot od problems connected with the airport would be resolved with meaningful input from suburban residents," said Rep. Lee A. Daniels of Elmhurst (46th District). House minority leader. "As it stands now, we have no say whatsoever, though suburbanites near the airport feel its impact more than anyone else." The Federal Aviation Administration has determined that sound levels in communities adjacent to the airport, like Elk Grove Village and Des Plaines, are equivalent to an alarm clock ringing two feet away. And since O'Hare has 750,000 takeoffs and landings every year (one about every 45 seconds, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year), that's a lot of alarm clock noise to tolerate.

Third, there is a push for a new metropolitan area airport, as a means of relieving the noise and overcrowding at O'Hare. "One very practical way to handle our problems is a new airport, possibly in Will County [near Joliet] or in south suburban Cook County in the Calumet region," says Sen. Boh Kustra (R-28, Des Plaines). "The idea makes good sense." The idea also makes such good sense to Gov. James R. Thompson that he has authorized $594,000 for a year-long study of the feasibility and best location for a new airport.

Symbol of power shift

Needless to say, it is the Chicago Democrats who are portrayed as the villains on all these matters. The city controls the three present airports, and they provide a firm, permanent basis for lucrative contracts and jobs. And it is the city that so far has effectively blocked the suburban forces on all three fronts. In late June, during the frantic closing days of the spring session, the Illinois House actually passed a provision to establish the sort of regional airport authority suburbanites so desire. Minutes later, however, Democrats loyal to Mayor Harold Washington invoked a parliamentary maneuver which, in effect, nullified the vote and left intact the airport status quo — at least until the next legislative session.

It would be a mistake to view this battle as just another Chicago-suburban political hassle or as an unfortunate and unavoidable conflict between harried homeowners and the transportation needs of the metropolitan area. The O'Hare conflict is, in fact, a graphic symbol of the growing strength and flowering independence of Chicago's suburbs and its collar counties. Indeed, the focus of power has been gradually shifting out of the city itself and into those communities that ring it and that have been traditionally regarded as weak, dependent satellites.

Once upon a time, Chicago, like the proverbial 300-pound gorilla, could do anything it wanted in the region — such as gerrymandering in the 1950s a pencil-thin strip of land out into the country northwest of the city so that O'Hare Airport is technically in Chicago though it is surrounded by suburbs. No one complained because of the prevailing wisdom: What's good for Chicago is good for everyone. And complaints, particularly in Mayor Richard Daley's era, were regarded as futile anyway.

But no more. The suburbs have risen as an economic and political force in their own right. They stand up to the city and slug it out toe to toe. Once upon a time, the combatants were the Chicago Democrats and the downstate Republicans. The suburban ring represented an inconsequential force in the great political debate.

No more. A well-disciplined, muscular contender has come on the scene. The future will see Chicago Democrats and suburban Republicans regularly pitted against one another as the major state combatants, with defections on either side crucial to winning important victories and with downstate forces relegated to a spoiler role. The battle over the airport is the first of these. Thus far, the perennial champion has withstood the newcomer on this volatile issue. There are, however, several rounds to go.

Bitter sparring

The sparring that preceeded this June's confrontation in the General Assembly in Springfield was complex, hard fought and increasingly bitter on all sides. In 1985 at a press conference near O'Hare (which was appropriately interrupted by jet noise), Daniels and other Republican leaders proposed a battery of bills: to set up an airport authority similar to the Regional Transporation Authority (RTA) and fund it by a jet fuel tax, to permanently ban new runways at O'Hare, to study the health risks due to heavy jet traffic, to install a permanent noise-monitoring system in the area around O'Hare.

Suburban leaders also went to federal court seeking a permanent injunction against the expansion of terminals at the airport. The court rejected that effort, and the federal appellate court not only concurred with the lower court decision but rubbed salt in the wound by citing "the enormous economic benefits" the suburbs near O'Hare had received and rejecting their self-portrayal as "innocent, passive victims of a relentless, expansive O'Hare."

