This week the media reported that Park Ridge Mayor Dave Schmidt called for the resignation of former Arlington Heights mayor Arlene Mulder as chairman of the O’Hare Noise Compatibility Commission (the “ONCC”).
It’s about time somebody did!
The reviews of Mulder’s performance as AH mayor from May 1993 to 2013 run the gamut from excellent to terrible. More than a few of her critics make comparisons to former Chicago mayor Richard M. “Shortshanks” Daley at the “terrible” end. They cite her expensive TIF projects and how, like Daley, she created an attractive “Potemkin” village with monuments like the village hall her detractors call the “Taj Mahal” and the taxpayer-subsidized Metropolis Performing Arts Center, all of which have cost, and will continue to cost, AH taxpayers bundles in bonded debt repayment and subsidies to developers.
But, frankly, we could care less about what Mulder did while managing AH. The folks who voted to make and keep her as mayor all those years deserved whatever they got, and the tax bills they will continue to get as her legacy.
Schmidt’s beef about Mulder properly goes to what he views as her conflict of interest regarding O’Hare expansion and the resulting increase in airplane noise over ONCC members like Park Ridge while AH’s airplane noise is being reduced. He is quoted in a Chicago Sun-Times article (“Park Ridge mayor wants head of noise commission to resign,” 08.05.14) as saying Mulder “has turned the ONCC into a lap dog for the Chicago Department of Aviation.”
Actually, Schmidt is wrong on the “lap dog” point.
Shortshanks created the ONCC in 1996 for the express purpose of its being his lap dog, and to siphon away membership in what at that time was a thorn in his side: the Suburban O’Hare Commission (“SOC”), of which Park Ridge was a charter member. With Mulder’s help as ONCC chairman beginning in 1997, that strategy worked so well that by May 2003, SOC’s 13-community membership had dwindled to 3: Park Ridge, Bensenville and Elk Grove Village. And by that point the O’Hare expansion had become such a fait accompli that even the bobblehead-dominated Park Ridge City Council voted to exit the SOC, prompting then-mayor Ron Wietecha’s resignation and subsequent emigration to Barrington.
AH never was a SOC member, preferring instead to cut its own deals with Chicago – first under Mulder’s predecessor, William Maki (who resigned in 1992 to become a Cook County Circuit Judge, and is now Presiding Judge at the Rolling Meadows courthouse), and then under Mulder. Not surprisingly, everything Mulder has done since becoming Daley’s puppet at the ONCC has benefited AH first and foremost, with benefits flowing to other ONCC members only if there was no risk to AH.
Apparently rewarded for her ONCC service with an appointment to the METRA Board in 2003, Mulder reportedly finagled a new train station for AH and also got the Union Pacific RR to give up some of its right-of-way land for downtown AH redevelopment. Meanwhile, however, she and the other political hacks on that Board rubber-stamped the continuing deterioration of METRA’s equipment and service under long-time CEO Phil Pagano, even as fares continued to rise.
You might remember the corrupt Pagano, who chose to avoid certain firing and likely indictment for embezzlement and sweetheart deals by taking one last METRA ride back in 2010. Mulder was such an unquestioning Pagano sycophant that even after his death and discrediting, she still referred to him as an expert railroader who built “one of the best transportation organizations in the nation.”
METRA? Seriously?
Although Mulder claimed credit for the hiring of Pagano’s squeaky-clean replacement, Alex Clifford, she appears to have done nothing to stop Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan’s uber-stooge, Board chairman Brad O’Halloran, and Shortshanks/Rahm lackey Larry Huggins from issuing their quit-or-be-fired ultimatum to Clifford in June 2013 when he balked at playing their corrupt Chicago-style political games.
Actually, Mulder did do something in connection with Clifford’s ouster: she voted to give him an obscene $750,000 “severance” package even though, by resigning, he was not contractually entitled to any severance payment. And she endorsed the confidentiality provision of that deal so that neither side could talk about it publicly, claiming that it was “the most prudent thing to do” in order to avoid potential legal action by Clifford – legal action that likely would have pulled back the curtains and exposed the kind of institutionalized corruption and incompetent Board oversight that Clifford wouldn’t tolerate.
That’s what Illinois government has come to – the payment of big-time hush money considered “prudent” management.
If there’s any reason to doubt Mulder was grossly unqualified to hold such a position of public trust, one need only read her comments to Sun-Times reporter Rosalind Rossi in a July 2013 article (“Metra didn’t have to pay outgoing CEO any severance, experts say,” 07.24.13), in which Mulder admitted that she voted for Clifford’s severance package without even knowing that his contract didn’t entitle him to severance if he resigned. But, true to form, she couldn’t or wouldn’t say whether knowing that fact would have changed her vote.
From everything we already knew or have been able to Google about her, Mulder seems to be the exact kind of career politician – 34+ years holding some public office or other, not counting the years she double-dipped at METRA and/or the ONCC – who has helped turn this state into the almost-bankrupt cesspool of public incompetence and corruption it has become, whether because she is too stupid, too clueless, too pliable, too accommodating, and/or just plain dishonest.
But even more sadly than that is how, here in Illinois, that kind of performance over that many years gets you re-elected and re-appointed; and it gets you retirement testimonials in the Congressional Record by fellow career politicians like Sen. Dick Durbin, Sen. Mark Kirk, and Rep. Jan Schakowsky.
As the passive-aggressive chair of the ONCC, Mulder appears to have done nothing concrete to help Park Ridge obtain relief from the airplane noise and pollution that have plagued so many of our residents, especially with the opening of the new O’Hare runways that substantially reduce air traffic over AH. Instead she has feathered her AH nest and provided comfort to Chicago while only pretending to look out for her fellow ONCC members.
Schmidt was exactly right to call her out.
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