Upon reflection, I think the most impressive thing about last week’s dog-and-pony unveiling of the O’Hare-to-Loop express service is that Mayor Rahm and Elon Musk got through their press conference with straight faces.
Those hundreds of millions of public dollars may not count to Mayor Rahm or Musk, his new best pal, but they sure would have come in handy to the public school kids who’ve gone without art, music, theater, special education, and so forth down through the years.
When all is said and done, that wisecrack may be the best thing to come out of this boondoggle.
The aldermen must choose between voting no and risking the wrath of Rahm—a terrible wrath to risk. Or voting yes and facing the wrath of voters, who will want to know why there’s money for such frivolities and not for special education or janitors to clean our filthy schools.
In defense of Rahm—and this really is no defense at all—Mayor Daley played the same game. In many ways, this deal comes straight out of the Daley’s playbook: Underestimate a project’s cost while overestimating its benefits.
Mayors Rahm and Daley had a surefire way to kill legislation proposed by council independents. They’d send it to the City Council’s Rules Committee to die a quiet death.
