Gayle Franzen has yet to roar off in a Batmobile or to wear a superhero costume to meetings of the DuPage County Board.
But, from interviews with board members and others, it appears as if cinematic gimmickry is about all that’s missing from Franzen’s first six months as board chairman.
“This is Gayle’s show,” said Lloyd Renfro (R-Glen Ellyn), one of the few board members to voice an occasional concern these days about county government. “And I don’t disagree with everything being done.”
Since taking over as board chairman last December, Franzen has charmed board members and, for the most part, calmed the political bickering that consumed the first two years of the term of his predecessor, Aldo Botti.
The new chairman has launched a special committee to study ways to improve the efficiency of county government; won board approval of bond issues intended to speed work on road- and drainage-improvement projects throughout DuPage, without raising property taxes; and guided the county’s first steps toward solving the serious overcrowding problem at its juvenile detention center.
Franzen also adroitly avoided what could have been a divisive political battle over the appointment of an interim state’s attorney by naming retired Judge Anthony Peccarelli to fill the office vacated when Jim Ryan was elected Illinois attorney general.
Board member Edward Merkel (R-Elmhurst), an ally of Franzen, thinks he’s doing better than former longtime Chairman Jack Knuepfer, whom Merkel admired, and Botti, whom Merkel did not admire.
“I think Franzen is comporting himself better than both of those guys,” Merkel said.
A major test, though, of Franzen’s political wizardry is likely to come in late summer when he presents to the board his proposed budget for 1996. The question is whether he can offer a balanced budget that finds the $7 million to $8 million required to meet immediate law enforcement needs without raising property taxes.
To provide money to staff and operate an expanded jail and to pay for the temporary solution to Youth Home overcrowding, Franzen may have to propose cuts in programs popular with board members.
“The next major conflict around here is going to be the budget,” Franzen said during an interview last week in his office at the county administration building in Wheaton.
Franzen served as a director of the Illinois Department of Corrections, state tollway chief and chairman of the Regional Transportation Authority before running a successful campaign last year for board chairman in his first attempt at elected office.
Unlike Botti in his final years in the job, Franzen so far has been more of a hands-on chairman.
“One of the things I give him credit for, he takes the job seriously,” said board member Michael Formento (R-Glen Ellyn). “He understands the mechanics of government.”
Franzen said he has worked hard to win the trust of board members. The trust, he said, has allowed for disagreement on specific issues, without the rancor that Botti faced.
“I think he works to get consensus on issues before they get to the County Board floor,” said Warrenville Mayor Vivian Lund, immediate past president of the DuPage Mayors and Managers Conference.
The tone for Franzen’s early months in office clearly was set by his appointment of Peccarelli.
At the time, there was a hotly contested, if not always visible, battle for the appointment among several contenders. Chiefly, they were County Board member Robert Heap (R-Naperville); Patrick Bond, a Wheaton lawyer backed by the DuPage Republican Party hierarchy; and Joseph Birkett, a career prosecutor with support in law enforcement circles and from some of the more independent board members.
Franzen’s selection in January of the highly regarded retired judge defused the controversy and let board members, who had to approve the appointment, avoid taking sides in the contest.
“It was a most fortuitous thing in that it gave the board an instant ability to see how I was going to deal with, and in fact did deal with, a very tough political issue in a way that got them off the hook-all of them, regardless of which side they were on,” Franzen said.
Franzen has been successful with many issues that had been raised initially by Botti. Botti, for example, had pushed for a road bond issue and had promised relief two years ago for flooding problems in southeast DuPage.
Like Botti, Franzen also has been strongly critical of spending and management practices at DuPage Airport in West Chicago. Franzen recently described the airport as “the most un-Republican public works program in this county.”
“I believe in 90 percent of what Al Botti stood for,” Franzen said. “He was absolutely in touch with what the voters are thinking and feeling. He just didn’t know how to get things done.”
For his part, Botti gives Franzen an “A” for what he has accomplished, though he sees himself as the Marine assault force that opened a beachhead for Franzen.
About the only tension so far appears to have been provided by Franzen’s miscalculation of the favorable sentiment toward the DuPage Convalescent Center and his underestimating of the opposition to talk of selling the institution or turning its management over to a private company.
There also appears to be some lingering coolness toward Franzen from some quarters of the Republican organization.
Some see him as a bit too independent or perhaps not as grateful as they expected for the party’s support in last year’s election. Franzen seems to have a base of support independent of the party and a demonstrated ability to raise substantial sums of campaign money on his own.
Though Franzen dismisses speculation that he may run for governor in the future, political pundits believe he may be cultivating a reputation as a bit of an independent. It probably would be an asset, they say, in a statewide campaign if he were to put some distance between himself and Illinois Senate President James “Pate” Philip (R-Wood Dale), the county’s GOP chairman.
