DuPage County Board Chairman Gayle Franzen has promised to seek the ouster of top officials at DuPage Airport once he strengthens his control over the airport’s board of commissioners.
“There will be a change in the management at the airport, and it will happen soon,” Franzen said Friday during a speech in Geneva before members of the Greater St. Charles Chamber of Commerce.
Franzen declined to publicly identify the officials whose ouster he seeks. But he reportedly has voiced unhappiness in private with the job done by Thomas H. Fawell Sr., airport director.
There also appears to be an undercurrent of animosity between Franzen and S. Chris Harris, the airport board chairman.
Franzen has been a vocal critic of the West Chicago airfield and its multimillion-dollar expansion project since he launched his campaign for County Board chairman in mid-1993.
Four of the nine members on the airport board were appointed in March by Franzen. He is expected to make two additional appointments next month once Gov. Jim Edgar signs legislation that clears a legal obstacle that has blocked one of his appointees from taking a seat on the board.
Among the appointments announced in March was business executive Joseph Kindlon, a Wheaton resident and chairman of a Chicago packaging firm. Kindlon, though, also is a member of the Illinois Racing Board, and a provision of Illinois law had barred those sitting on another public board from serving on an airport board.
Franzen has said he intends to reappoint Kindlon to the airport board once the legislation eliminating the provision is signed into law.
He also is expected to replace Commissioner Edwin Burtis, who continues to serve on the board though his term expired in May.
Franzen said he has made no secret of the fact that he wants to see a change in the management of the airport once he has put six of his appointees on the board.
The airport has been criticized for building a $14 million designer golf course on property set aside for storm water drainage on the south end of the field and $10 million Flight Center building that has been underutilized since it opened.
The Kane County communities of St. Charles, Geneva and Batavia have been mostly hostile to the airport since 1987, when Illinois Senate President James “Pate” Philip orchestrated a change in state law that put the field under the control of the DuPage County-dominated DuPage Airport Authority rather than the Fox Valley Airport Authority, over which Kane County had wielded considerable influence.
