Welcome to Chicago, Mayor William H. Hudnut III.
We’re honored that you have decided to cap your brilliant career-as father of the Indianapolis miracle and longtime dean of America’s Republican mayors-by helping us solve our problems here in northeastern Illinois.
But just for now, Bill, go find a comfortable chair and stay out of the way.
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You see, we’re awfully busy now that the Illinois legislature has gone into overtime so our “leaders” in Springfield can embarrass each other about our underfunded state budget.
Likewise, our congressional delegates are up to their ears in health reform now that it’s crunch time in Washington. Their constituents have a lot at stake, especially the doctors, insurance companies and malpractice lawyers who finance their re-election campaigns. And don’t forget the hospitals. One of our biggest and most influential-Northwestern Memorial-wants a special amendment that would make taxpayers help finance the new $600 million hospital it wants to build.
That may not sound like health reform to you, Mayor Hudnut, but you are new here and have much to learn.
Even during the hazy days before the 4th of July, Chicago is a hustling kind of town.
Take last Wednesday. All the major news shops had reporters and camera crews scrambling to find out whom the Bulls would draft to replace Scottie Pippen (who isn’t going to Seattle) and whom Gov. Jim Edgar would draft to replace our lieutenant governor (who is going to talk radio).
That’s why hardly anybody attended your news conference, at which it was announced you will move here from Indianapolis to take over as president of the Civic Federation, one of our city’s oldest and most respected good-government organizations.
Unfortunately, Bill, the announcement didn’t make Thursday’s papers. I’m told only two reporters showed up-one from news radio and the other from City News Bureau-and that the first thing they asked was why the federation couldn’t find someone local.
But don’t let that discourage you, Mayor Hudnut.
Some of us know who you are and what you accomplished in your 16 years as mayor of the city people used to call India-no-place.
For those who don’t know, William Herbert Hudnut III is an ordained Presbyterian minister and former Republican member of Congress from Indiana who was elected mayor of Indianapolis in 1975 and proceeded, over four terms, to establish himself as one of America’s most successful big-city mayors.
By the time he retired from office in 1991, Hudnut and the public-private civic coalition he built had accomplished one of the great rags-to-riches turnarounds in U.S. urban history.
Well, not exactly rags. Indianapolis never had the poverty and racial divisions that afflict a Chicago or New York. But it didn’t have those cities’ excitement, either. Indy was a drab state capital famous only for a car race.
Hudnut solidified his region’s metro government so that his sprawling city would not be circled and sapped-as so many are-by affluent suburbs. Then he sold Eli Lilly & Co. and other businesses on the idea of becoming the nation’s amateur sports capital, complete with world-class swimming and cycling venues (in time for the ’87 Pan American Games) and a domed football stadium and basketball arena that would draw pro franchises.
But sporting extravaganzas were never his main goal . . . jobs and tax base were. Indianapolis added 100,000 jobs and tripled its tax base during the Hudnut years. His biggest economic development prize, captured just before he left office, was the $1 billion United Airlines maintenance facility.
And now, after a restive three years as senior fellow with the Hudson Institute in Indianapolis, Hudnut, 62, is coming to Chicago to help trouble-shoot our urban and fiscal problems.
Exactly why you are doing this, Mr. Hudnut, we can only guess.
Though marking its 100th anniversary this year, the Civic Federation is a limited-budget operation with a tiny staff and little of the boardroom clout that drives, say, the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club.
Starting Sept. 1, however, it will have Bill Hudnut, who says he wants to help build bridges of understanding between rich and poor, city and suburb.
Good luck in that, Mr. Mayor.
But remember, this is no Indianapolis.