Then in early 1986, Mayor Harold Washington further enraged suburban leaders by announcing that O'Hare needs "at least one new runway" and warning his critics to "think twice before trying to cripple O'Hare." In this he received support from airline officials, who insisted that O'Hare expansion is just as necessary as a new airport is unnecessary and unfeasible.

Gov. Thompson entered the fray for the first time, acknowledging his support for both a regional airport authority and a new airport. "Too often," he said, "suburban neighbors of airports have had to live under policies dictated to them by units of government over which they have no say."

House Speaker Michael J. Madigan (D-30, Chicago) then stormed into Thompson's office and said the governor should view his belated interference "with shame" and as "a low point in his career.'' Madigan cited the basic rationale for leaving O'Hare in city hands: The city has been responsible for its development and the accompanying prosperity of its suburban neighbors; the city has maintained it adequately at tremendous financial costs; the airport has never been a goose laying golden eggs for the city; and a new airport authority would only add another useless regional layer of government.

Undeterred, Daniels, Philip and their associates put their reform measures in three bills that crashed in Springfield in May shortly after takeoff. The Democrats managed to pass an alternative measure that wrote into law a 1982 federal consent decree in which Chicago agreed not to build any new runways for "heavy" aircraft until 1995. Madigan called it a "well-thought position," while Daniels saw it as a meaningless do-nothing codification of an agreement to which the city was already bound by the federal government.

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Then in June as the legislative session neared conclusion, Daniels sought to take advantage of the aforementioned chinks in the Chicago Democratic armor. Suburban Republicans and Democrats loyal to Cook County Democratic Chairman and Chicago Aid. Edward R. Vrdolyak became strange partners in a bizarre horse trade that almost worked. According to the terms of the deal, a 12-member contingent of House Democrats aligned with Vrdolyak agreed to back the regional airport authority, provided Republicans supported their effort to keep Edmund Kelly as head of the Chicago Park District, thereby thwarting Washington's bid to oust Kelly, his fierce critic and foe. While observers wondered why and how the Illinois House should be involved in determining the lines of authority in the Chicago parks, the particulars of the deal were hammered out behind closed doors.

Maneuver to limbo

Thanks to the crossover vote, a bid to create a 15-member airport authority (with the majority from the suburbs) passed the House on June 30, only to falter when Washington loyalists demanded the three-day reading provision before final approval. As they well knew, the legislative session would be over by then. So the measure was destined for limbo, at least until the next session of the legislature.

Madigan then called for a vote on the Kelly-Park District matter and learned to his consternation that, sure enough, the deal had real substance. Thanks to Republican support. Vrdolyak Democrats passed the measure that would prevent Washington from stripping Kelly of his authority, That wound up in limbo, too. however, when the measure was unable to get through the Senate before adjournment.

On the surface, the city of Chicago appeared to have achieved a double victory: no airport reform and no salvation for Kelly. The handwriting on the wall could not be ignored, however. The combination of a strong, tightly knit, opportunistic Republican contingent and a fractured Chicago Democratic delegation had opened up a world of new possibilities in the legislature.

"O'Hare is far from dead," chortled Daniels.

"I think maybe you'll see a new coalition forming," said Philip.

Both were fairly smacking their lips at the prospect of further wheeling and dealing, though there is no assurance that the terms of the June deal or the present constitution of the legislature will endure beyond the November elections.

Nevertheless, too much has changed for the political pros to apply a Band-Aid or two and get back to business as usual. Right now O'Hare Airport appears to be the likely symbolic site of an historic shift in power.

Robert J. McClory writes regularly for the Chicago Reader, the National Catholic Reporter and other publications.

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The suburbs learn to use their clout

CONSIDER what is occurring in the six-county Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area (SMSA) in northeastern Illinois. Today the city of Chicago, with a population of just under three million, can claim only 42 percent of the entire area's population. The ring, including suburban Cook plus DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will counties, boasts a population of more than four million, or 58 percent of the SMSA total. The shift to the suburbs has been going on for many years. Chicago lost 5 percent of its population in the 1960s and another 11 percent in the 1970s, while farms and prairies out in the boonies were being transformed into burgeoning little villages: Schaumburg, Streamwood, Carol Stream, DuPage County, home of both House Minority Leader Lee A. Daniels (R-46, Elmhurst) and Senate Minority Leader James "Pate" Philip (R-23, Wood Dale) is the fastest growing county in the United States outside the Sunbelt. And though the overall SMSA growth in the six-county northeastern Illinois area is expected to decline during the rest of the century, the disparity between city and suburbs will widen. According to the Metropolitan Planning and Housing Council, Chicago by the year 2000 will hold only 38 percent of the area's population, while the suburbs top the five million mark.

