Third Airport talk resurrected, but are we any closer to it actually being built

In the three-plus decades that I’ve covered news events in and around Chicago, there’s one story that seems to have lingered on beyond belief – a “third airport” for the metropolitan area.

Will this site ever become an airport?

It was a concept that was going through the process being planned and someday built, with the idea being that the first flights would be departing the new airport just prior to the beginning of 21^st Century – and would be expanded to full capacity probably about a decade ago.

THE LAST TIME I was out in the cornfields of Will County just south of Peotone, there was nothing resembling any of this having occurred. In fact, we’re really no closer now than we were back in the early 1990s to having another airport to relieve the congestion that exists at O’Hare International and Midway airports.

Which is why I find it humorous to learn that Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., signed off on a letter, along with Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, and several Congressmen, state legislators and mayors/village presidents from across the southern part of the Chicago area.

All of those political people are asking Gov. J.B. Pritzker to put $150 million in the next state budget to pay for improvements that would need to be made to the rural Will County site that has oft been considered for an airport.

Kelly tries to resurrect project … 

As in road repairs and utility connections leading to the site, along with an interchange on Interstate 57 that would make it possible for people to access the site – rather than whiz on by as they drive south to Kankakee or (a little further) Champaign-Urbana.

ALL OF WHICH is stuff that should have been decades ago if our officials were the least bit serious about developing a new airport for the Chicago area.

Instead, this is a project that has been perennially bogged down in partisan politics – with some people thinking that building any sort of project that would encourage economic development at the far south end of the Chicago area being a complete waste of time.

There’s nothing there, they argue. Why try to develop anything there?

… that Rauner tried to kill off for good

Of course, part of the problem is that supporters look at an airport project solely in terms of what can they gain from it. Not from any aviation perspective or whether it makes any sense to do an airport there.

IT’S ALMOST LIKE they’re following the logic of “Field of Dreams.” Remember? “It you build it, he will come.”

Although instead of the ghost of one-time White Sox superstar Joe Jackson, it would be jobs. And possibly the development of nearby towns such as Peotone, Beecher or Monee (with a combined population of 13,000) into municipalities of significance -- rather than rural burgs on the fringe of Chicago.

Whether that will happen remains to be seen.

Some think this site will be as under-utilized … 

For we went through four years of Bruce Rauner as governor, who always made it clear he didn’t want to be bothered with this project. Meaning that all the work former Gov. Pat Quinn tried to accomplish on the project was laid to waste.

NOT ALL THAT different from the ways that President Donald Trump has tried to undo anything and everything that had predecessor Barack Obama’s name attached to it. Would throwing money at the airport project enable it to return to life? Or has it lingered too long to survive?

The issue I wonder about is whether the need for a third airport for the Chicago area still exists the way it did back in the 1980s. As Kelly points out in her letter, United and American airlines coped with the crowded conditions of Chicago airports by moving their domestic hubs from O’Hare to airports in Denver and Dallas.

While O’Hare has dropped from the 12st busiest cargo airport to number 21. Maybe we could have kept these previous rankings if we had acted a few decades ago – instead of letting our partisan politicking take over.

… as the airport near Mascoutah

It may be too late, and we could be in danger of developing something along the lines of the MidAmerica St. Louis Airport in Mascoutah, Ill. – which for many years sat unused and got tabbed as the “Gateway to Nowhere.” I’m sure some are eager to tag similar label to any Peotone-related project.

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EXTRA: How many chances does Gov. Rauner need to say Madigan is corrupt?

Listening to Gov. Bruce Rauner say this week he wants there to be a dozen formal debates between now and Election Day reminds me of the 1998 election cycle.

Pritzker only wants three

Specifically, the portion of the cycle in which Democrats had their candidates fight it out for who would get to be the gubernatorial nominee who would ultimately take on Republican George Ryan.

THAT ELECTION CYCLE ultimately saw Southern Illinois favorite son candidate Glenn Poshard use his regional base to beat up on urban candidates John Schmidt, Roland Burris and Jim Burns. It also was one in which there were many debates.

