Daley's Lawyers Demand Court Hearing

While, as the saying goes, you can't fight City Hall, there's nothing that says City Hall can't fight you -- especially if you're the FAA and especially if the subject is Meigs Field. Mayor Richard Daley's administration has decided to fight a $33,000 fine levied by the FAA over the midnight raid on Meigs Field, which left the runway unusable and eventually led to the near-downtown airport's demise.

At the center of the issue leading to the fine is the city's failure to provide 30-days' notice to the FAA pending Meigs' closure on March, 30th, 2003.

"There wasn't enough time to allow us to give the FAA 30 days' notice.... They didn't want to continue an airport at that site. Once they canceled the lease, we had no basis for continuing to operate an airport at that location," Chicago Law Department spokeswoman Jennifer Doyle told the Chicago Sun-Times. "We have a substantial amount of evidence supporting the fact that our closure falls within the exceptions to that rule, and we want the opportunity to present that information."

That just doesn't make sense to the president of the Friends of Meigs Field. He told the Sun-Times Daley's contention that Meigs posed a security risk in the wake of the 9/11 attacks was nothing more than a ruse to cover his real dream of turning Meigs -- and all of Northerly Island -- into a city park.

"If it had been an emergency, they could have closed the runway through some other means -- like parking trucks" on it, he said.

"Our position remains that they acted against federal regulations and, as a result, they killed a vibrant city airport," AOPA spokeswoman Kathleen Roy told the Sun-Times. The AOPA filed the FAA complaint that led to the $33,000 fine.

FMI: www.faa.gov, www.friendsofmeigs.org