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player ready...Richard Daley is no Alan Greenspan, which is a relief. If the markets listened to the mayor the way they listen to the chairman of the Federal Reserve, they would be in a panic.
To hear the mayor tell it, hard times are right around the corner. You won’t be getting the bump in your paycheck that you’re used to. When you want to sell your house, there won’t be as many new buyers flocking to Chicago. All those new jobs? It won’t be half as good in the future.
The mayor didn’t call a press conference to tell the world that the Chicago area’s heartbeat is about to flat-line. He sent out his aviation commissioner, Mary Rose Loney, to do the dirty work. Loney slipped a few numbers into a speech last month to the City Club of Chicago, and left the rest of the bad news in a consultant’s report put out by the city.
But look on the bright side. The mayor says this proves we don’t need a new airport!
For the last few years everyone has listened to Daley and the Big Two in the Chicago skies, United and American Airlines, shut down all talk of building an airport in the south suburbs. And they’ve talked a good game. But maybe it has been a con game.
Maybe not a con, but something just as dangerous. A self-fulfilling prophecy.
As long as Daley is mayor, there will be no new airport built in northern Illinois. Daley has enough influence to single-handedly stop a new airport. That means Daley may single-handedly keep a lid on jobs, growth and development.
The mayor’s study says says job growth in the region for the next 10 years will be less than half what it has been for the last 15 years. Population growth will be cut in half. Personal income growth will tail off, too. And because of all that, Chicago airline travel will grow at about half the national average in the near future.
Before anybody steps out on the ledge of the 35th floor, remember this is just one study done for the city. And the pessimism isn’t shared. Other trackers project better growth in population and the economy.
But the mayor is selling us stagnation–and he’s doing it with a smile because it means we don’t have to build a new airport.
Funny how things change. In 1992, Daley was pitching his idea for a new airport on the South Side with all the gusto he could muster.
“Illinois is losing jobs,” the mayor said.
“Families are being ruined,” the mayor said.
The mayor said Chicago had to build a new airport to haul in those jobs and save those families. Gov. Jim Edgar, the mayor said, didn’t have the “passion” to build a new field.
Daley pulled the plug on his own airport plan. Now it’s the eighth year of an economic expansion and Daley can get away with sending out his aviation commissioner to project doom and gloom. No need for an airport. Nobody’s going to be coming here to use it.
We have a stalemate. There will be no new airport as long as Daley is mayor. He has the Clinton administration’s Federal Aviation Administration under his thumb.
Last year the FAA scratched Chicago from its list of planned airports, killing any chance to get federal money for the project. The FAA was mum while Daley announced an expansion of Midway Airport, then earlier this year slashed its projections for airline growth in Chicago.
Take it to the bank that there will be no expansion of O’Hare International Airport to handle more traffic. If anyone had doubts, just look at how Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun and Sen. Richard Durbin scrambled to scale back the proposal to add just 100 flights a day at O’Hare.
So we’re locked in. That’s OK for the airlines. They can go to St. Louis and Atlanta and Kansas City and Denver. But it is bad news for everybody who lives here.
Thirteen cities have lost air service to O’Hare since 1992. Some of that, no doubt, can be blamed on low traffic. But state aviation officials say many of those routes were profitable. The airlines made a decision–they had a limited number of gates to use in Chicago, and they weren’t going to waste them on marginally profitable cities.
Air fares at O’Hare have risen by 14 percent since 1995, compared to 3.4 percent in the nation. The demand is high, the supply is limited at O’Hare. So you pay.
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Daley professes to be neutral on a third airport, but the truth is he has put a brick on it.
When the people who want a new airport say it will bring jobs and money, the mayor can shrug his shoulders because he doesn’t hear a lot of anguish about people being out of work. But maybe he’s not listening to the right places. On the South Side of his city and in the south suburbs, the last recession never ended. The jobs are still leaving.
It’s time for Daley to take his thumb off of the new airport. He doesn’t have to become a cheerleader, but he has to give it a fair chance to get built. Peotone, the Joliet Arsenal, wherever it goes, Daley has to give it a chance.
Air travel is going to grow, but it won’t grow here if the planes can’t land anywhere.
They will, though, find a place to land. It would be a shame, after everything Daley has done for Chicago, if his legacy turned out to be the economic renaissance he created for St. Louis.