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AIP in the NewsChicago Sun-Times Airport expansion foes say debate on issue muzzledBy Chris Fusco As a delegation of Chicagoans lobbied in Washington on Thursday to build support for an O'Hare Airport expansion deal, expansion foes on the home front unveiled documents they say show why the public should be wary of the runway deal forged by Mayor Daley and Gov. Ryan. The assault was launched by former Better Government Association head J. Terrence Brunner, who has been hired by the anti-expansion suburbs of Park Ridge, Wood Dale, Elk Grove Village and Bensenville to head their Aviation Integrity Project. Brunner presented documents he says portray some Chicago business and political leaders as in cahoots to stifle public debate about O'Hare through calculated public-relations strategies. City and business leaders long have defended the process by which they've moved to expand O'Hare. A Jan. 18 memo from the head of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce states there must be "a sense of inevitability in regard to the plan which will isolate [U.S. Sen. Peter] Fitzgerald and [the anti-expansion] Suburban O'Hare Commission. . . . We must reduce opposition to these 'fringe' players which will 'clear the field' for us." Brunner also criticized friends of Mayor Daley for having lucrative business deals at O'Hare, including veteran power broker Oscar D'Angelo and Jeremiah Joyce, a political operative with long-standing ties to Daley. A May 26, 1998, internal memo, he said, shows D'Angelo's influence in keeping a United Airlines consultant's report from disclosing that O'Hare was nearing its capacity to handle flights. "As you look deeper into the documents, here's Oscar D'Angelo setting public policy at O'Hare with a consultant, changing the consulting reports that say you need new runways at O'Hare because we don't want to tell anybody," Brunner said. "Because if we told anybody . . . somebody might say, hey, we need more capacity, maybe we ought to build an airport south of the city. "The same corruption that they have been involved in at O'Hare also permeates the planning process that produced the deal." |