It seems the candidates were traveling all over the state, making appearances and trying to make the locals feel like they were privileged to be in the presence of the gubernatorial aspirants.

Sounds great? Not really.

What I remember of that election cycle was that they became less about speaking to the would-be voters, and more about giving every broadcast organization involved in sponsoring an event a chance to pretend that THEIR debate was the ONLY debate that mattered.

Rauner must really want to say "Madigan evil"

WHILE NEWSPAPER COVERAGE wound up making these events all sound so repetitive of each other.

Largely because they were. Candidates mostly ignored the questions they were asked and used their time to issue rebuttals to whatever negative pot-shots were made against them. I can remember sitting through those events and feeling incredibly uninformed.

I was always thankful that election officials in the future went back to thinking in terms of three as the number of debates that were needed prior to an Election Day. Even though I do believe there is benefit to a structured-format event in which the candidates confront each other.

McCann will take 12 too

So to hear Rauner say he wants a dozen debates fills me with dread. How many times do we need to hear the man spew insipid claims of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s corruption? How many times do we need to hear rhetorical links of Madigan’s support for billionaire J.B. Pritzker’s candidacy?

THREE WILL PROBABLY be more than enough. Although I expect Rauner will insist on complaining he’s not being given ample times to screech “Dump Madigan!!!” to prospective voters.

If anything, Rauner is merely confirming my own political hypothesis – which is that the first candidate in any election cycle to complain about the number of debates is the loser.

So I’m inclined to be sympathetic to the Pritzker camp which has suggested three debates – although I’ll admit Pritzker is playing some hard-core politicking of his own in picking where they will be held, and pretty much making it a “take it or leave it” choice for Rauner to accept.

Two of the debates would be held in Chicago, with one to be co-sponsored by the Telemundo Spanish-language television affiliate along with the Chicago Urban League. Where I’m sure we’ll get tons of questions intended to remind us that Rauner is just a rich white guy who doesn’t get it. Along with reminders of all the vetoes Rauner made last week on measures related to immigration.

AS FOR THE one debate intended outside of metro Chicago, it would be set for Quincy, the city along the Mississippi River with a veterans’ home that has been the focus of instances of veterans who died from Legionaires’ disease. It’s probably the one place in rural Illinois where Rauner does NOT want to set foot.

Multiple debates didn't help Poshard win

And as for the traditional debate held by the League of Women Voters, that’s a group most likely not interested in cheap political pandering by any candidate.

I do find it intriguing that Conservative Party candidate Sam McCann is accepting Rauner’s offer of 12 debates. But that’s because he needs as much attention and opportunity as possible to let voters know he exists if he’s to be at all irrelevant come Nov. 6.

Which means it’s really sad that Rauner, an incumbent with significant personal wealth (he essentially bought the post in the 2014 election cycle) feels he’s just as desperate. All the more reason many voters have already shifted their focus to the mayoral election cycle of 2019.

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Should Chicago focus guv attention on St. Louis suburbs, Southern Illinois?

In a certain sense, there’s a logic to the notion that the rural third of Illinois will decide the Democratic primary for governor in next year’s election cycle – even though the bulk of votes in that primary will be cast in the urban Chicago-area majority of the state.

Gubernatorial hopeful J.B. Pritzker meets with St. Louis-area Dems who now endorse his political bid.. Photograph provided by Pritzker

When our Chicago politicos get all wrapped up in petty infighting, it can very well be the less urbane elements of Illinois that wind up deciding who gets to call themselves “da Winnah” on Election Night!

SO IT’S NOT absurd that J.B. Pritzker, the billionaire whose family fortune originates from the Hyatt Hotels chain, is making a big deal of the fact that he got the political support this week of the Democratic Party organization of St. Clair County.

For those of you Chicagoans who don’t know of anything beyond your own ward or suburban township (and may not even know what ward number or township name you reside in), St. Clair is one of two counties on the Mississippi River that are part of the St. Louis metropolitan area.

