DALEY’S ‘DIFFERENCE’
Mayoral candidate explains how his style would be different from brother’s
Bill Daley said Friday there’s a “big difference” between his style and how Richard M. Daley ran Chicago, and he offered three examples: He never would have sold the parking meters. He wouldn’t have allowed the pension crisis to fester. And he would have closed Meigs Field — but in the daylight.
The parking meter deal is an easy place to draw a line between brothers.
The widely despised deal is a symbol of Richard M. Daley’s financial mismanagement.
“The way they did it was absolutely a mistake,” Bill Daley said. “I would not do that deal.”
Chicago’s parking meter system raked in $134.2 million last year, putting private investors on pace to recoup their $1.16 billion investment by 2021 — with 62 years left in the lease.
“He did a lot of things wrong. He didn’t solve the pension problem. I gave you the headline,” Daley said of his older brother, Chicago’s longest-serving mayor.
Richard M. Daley’s decision to send in bulldozers at night to carve giant X’s into Meigs Field’s only runway is also easy pickings as a symbol of the former mayor’s arrogance.
“I would have closed it. I would have brought the 40 acres to the people of Chicago,” Bill Daley said, but “I would have done it in the daylight.”
During a wide-ranging interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, Daley also said it’s time for the City Council’s most powerful and longest-serving alderman, Finance Committee Chairman Edward Burke (14th), to step aside, possibly allowing a Hispanic alderman to represent his majority-Hispanic ward.
“Fifty years is a long time to be in any job,” Daley said.
Burke, who has endorsed his longtime friend and former employee Gery Chico for mayor, could not be reached for comment.
Burke has had a political bull’s-eye on his back since his brother, state Rep. Dan Burke (D-Chicago), lost to political newcomer Aaron Ortiz in a primary dominated by Edward Burke’s property tax reduction work for the riverfront tower bearing the name of President Donald Trump.
Burke has since stopped representing Trump, citing “irreconcilable differences.” Even so, County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia and his allies recruited a challenger.
Asked if Burke is in trouble, Daley replied: “I assume he is.”
Earlier this week, Daley unveiled an ethics plan intended to separate him from the scandals that marred his brother’s administration.
It included a pledge to prohibit his immediate or extended family from doing business with the city while he is mayor — including lobbying, bidding on city contracts or managing public pension funds.
Still, on Friday, Bill Daley repeatedly refused to pass judgment on past Daley family profiteering.
“You can write the history book and I’ll buy it. … That’s your job to look back. … I don’t think the public cares to engage in a process about the last 30 or 40 years,” he said.
And why didn’t he tell his brother at the time that it was the wrong thing to do?
“Because I wasn’t running for mayor at the time.”
Also Friday, Bill Daley:
♦ Said he is not prepared to lay out a plan to deal with a $1 billion spike in pension payments.
♦ Made it clear he thinks little of Elon Musk’s plan to build an underground express transit line between downtown and O’Hare Airport. He’s skeptical of the unproven technology — and not even sure the market will support it.
♦ Said solving Chicago’s affordable housing crisis may require stripping aldermen of control over zoning in their wards.
♦ Pointed to federal “Opportunity Zones” in the Trump tax cut bill as the best hope to rebuild South and West Side neighborhoods.
♦ Maintained his decision to run for mayor is “not just some ego move” or capstone on his long career. His decades of service in business and in government, he said, give him a unique ability to “bring people together to solve problems.”