Chicago has been Mayor Harold Washington`s baby since his second term started in May, yet after 16 weeks some of his fans have a nagging suspicion that City Hall is suffering from the political post-partum blues.
Since the last reveler left the inaugural ball at the Chicago Hilton and Towers, some lights have dimmed on the promise of Washington II.
The administration has been preoccupied by the crisis at the Chicago Housing Authority while initiatives to revive Navy Pier, to reform the taxi industry and to revamp city finances have languished. The reform agenda is jeopardized by a cash shortage, and budgetmakers are whispering about a coming property-tax increase.
Washington has firm control of the Chicago City Council, yet the council has done little in recent months except try to weaken the ethics ordinance that was passed two weeks before February`s primary election.
That hasn`t made for the appearance of good government. Unlike ”Council Wars,” it hasn`t even made for good theater.
Ironically, after Jane Byrne`s chaotic term, the Washington administration has the growing image of a band of professors who are at home with research ad nauseum but who are uncomfortable with the prospect of action.
For example, Washington appointed a Youth Development Coordinating Committee of educators, counselors and activists who drafted dozens of recommendations for the Department of Human Services.
”Since then, nothing,” a committee member said. ”They sent out a copy of the report, but there`s no indication they`re going to do anything with it.”
The city`s response? The department is two months behind in its timetable, but it has formed a new youth coordinating council to study the work of the old youth coordinating committee, department officials said.
If that`s the jacket that Washington`s critics want to tailor for him, he`s willing to wear it.
”Chicago`s . . . institutions are just shot to death; they`re not working. You have to restructure all that,” Washington said Friday in an interview. ”Do you just go out and pell-mell put things together? No. You`ve got to study. We`re going to take our time, study these things out, wait for the dollars and then move on them.”
But the perception of inertia that nags some of the mayor`s supporters goes beyond any image that the 5th floor of City Hall is now populated by academics who are fond of gazing out the window while puffing their pipes and wearing turtleneck sweaters and tweed coats.
When administration critics look for the reasons behind the lackluster beginning of the second term, they see a yellow caution flag waving in the Hall.
Some say the administration has been handcuffed, in part, by staffers who are so concerned about not damaging the mayor that they are obsessed with the fear of making a wrong move.
”The mayor has to have people who can make a good, honest decision and go with it,” said Ald. Bernard Hansen (44th), chairman of the council`s Economic Development Committee. ”Some of these things have to get moving. You can`t take a consensus of everybody-you don`t have time.”
Warning signs of guerrilla warfare outside the mayor`s office on the 5th floor of City Hall have also sent some veterans scurrying for cover. The ouster of Revenue Director Patrick Quinn and the subsequent firing of three veteran employees of the Revenue Department have prompted talk that a handful of top deputies are ruthlessly consolidating power.
After Quinn went out on a limb with a parking-ticket amnesty program that met with mixed success, Barefield and mayoral aide Lucille Dobbins trumpeted it as proof that Quinn was unfit for government service.
Some also suggest that the administration is going to have to shake out what has become a heavily bureaucratic approach to government if it is to accomplish much before the next mayoral election in 1991.
”I am frustrated with the pace of things,” said freshman Ald. Edwin Eisendrath (43d), who has watched his ordinance to protect factories from the encroachment of yuppie-driven developers win the administration`s nod-and then get lost in a morass of paper.
”The adminstration really wants to do that, but they haven`t gotten around to getting it written,” Eisendrath said. ”They say they`re busy, they`ve had other things to do, they`ve had to deal with crises.”
In his defense, one could envision Harold Washington as Hercules battling the Hydra, the nine-headed snake that grew two heads each time one was sheared off. When Washington lopped off the heads of his council opponents, other demons took their place.
”By the time the mayor got control of the council and won re-election, the lid had popped on the Chicago Housing Authority,” said Samuel Mitchell, executive director of the Chicago Association of Commerce and Industry. ”That seems to have absorbed a lot of the administration`s time and effort.”
The mayor`s lobbyists fended off a Republican attempt in the legislature to snatch control of the future of O`Hare International Airport. Chief of Staff Ernest Barefield has been largely consumed by the Reagan
administration`s threats to install a new landlord at the CHA.
But some of the mayor`s loyalists confess that they are growing tired of hearing him blame outsiders for the problems of the city.
It`s been 15 months since Washington won a working majority in the city council. Former Ald. Edward Vrdolyak (10th) has whiled away the summer fishing and playing golf. Ald. Edward Burke (14th) has shown little enthusiasm for the role of disloyal opposition since he was ousted as chairman of the council`s Finance Committee. The old foes aren`t there to fault for the listlessness of the second term.
Yet movement on developments that could shape the city`s image and its future has been slow and ponderous.
The administration isn`t close to a plan to revitalize Navy Pier, while a new engineering study says the costs of rehabilitation will escalate steeply if the site is left to rot.
The legislature more than a year ago created the sports authority to guide construction of a Chicago White Sox stadium, but the project is mired in a grudge match between the Democratic mayor of Chicago and the Republican governor of Illinois.
The Chicago Bears and the city have a ”memorandum of understanding” on a West Side stadium site, but there is no guarantee that the team won`t head to the suburbs if the project doesn`t progress.
As the cost of a planned new Chicago Public Library escalates toward $189 million, about the only sure thing is that it won`t be located in the suburbs. Late in 1986, Washington proposed a reform package that would have opened the Chicago taxi industry to competition. But the centerpiece of that legislation is as elusive as an empty cab in a storm and is awaiting the result of negotiations between the city and the cab companies.
One certain sign of momentum within the administration seems to be toward passing a property-tax increase later this year to pay for employee raises that aren`t funded in the preliminary 1988 budget. That has begun to reawaken the mayor`s opponents who have laid low since the election.
”I think they`ve done a lot of things,” scoffed Ald. Bernard Stone
(50th). ”For a grand finale on the first term, they raised taxes. And now as a curtain-raiser on the second term, they`re going to raise taxes.”
To be fair, the administration has drawn more flak than it may have deserved. Washington has been criticized for not pushing Thompson`s $1.6 billion tax increase, and his lobbyists have been chastised for not returning from Springfield with a big-ticket prize this year.
But some of the mayor`s critics say the city was, quietly, rather successful in Springfield. A bill that will give control of parking-ticket processing to the city should help bring in millions in previously uncollected revenues.
And the mayor adroitly heeded the advice of House Speaker Michael Madigan (D., Chicago) that intensive lobbying for the tax plan would backfire because the proposal was doomed.
Washington notes that the O`Hare expansion is on time, that the development of a Southwest Side rapid-transit link is on time and that the city is juggling the future of three major sports arenas at once (including the issue of lights at Wrigley Field). The city has also recently moved to develop acres of vacant land at O`Hare.
”All of these big-ticket items are moving,” he said. ”The perception that things have slowed down amazes me. Improvements are going on almost quietly and unobtrusively because nobody`s ying-yanging around, making phony headlines about what they`re going to do. They`re just doing their work.”
But those are programs from the first term; some even date to Byrne.
So when one asks, ”What have you done for me lately,” the administration offers its upcoming ”transition team” report, a game plan coordinated by policy adviser Hal Baron for putting the second-term agenda in place.
But after four years in power, critics wonder, why is it taking so long to decide what to do with the next four years?