It is an area, along with neighboring Madison County, that can lean Democrat, and could be significant in turning out a significant number of votes. Unlike many other Southern Illinois counties where there are so few people living there that the number of ballots cast aren’t enough to boost the vote total – even if you win!

Which is the problem with the line of thinking of those who prefer candidate Chris Kennedy. They were claiming on various Internet sites that some 20 Southern Illinois Democratic organizations prefer the “Son of Bobby” to J.B. – but many of those counties in recent elections have shown a willingness to back Republicans and may wind up being in the Rauner camp come November 2018.

DAIBER: Wishing he had St. Clair support

PRITZKER WANTS US to think he’s the guy who can dominate the rural vote, while also taking a portion of the urban Illinois vote, to be the successful candidate next year. The sooner he can be perceived as the winner, the quicker he can began focusing on ripping Rauner, rather than bashing fellow Democrats – whose support he’s going to need once the primary election is over.

There is some history in the not-distant past indicating that people in places like Peoria and East St. Louis can determine the outcome.

There was the 1998 election cycle in which three Chicago-based candidates slugged it out for the city vote, while former Congressman Glenn Poshard of Southern Illinois managed to win by dominating the rural vote. Of course, that produced a whole lot of bitter urban voters who either sat out the general election – or actually cast votes for Republican George Ryan (who actually won the north lakefront wards of Chicago that year).

POSHARD: Won primary w/ rural strategy

Then there was 2002, the cycle that saw Rod Blagojevich rise from an anonymous member of Congress to the state’s governor.

BLAGOJEVICH ACTUALLY FINISHED third in Cook County in the Democratic primary behind former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas and former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris, but won so many rural counties by such large margins (where people were voting against whomever they perceived was the Chicago favorite) that he won.

He then went on to defeat Jim Ryan in the general election that year because of the perception that 26 years of Republicans as governor was long enough.

Could Pritzker be having similar thoughts in hoping that voters next November come to believe four years is long enough for Bruce Rauner and they vote against his re-election – no matter how many millions of HIS own dollars he pumps into his GOP campaign?

There is one bit of significance in that Pritzker’s move may be meant to discourage those people who prefer the idea of Bob Daiber (“Who??!?”) as the Democratic nominee for governor.

DAIBER IS THE regional superintendent of schools for Madison County, and he’s hoping that as the lone non-Chicago-area resident running for governor, he can appeal to the non-urban population. He wants to win the Democratic primary via the Glenn Poshard route.

KENNEDY: Some still think he's in the running

What is the significance that the largest county Democratic organization for Southern Illinois is backing Pritzker rather than Daiber? Could it be that the St. Clair Dems are showing a lack of support for Daiber because they think he’s just too unfunded compared to the millions that Pritzker could put into his own campaign to take seriously.

Voting for the “hometown boy” (or in this case, the guy from the neighboring county) only goes so far. Those people who are suffering from the political infighting now taking place within Illinois state government are most concerned with wanting to win.

Supporting the local favorite doesn't feel good if it results on Election Day of 2019 with your preferred candidate sitting in an anonymous seat buried in the middle of political spectators – rather than taking the oath of office and preparing to dance that night with his spouse at the Inaugural ball!

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Don’t conservatives trust the police? Or is this all just partisan nonsense?

There is one aspect of the political debate taking place these days concerning the ability of people to carry pistols on their person for self-defense – the fact that it has the “law and order” types now questioning the authority of the police.

These people can't seem to play nice

These socially conservative types are usually the first to claim that police need all these powers in order to do the job of offering protection to the populace from criminal elements.

EVEN IF THOSE powers cross over the line into violating the privacy of the public, these types usually claim that the police should be trusted. Heck, why should we worry unless we’re doing something wrong?

But when the issue of “concealed carry” comes up, they suddenly become critical.

That was evident in Springfield this week when an Illinois Senate committee gave its recommendation to a measure that would allow some people in Illinois to get permits to carry firearms in public.

