There are plenty of maybes surrounding the proposal for a Lake Calumet airport, beginning with the question of whether it will ever get built.
One of the biggest maybes is whether it can be built without scandal.
The city and its public officials, after all, have earned a reputation almost as tainted as the hazardous waste sites that need to be cleaned up on the airport acreage.
The wink, the thick envelope and the political favor are still part of doing business here, at least in some quarters, based on indictments in recent years.
The $10.8 billion for the new airport means new terminals, new runways and new economic opportunity for a whole region of the city.
To some it also means a long public trough of contracts and subcontracts, power and patronage, ranging from consultants to construction workers and waste removers to people movers to popcorn vendors.
All of which might be labeled air-pork.
Should the public be wary of the dirty underside of a golden public works project?
”The answer is yes,” said Anton Valukas, the former U.S. attorney in Chicago. ”It`s a self-evident answer that whenever you`re awarding contracts, big or small, focusing on the integrity of the process is critical.”
Michael Lyons, chief investigator for the Better Government Association, has an even more concise answer. ”This is Chicago,” he said.
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When the U.S. Attorney`s Office in Chicago examined corrupt purchasing practices in city and public agencies in the mid-1980s, it code-named the investigation Operation Lantern.
The reference was to the Greek philosopher Diogenes, who carried a light as he searched the streets for one honest man.
”Corruption is something that can happen anywhere, anytime you have money to give out,” said Valukas, who oversaw the indictments from Operation Lantern. ”There`s always the potential for somebody to try to cut a corner.” Still, it is his belief that, under the administrations of Richard Daley and Harold Washington, reforms in the public bidding process have made the business of the city more open and fair.
And, it should be noted, the governments of Daley and Gov. Jim Edgar, the two major proponents of the airport, have been free of ugly scandal. The new Comiskey Park, for instance, was built within budget and without major controversy over contracts.
Valukas predicted that ”integrity will be a watchword” for Daley and Edgar in creating the airport.
In addition, he said, a larger project such as the White Sox stadium or the airport is subject to such intense public and media scrutiny that officials and public employees are more likely to operate by the book.
But Lyons sees it another way. If aldermen, city inspectors and even judges can be bought for thousands of dollars, he wonders, what happens when the stakes are raised?
”We have sent many aldermen to jail for a lot less than $10 billion,”
Lyons said. ”I see no sign that the avarice we have demonstrated won`t come into play again. This is not Des Moines, Iowa.”
Nor it is it Denver, a city that has demonstrated how a large airport project can feed avarice even in a locale a mile up and a long ways removed from the unsavory traditions of Chicago.
The making of Denver International Airport, now under construction, is a saga that has built and wrecked political careers, launched a raft of grand jury probes into suspicious land deals and drawn the focus of a Federal Election Commission inquiry into vote buying.
In late 1991, the FEC announced it was investigating allegations that local business people with big financial stakes in real estate around the airport used illegal strongarm tactics to force building contractors to make campaign contributions to politicians who supported the airport project.
Airport critics complain that high-powered political operatives used money and influence to keep the political establishment, from the Colorado governor through the entire congressional delegation, solidly behind the project despite massive constituent complaints.
The airport project also has been cited as a centerpiece in the failed real estate dealings that brought Silverado Federal Banking Savings and Loan to its spectacular final collapse as a result of shaky deals.
Airport foes continue to warn against the project even as construction nears the halfway mark, but there appears little doubt that it eventually will open.
There are more than a few obstacles ahead for the Lake Calumet airport, but you could almost hear one Chicago politician licking his lips on Thursday when he observed, ”This pig is so big there will be pork chops for everyone.”
The political deals and pork barrel benefits that make elected officials salivate do not necessarily lead to grand jury probes, but Ald. Lawrence Bloom (5th) said that they don`t always lead to good government either.
”There is tremendous money to be made here, and perhaps that was what was going on behind the scenes. Not whether the governor was going to support the airport, but how much say he and his people will have about who gets the lucrative contracts and how much the mayor and his people get to say,” said Bloom, an independent Democrat who has tried unsuccessfully to unseat Daley.
Bloom, though, was more intrigued by the structure of the new regional airport authority that will be created, a city-state hybrid not unlike the agency that oversees construction projects at McCormick Place.
Who will hold the new authority accountable? he wonders. And while the Shakman decree limits patronage jobs in city government, will a hybrid authority have more leeway to make political hirings?
State Rep. John Cullerton (D-Chicago) also is concerned about spending too much on professional services that do not have to be awarded through competitive bidding, such as bond underwriting.
He was critical of what was called the ”pinstripe patronage” of Gov. James Thompson`s years, where certain bond firms worked on lucrative public works projects.
”The basic argument was, it ought to be bid,” he said, ”and I still think that ought to be the case.”
Rules and requirements can be changed, but Bloom remains skeptical. In such a large project, he said, cost overruns and contractor overcharges are easily hidden and often too easily tolerated.
”When you`re dealing with so much money, sticking in $10,000 here or $20,000 there is so easy,” he said.
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As one of the largest public works projects in the country, the airport has all types of potential, Bloom said, not all of it the kind that will be boasted about at news conferences. ”It surely can be abused politically,” he said. ”That`s the history of Chicago.”