Not only that, but Chicago's citizens, increasingly black and Hispanic, will continue to lag behind their suburban neighbors in education, employment opportunity and income. By 2000, predicts the housing council, the city will be 67 percent black and Hispanic.

Particularly significant is the marked economic strength out in suburbia. One glitzy example is a six-township sector of northwest Cook County that has come to be known as the Golden Corrider. From Park Ridge northwest to Barrington on one axis and from Streamwood to Wheeling on the other, lies a pie-shaped segment of prosperity which "has just about won its economic independence of Chicago," says Chicago Tribune reporter Ron Grossman. Office buildings, industrial parks and innumerable shopping malls mushroom in the Golden Corridor, providing local municipalities with healthy tax bases and a sense of self-sufficiency. In 1970, according to a Barrington area official, 75 percent of the local breadwinners commuted to downtown Chicago daily; now only 25 percent do.

An even more dramatic revitalization decorates the communities between the Edens Expressway and the Tri-State Tollway directly north of Chicago. What was once a colorless corridor of bedroom communities now boasts fine restaurants, sports and entertainment complexes, offices and manufacturing centers. Only 8 percent of the professional workers living in Northbrook now commute to Chicago; the vast majority work in the immediate neighborhood.

All this didn't happen overnight, according to Elliot Otis, president of a Deerfield real estate organization. "Once developers demonstrated that they would and could produce office and commercial developments of the same quality applied to residential areas," he said, "zoning barriers were lowered. Practically everything people wanted or needed, including work opportunities, became available close to home."

To be sure, the blossoming of the suburbs is not spread evenly over the six county area, but it is sufficiently widespread to alter the SMSA economic balance. The bottom line is this: Since 1972

Chicago has lost more than 125,000 jobs: in the same period the suburban ring has gained almost 300,000. Only four years ago the political infrastructure of the suburban ring appeared ill-equipped to take advantage of its new-found economic and population assests.

The Chicago Tribune concluded a 1982 series on SMSA expansion by observing that "the only thing small town about the suburbs is their politics....The collar counties seem trapped in a provincial time warp, while Cook County is firmly controlled by city Democrats, with a Republican minority that's uninvolved and seldom heard... Most suburban politicians' only sense of direction seems to be the instinct of pointing an accusing finger toward Chicago as a diversion from their own inadequacies."

Then came 1983, the year Chicago yielded to Los Angeles its distinction as America's second largest city. A series of developments in 1983 helped make it a watershed year in more ways than one.

• For the first time the effects of the 1982 Cutback Amendment were felt, as voters elected 118 representatives to the Illinois House from new, single-member districts, in place of the 177 members formerly elected through cumulative voting in larger, three-member districts. As a result, the House of Representatives was transformed into a more rigid, polarized place. Formerly, heavily Democratic districts often had one Republican among their three representatives and predominately Republican districts similarly claimed a lone Democrat. Suddenly the representatives exactly mirrored the majority view of their constituents. The House became, as Illinois Issues predicted in a 1982 special report, "The Cut-back Amendment." "a less colorful and more predictable institution — that is, more like the Senate."

The day of the maverick was at an end. People like Susan Catania, a popular white Republican who represented an overwhelmingly black Democratic slice of southside Chicago, were compelled to seek other occupations. "The new setup took away a lot of the independence and much of the excitement from the legislature," said Paul M. Green, director of the Institue for Public Policy at Governors State University. "There is now stronger, more unified party leadership dictating the direction to go. There's less debate and discussion. People who cross the party lines are in real trouble." With the lines between the parties more firmly drawn, the once scattered Republicans pulled themselves together with a new sense of "we" versus the dominant Chicago Democrats. That unity was to manifest itself most quickly in the push for aiport reforms.