Actually, what the bill by state Sen. Kwame Raoul, D-Chicago, would do is put it into the hands of local officials to decide whether people should be able to get a permit that is valid within their communities.

THAT’S ANOTHER “VALUE” that the conservatives usually claim to support – trusting local people to decide for themselves what they want. But in this case, they’re willing to throw that “value” into the trash can.

What Raoul’s measure – which still faces a tough political fight in the Legislature and may well fail to gain approval – reflects is the fact that Illinois is NOT a unified place on this issue. It concedes that there are different ideals at stake, and tries to let everybody have their view on their home turf.

Unlike the people who are being led by the nose by the National Rifle Association whose primary goal in all this political blather seems to be to impose their own small-town, rural viewpoint on a state whose population is overwhelmingly urban.

This particular measure would require anyone from Chicago who seeks a permit to carry a pistol publicly to first submit to a review by the Chicago Police Department – which would have the authority to reject it before the state could even consider it.

IT ALSO WOULD allow the “home rule” communities (larger municipalities of 25,000 people or more) to say for themselves if they also would like to impose restrictions on firearms within their own boundaries.

NRA-types say this is unacceptable. When their lobbyist, Todd Vandermyde, told the Chicago Tribune that he thinks places like Chicago and Oak Park will throw up so many procedural roadblocks that it will be next to impossible for people to get permits in those communities.

They also spew out the rhetoric that people who get a firearm permit in their home community would wind up being criminalized if they venture into Chicago – or some other community where firearms themselves are “non grata.”

Of course, these are the same kind of people who usually go on and on and on about how they want nothing to do with Chicago and go out of their way to never visit the place.

BUT NOW, WE’RE supposed to believe that they’re eager to visit? They probably would; only for the reason that they want to be seen in public carrying their holstered pistols.

Which as far as I’m concerned is the last thing we need to have – a bully who’s armed and thinks he has a “cause” to pursue.

I’m not about to venture a guess as to how this issue will be resolved. The Legislature has until June 9 (the deadline set by the U.S. Court of Appeals based in Chicago) to do something, but the General Assembly’s calendar only gives them 13 more days to do something.

Maybe we’ll get a legislative miracle – although it probably won’t occur until the final hours of May 31. More likely, our differences will keep anything from occurring – and we fall over the cliff into legal uncertainty.

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Call it a refreshing reaction to repulsive attitude once mistaken for acceptable

I was at a theater this weekend with one of those types of crowds that insists on talking back to the screen. Or maybe I was just seated right in the middle of a group of a dozen people who were particularly vocal about their reactions.

We all were watching “42,” the new film that purports to give us the story of Jackie Robinson’s beginning in baseball back in the years following the Second World War.

THE FILM HAS the potential for controversy because the producers didn’t go out of their way to couch the ways in which southern ballplayers and fans (both Yankee and Dixie) were blunt in their use of epithets and other means of expressing their displeasure with the breakdown of the major leagues as a white-only entity.

I have no doubt that such words really were used. In fact, there was hardly anything in the film’s facts that hadn’t been documented excessively elsewhere. This film does not give us any new information or different understanding of the facts.

It does depict anecdotes that we have all had the opportunity to read for decades. I suppose for people who don’t want to read and need things visualized, this film is a plus.

So for me, the intriguing part of seeing this film was literally listening to the reactions of the people sitting around me. They were appalled at so much of what came from the mouths of actors portraying Dodger ballplayers Dixie Walker and Kirby Higbe and Philadelphia Phillies manager Ben Chapman.

I CAN’T RECALL the last time I heard so much booing and hissing and chants of “You suck!” being hurled at the screen every time somebody said something scurrilous, scandalous or just downright mean and vile!

And no, this wasn’t in a movie theater in a predominantly African-American neighborhood. I’m sure at least a few of the people who were in attendance were amongst the types of individuals who believe that racism is something that certain people in our society exaggerate in order to gain something for themselves at the expense of the greater good! (My fingers feel like they went to the toilet just typing up that line of hooey).

