CHICAGO -- The Daley administration agreed Monday to pay a $33,000 fine -- and repay $1 million in federal airport development grants -- to settle claims stemming from Mayor Richard M. Daley’s midnight destruction of Meigs Field in March 2003.

Monday’s settlement between City Hall and the Federal Aviation Administration resolves the long-running dispute in a way that is less costly to Chicago taxpayers than it might have been.

The city used $1.5 million in federal grants and airline ticket taxes to demolish Meigs. The FAA could have imposed penalties of up to $4.5 million -- three times the amount improperly diverted.


Instead, City Hall has agreed to reimburse the airport development fund by $1 million using money from a "non-aviation fund." Under the deal, airport revenue can go only to clean up "airport-related environmental contamination" at Northerly Island.

The city has agreed to pay the full $33,000 fine imposed by the FAA after Daley failed to provide the required 30-day notice when he sent in bulldozers to carve giant X’s into the Meigs runway.

Steve Whitney, president of Friends of Meigs Field, applauded the FAA for "holding the city’s feet to the fire" by requiring it to pay the full fine for violating the notice requirement.

Congress has since made the fine 10 times as high "because they never want this to happen again," Whitney said.

Good for the FAA!

I'm so mad they dimolished Meigs.

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For a start; then perhaps drawing and quartering...

It was a criminal act- he should be in prison.

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Sad, but true.

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Perfectly fine opinion.  However, as you said, it was the way in which he did it that was absolutely despicable, not to mention hazardous.

It's a mere slap on the wrist.  He has to pay back the $1M that he misused, and only got a $33K fine.  That's less than a year's wages for a janator in city hall.

Hagar,  your points are exactly correct.  I mis-spoke when I said "he".  I was thinking "city" though.  That's why I said it's a slap on the wrist.  To an individual, $33K may be significant.  But to the 3rd largest city in the US, $33K is trivial.  But you're also correct, the taxpayers will foot the bill.  But then again, Chicago is not shy about imposing taxation on it's citizens.

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The Friends of Meigs have proposed a compromise between the two: a park and an airfield.


http://64.143.36.15/

But Daley needs the "scare factor" of an airport to maintain control of the site for... what else? Luxury housing and commercial development.
There will be a park, of course- this, in addition to security from those little airplanes plummeting out of the sky, is what Daley  has sold to the people of Chicago for 20 years now.
But mark my words, there will be a mall or a casino or condos there in the near future: no politician fights that hard and for that long just for a park, especially in a city that already has adequate parkland. He's a proven liar, and a criminal.  Do I believe he just wants more green space for the good people of Chicago? Uhh... no. 

Not that he stands to benefit personally in any way from kickbacks from lucrative no-bid construction deals or anything like that- I mean, after all, he's the mayor of Chicago!! 
Maybe he just wants a new mayoral mansion right there on the water...