• In 1983 for the first time Republican legislators from suburban DuPage County became minority leaders in both the House and the Senate. Rep. Daniels from Elmhurst and Sen. Philip, now of Wood Dale, were beneficiaries of the economic, industrial and population growth of their areas. Through reapportionment DuPage County gained four House seats and two Senate seats. Daniels, in particular, has proven a high-profile dynamo well able to pull his forces together and exploit weaknesses in the Democratic camp. As the visibility and influence of suburban Republicans increase, the political power of downstate GOP leadership naturally diminishes "I have to wonder just how powerful DuPage County will get." said Green.

'Will the Chicago Art Institute be moved out there — only with elephants at the entrance instead of lions?'

"It's not just business and industry moving out there; it's restaurants and cultural institutions, even ballparks.

"Will we eventually have the DuPage Symphony Orchestra?" he asked only half facetiously. "Will the Chicago Art Institute be moved out there — only with elephants at the entrance in place of lions?"

Daniels said that the depressing state of suburban political affairs reported in the 1982 Tribune editorial has been almost entirely reversed. "Chicago can't pretend any longer we don't exist," he said. Although his territory is a long way from O'Hare, Daniels has been chief sponsor and advocate of the bills seeking to rein it in.

• In 1983 majority control of the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) passed from city Democrats to suburban Republicans under an agreement related to the reapportionment amendment. And so it has remained. Suburban interests had bitterly opposed the RTA when it was introduced in the early 1970s. They felt their communities would be required to help carry the deficit-ridden Chicago Transit Authority. And in the early years they had bitterly complained about sloppy management and unequal distribution of resources under Chicago control.

Now however, under suburban control, the RTA is no longer a source of antagonism and seems to be working efficiently for both city and suburban interests. "So why not extend the concept by creating a regional airport authority?" asked Sen. Bob Kustra (R-Glenview). "RTA is one of the best precedents we could have."

Kustra vehemently denied that the goal here is to strip jobs and revenue from the city by an O'Hare takeover. "In no way do suburban municipalities want to get involved in patronage and contracts at O'Hare," he said. "The day-to-day operations should be left in the hands of the city." But, he added, suburbanites, especially those directly affected by the airport, have every right to be involved in decisions concerning planning, construction of terminals, building of new runways, etc.

• The year 1983 was especially noteworthy for the election of Chicago Mayor Harold Washington. His ascension was accompanied by tremors throughout the Cook County Democratic organization — tremors which produced wide rifts, most notably in the 29-21 division between aldermanic supporters of county Democratic Chairman Edward R. Vrdolyak and Washington. The figures shifted in the mayor's favor early in 1986, but the rancor has raged on.

The most apparent result has been a loss of confidence in the city as the region's perennial source of stability. That loss occurred at the very moment when suburban forces were finding common concerns. A 1984 survey by the Chicago Tribune indicated that the mayors of some 46 municipalities near Chicago were either worried, disgusted or angry at the Chicago political deadlock, which at the time was threatening to hold up some $7 billion in capital improvement funds for the area. Though the funds were eventually levered loose, suburban confidence has not been restored.

Meanwhile, Republican leaders correctly perceived Chicago as vulnerable in a way it had not been before. No longer did the city's Democratic forces march in lockstep. Ironically, the Democratic vulnerability was increased by the efforts of House Speaker Michael J. Madigan (D-30, Chicago) to preserve as much Democratic presence as possible in the suburbs immediately adjacent to the city of Chicago. In the reapportionment map that he oversaw, many of the new Chicago districts have boundaries with fingers probing out into populous suburban areas. Yet thanks to the O'Hare dispute, the Democratic representatives from those areas are now under pressure from their suburban constituents to help wrest control over O'Hare away from the city. Kustra said several told him they found the suburban arguments compelling. And indeed in late June, some outer-edge Democrats were among those who supported the short-lived, last-minute Republican amendment to create a regional airport authority.

Robert J. McClory

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