To see that so many were so offended at a reminder of just how blunt and guttural the racist expressions once were is truly evidence of how much our society has changed for the better. Perhaps we need more reminders of what “Jim Crow” once was to keep us from reverting back as a society?

If anything, that scene where actor Alan Tudyk (who portrayed Chapman) is the part that will forevermore stick in my mind. The endless flow of slurs – taken from what really happened when Brooklyn first played the Phillies in ’47 – sticks in my mind more than anything actor Chadwick Boseman said or did while portraying Robinson himself.

PERSONALLY, I WONDER if those people who wanted to make a campaign issue back in 2008 about Barack Obama and his family once being members of a congregation presided over by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright (he who has been captured on video saying “God Damn America”) have second thoughts.

Since what Wright was expressing anger over with such rhetoric was a society that once thought people like Chapman were completely acceptable – and ones who bought into the explanation that Chapman really did give to reporters to explain his on-field rhetoric.

That ballplayers like Hank Greenberg and Joe DiMaggio were able to “laugh about it” when they were hit with on-field taunts for being Jewish and Italian, respectively. Anybody who has ever read anything about Greenberg, at least, knows he didn’t think it was humorous.

We are now able to look back and see just how ridiculous such trash-thought truly was. Just like last year’s BIG film “Lincoln” made some political interests look downright ignorant for the way they tried defending the institution of slavery.

IF ONLY WE could keep this thought in mind – how will people some 50 years from now look back at us when they have to think about an issue such as gay marriage, or perhaps the immigration reform spectacle?

Which means Jackie Robinson’s life story may still be teaching us some life’s lessons – or at least more than the 1950 film “The Jackie Robinson Story,” notable only because it starred Robinson as himself in a fictionalized account of his life.

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Will Midwestern U.S. send Obama back to White House for four more years?

It’s just a matter of time before the presidential campaign devolves into an attempt to portray Barack Obama as a Chicago political hack unworthy of re-election. Mitt Romney will find some way of using that label – most likely in a lame, nonsensical way.

Which is why I couldn’t help but be amused to learn of the results of a new Gallup Organization poll that studied presidential candidate popularity by region.

FOR IT SEEMS that Obama “wins” the support of Midwesterners. Could it be the fact that Obama is an adopted Chicagoan that makes him seem a little more comprehendible than a candidate who can claim Michigan in his family tree – but really isn’t clear about where he’s from or what his “home” region is!

It would be hilarious to see how the ideologues try to explain the fact that Obama’s origins are his strength, and not a weakness because he’s not “just like them.”

For the record, the Gallup poll had Obama leading Romney on Thursday by a 47-44 percent lead. It’s slim. It’s not going to be a large, overwhelming margin like in 2008.

Insofar as regionalism is concerned, Obama is the preference of the East Coast, while Romney gets solid support from the South – both of which are completely predictable outcomes.

AS FOR THE West and the Midwest, Obama leads Romney in both regions, although by not much. In the Midwest, Obama leads Romney 46-44 percent.

And while there are some Midwesterners who want to view Chicago as a drag on the region, there will be others who will be unable to back a Massachusetts resident who has no chance of winning his own home state.

OBAMA: Regional backing

Indiana is likely to wind up shifting its Electoral College votes back toward the GOP candidate this time around (it really was a fluke that the state went for Obama in ’08). But Illinois could wind up being joined by Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin in giving Camp Obama a base to rely upon.

Heck, even those Cleveland and Toledo voters may wind up overcoming the Cincinnati electorate, which would result in putting Ohio in the Democratic Party column on Nov. 6.

PART OF WHAT is involved in this, according to Gallup, is the fact that non-white people are overwhelmingly for Obama. Which probably means they’re really more opposed to GOPers with their hostile rhetoric and are willing to take it out on Romney’s presidential aspirations.

Which also is what makes it so predictable that Vice President Joe Biden would go for the jugular on Thursday when he spoke in Houston to the NAACP convention.

He got the string of “boos” from the African-American crowd when he brought up the name “Robert Bork” and suggested that a Romney administration would be filled with similar ideologues.

When Biden says the election cycle this year, “is a fight for the heart and soul of America,” I’d argue that we’ll find that “heart and soul” right here in the Midwestern U.S. – the part of the nation that has as its symbolic capital our city of Chicago.

WHICH MAKES ME wonder if the Midwest has become what Illinois used to be – the bellwether that provides a sample for how the election will turn out as a whole!

For as Gallup noted in their poll background info, the only election cycle of the past 25 years where Midwesterners did not support the overall popular vote winner was in 2000.

And we all recall that Election ’00 was truly the ultimate fluke – a set of circumstances we’re never going to see repeated in our electoral lifetimes.

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What a batch of bunk!

I realize the kind of people who actually show up for Election Night campaign parties to hear (live and in-person) the victory or concession speeches of political candidates are the types who like to be fed the political equivalent of Pablum.

Yet as I listened on the radio to the speeches made respectively by Mitt Romney (upon his presidential primary victory Tuesday in Illinois) and Rick Santorum (who lost yet again), I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of people these were who were getting so worked up over the trite trash being spewed by both candidates for president.

ROMNEY WAS LIVING it up while speaking before a gathering in northwest suburban Chicago, being able to claim a “victory” in President Barack Obama’s home state.

Of course, the fact that all this means is that he gained significant suburban support without really impacting the rest of Illinois means his “victory” isn’t likely translate into Electoral College delegates from the Land of Lincoln in the Nov. 6 general election.

Yet he was in his glory in going on a rant about how Obama is damaging our nation by pursuing policies that inhibit business interests from being able to advance themselves.

After all, they’d be able to create more jobs if only they didn’t have to comply with all those pesky regulatory guidelines that are meant to protect the environment on behalf of the public.

PERSONALLY, I FOUND his attempt at giving a history “lesson” to be the most lame aspect of his speech. He tried citing several moments in history that “wouldn’t have happened” if a “President Obama” were in office at that moment.

The lightbulb would have been banned, and the Wright Brothers would have been cited for stirring up excess dust when they first invented what evolved into the airplane.



An environmental crime? Only in the mind of Mitt Romney



Meanwhile, the crowd cheered and applauded – lapping up the nonsense political talk about as eagerly as a dog with no sense that drinks from the toilet bowl because he (or she) doesn’t know any better.

Personally, I found the rhetoric to be absurd – although since I was driving an automobile at the time I had to focus my attention on the road ahead rather than start screaming rants at Romney’s persona.

WHICH NOW SHIFTS its focus away from Illinois – Louisiana is next. Just as quickly as the Republicans swarmed over our state (except for Chicago proper), they will now neglect us.

We were a cheap fling for them, and once we “put out” with our presidential delegates (Romney gained a significant number because his campaign was better structured) we get cast aside.

That literally was the feeling I sensed from the speech given by Rick Santorum (which I also heard on the car radio).

For it seems that Santorum couldn’t wait to leave our state. He gave his Illinois primary concession speech from Gettysburg, Pa., and going on-and-on about how glad he was to be at home.

BUT WHILE ROMNEY’S rhetoric offended my sensibilities of truth, Santorum just gave me a chuckle.

I particularly enjoyed his comment about how he “won” the bulk of votes in Southern Illinois, central Illinois and western Illinois. Or, as he put it, the parts of Illinois where, “conservatives and Republicans populate.”

By that line of logic, the 1994 general election in Illinois wasn’t bad because Democrats continued to dominate Cook County – even if they lost the rest of the state and we got stuck for two years with a Republican-dominated state government that pushed an ideological agenda that targeted Chicago interests.

It would have been nonsense 18 years ago, and is nonsense now.

TALK ABOUT TURNING “defeat” into “Victory!!!” I only wish I could have been in the company of a Romney-ite (or should we call them Mitt-men?) to hear what they thought of that rhetorical flourish.

And I’m pretty sure that sane people (a.k.a., the real majority) will be thankful that yet another Election Day has come and gone.

Only 231 more “shopping” days until the next one.

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Do we need so many police chiefs?

There’s a bill pending these days before the Illinois House of Representatives; one that would make it easier for police departments in individual municipalities to be done away with and combined into larger law enforcement entities.

I heard about this particular bill earlier this week from a state legislator who absolutely detests the idea. He denounces it as a “bad bill” and makes it clear that he’s going to do whatever it takes to kill this concept off.

PERSONALLY, I THINK his effort will succeed – although not because of this individual legislator (who is way too low-ranking to have any such influence, which is why I’m not going to name him). It’s just that I can see his attitude when it comes to local police to be very pervasive among political people.

There’s no way they’re going to give up their local police departments – which make them feel like they are people of importance. After all, they have their own departments and their own chiefs who have to answer directly to them.

If their respective home communities got merged into some larger-scale law enforcement agency, it might very well show how insignificant some of these towns and villages truly are.

So for the time being, we likely can count on each and every ‘burg having its own police chief and its own law enforcement officers – anxiously patrolling their local streets to keep them safe from crime that they likely think spills over from surrounding communities.

AFTER ALL, ___________________ is far too fine a community to have criminals of its own, the local officials (fill in the blank yourself) will proclaim.

Nonsense!

Because I have to admit that when I heard this particular legislator (who comes from Cook County) start attacking this particular bill, I couldn’t help but get motivated to think what a wonderful idea it truly is.

Perhaps it is because I come from Cook County, where our 129 municipalities run the gamut from Chicago’s 2.7-something million people to the communities that barely have 1,000 people.

HAVE YOU EVER been to Hometown, Ill.?

Not that this is a bash on Hometown, a southwestern suburb so tied into Oak Lawn that I’m sure many people passing through don’t even realize they are separate municipalities.

I also have seen many smaller suburbs where the local police department is a chief, a second-in-command (who usually carries the rank of Lieutenant) and a full-time patrol officer or two – backed up with many part-time cops who do their patrols to bring in extra money to bolster their “real” job.

I wonder what is truly accomplished – other than the fact that the mayor (usually a ‘village president’ in reality) of that town gets to say he has his own department.

PERHAPS WE’RE AT the point where we ought to merge all these local departments into one law enforcement agency. In fact, there are times when I think that the Cook County sheriff’s police ought to be patrolling all of the county – and not just the little patches of unincorporated area that exist.

Of course, that would require a significant upgrade in the budget the county sheriff gets. I’m sure Tom Dart wouldn’t be able to undertake such an effort on his current budget – although he’s already being asked to patrol the streets of suburban Ford Heights without any increase in funding.

Although considering that many suburban municipalities are having their own budget crunches these days and that the cash-consuming part of their budgets is their public safety agencies (police and fire departments), maybe it would cost the towns less money if a larger-scale entity were to do the patrols.

They likely could do it at a slightly lesser cost than it now takes to maintain individual police agencies in all those suburban towns.

PERHAPS IT SHOULD be only the largest of suburban towns (and the city of Chicago itself) that have their own police departments?

Then again, perhaps even that is a mistake. Take Miami and Dade County, Fla., where it literally is the equivalent of a county police that patrols the entire area. Maybe that’s something that city is doing right.

Besides, I have often heard those suburban officials complain about how they are susceptible to gang-related crime because those gang members know how to jump across suburban boundaries at-will – using jurisdictional issues to evade arrest for their actions.

Making an all-mighty Cook County police (or Chicago-area police, if you will) could help get around that, while also potentially making police structure more efficient.

THE ONLY ONE who really suffers is the politician – whose electoral ego will take a body check.

Then again, that probably is sufficient reason in the “real world” for legislators to vote against this (they don’t want to tick off the local political operatives who got them elected to their seats in Springfield in the first place).

So in the name of political expediency, the one who will take a body check this spring will likely be we, the people, when this bill withers away faster than Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s attempts to have the General Assembly impose that registration fee on people who own handguns.

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