Michael A. Bilandic papers

Biography/Profile

An accomplished lawyer, Michael Bilandic (1923-2002) is best remembered as a civil servant who served in each of the three branches of government. Bilandic was an alderman for seven years, served as mayor of Chicago for two and a half years, and sat as a justice on both the Appellate and Illinois Supreme Courts. While receiving mixed reviews of his work as an alderman and as mayor, he won his highest praise for his work as a jurist. Bilandic died in 2002 at the age of seventy-eight from a heart rupture.

Born February 13, 1923 to Croatian immigrants, Michael Bilandic grew up in Bridgeport, a south side neighborhood of Chicago. He attended grammar school at St. Jerome's Croatian School and graduated from DeLasalle High School in 1940. In his youth Bilandic developed a strong interest in politics, learning from his neighbor and mentor then-alderman Richard J. Daley. Following high school Bilandic left Bridgeport to attend St. Mary's College in Winona, Minnesota. After graduating he spent four years as a first lieutenant in the Marine Corps in the South Pacific during World War II. Some sources indicate that he fought in the battle of Iwo Jima.

After his military service, Bilandic returned to Chicago where he graduated from DePaul University Law School. He began his legal career in 1949 as a law clerk at the firm where he would become a senior partner, Anixter, Delaney, Bilandic & Piggott. He practiced law as a corporate attorney for twenty-eight years. Bilandic also served as a master in chancery and a special assistant Illinois attorney general.

Bilandic renewed his interest in politics at the same time that he began practicing law. Back in his Bridgeport neighborhood at the request of alderman Daley, Bilandic volunteered for the Democratic Party in the eleventh ward. He increased his involvement in politics in 1955 when he campaigned for Daley's first mayoral race. Fourteen years later in 1969 Mayor Daley invited Bilandic to run for his old aldermanic seat as the eleventh ward incumbent, Matthew Danaher, was seeking to be appointed clerk of the Cook County Circuit Court. Bilandic won by a large margin, becoming the first non Irish-American to hold that seat in decades. The following year, Daley appointed Bilandic as a member of the City Council finance committee, reportedly the most powerful committee of the Chicago City Council. In 1974, when Alderman Thomas Keane, the former chair of the finance committee, was indicted on fraud charges, Daley named Bilandic to replace Keane as chair.

Bilandic's tenure as an alderman has been both lauded and criticized. Dubbed a "legislative trailblazer" by supporters, he is remembered for his efforts to protect the environment. Most notably, Bilandic was the primary sponsor of an ordinance that banned lead paint and phosphates from detergent. Bilandic also supported the Lakefront Protection Ordinance, a bill that regulated condominium conversions, and he developed an ordinance that helped clarify and explain city planning. Detractors, however, describe Bilandic's policies as conservative, conceived to support the Chicago business community.

When Mayor Daley died in 1976 the Chicago City Council, after significant debate, chose Bilandic to sit as interim mayor. A special election was to be held in six months to elect a mayor to finish the remaining two years of Daley's term. Bilandic accepted the interim position announcing that he would not run for mayor in the special election, though he quickly changed his mind once he took office. In June 1977 Bilandic was elected as Chicago's fortieth mayor. One month after the election Bilandic married Heather Morgan, director of the Chicago Council on Fine Arts and daughter of a Chicago businessman. While Bilandic was mayor the couple had a son, Michael Morgan.

During his two and a half year term as mayor, Bilandic was principal in the resolution of a number of controversial issues regarding the city's development. Bilandic assisted in the negotiation of labor contract agreements with the city's grave-diggers, butchers, and members of the Chicago Lyric Opera Orchestra. He is also credited with ending the fifteen year dispute over a crosstown expressway, enabling Chicago to use $1.5 billion of federal money. Bilandic's initiatives included arranging low interest mortgage loans insured by the city for middle-income families and organizing the first Chicago Fest. An avid runner, Bilandic lent his support to the first Chicago Marathon and initiated the now eighteen mile lakefront running path by designating five miles of an old equestrian trial as a jogging path.

Though described by Chicago Sun Times columnist Mike Royko as "Mayor Bland," Bilandic's term as mayor had some colorful moments including an ongoing public battle with politician Jane Byrne and a major snowstorm. Bilandic fired Byrne from her Daley appointed position as commissioner of Consumer Sales, Weights and Measurements when she criticized the Mayor's role in negotiations with the taxi companies that resulted in increased fares. Bilandic also used his influence to remove Byrne as co-chair of the Cook County Regular Democratic Organization's Central Committee. Subsequently beginning in December 1978 and continuing into February 1979, a record seven feet of snow fell in Chicago coupled with twenty-four days of sub-zero temperatures. The city administration was highly criticized for its snow removal efforts and its handling of transportation issues. The most prominent transportation failing occurred during the first weeks of January when a blizzard caused O'Hare International Airport to close and interfered with the operation of the Chicago Transportation Authority's elevated train lines. Critics blamed Bilandic for the CTA decision to bypass a number of L stations on the south side of Chicago where a majority of African American passengers were stranded. In the administration's efforts to plow the city streets, it directed residents to move their cars to school parking lots it erroneously reported were plowed. For many Chicagoans the difficulties of the storm were exacerbated by Bilandic's television appearances where the Mayor congratulated the city on its snow removal operations.

Over accusations of election fraud, on February 27, 1979 Jane Byrne defeated Bilandic in the mayoral democratic primary. Byrne's campaign during the last month before the primary was negative and aggressive, causing Bilandic to publicly describe himself as a martyr, referencing the early Christians and the persecuted Jews. In April Byrne was elected the first woman Mayor of Chicago by a landslide vote. Some argue that Byrne's election marked the end of "machine politics" in Chicago.

Bilandic returned to the law following the election. He worked in private practice until 1984 when he was elected to the Illinois Appellate Court. Winning praise for his work on the bench, Bilandic's supporters posit that being a jurist was his true calling. In 1990 he was elected to a ten-year term as a justice on the Illinois Supreme Court, serving as chief justice from 1994 to 1997. Reviewing thousands of cases during his tenure on the court, Justice Bilandic wrote over 225 opinions. Three of his decisions involved high profile issues in death penalty cases. In the 1995 Verneal Jimerson case the court unanimously ruled that the defendant was entitled to a new trial because, the "knowing use of perjured testimony," Chief Justice Bilandic ruled, "constitutes a violation of due process." Two years later in the Marilyn Mulero case in another unanimous opinion, Justice Bilandic wrote that the defendant's motion to suppress a written statement to the police could not be used as evidence in the penalty phase of the case to imply that the defendant was trying to cover up her actions. In 1999 Justice Bilandic granted an extension of a hearing to determine whether Anthony Porter, who was convicted of murder, was mentally competent to be put to death. The extension was based on evidence gathered by Northwestern University professor David Protess and five of his students that supported the defendant's claim that he was wrongfully convicted.

Among Justice Bilandic's other opinions were landmark decisions in health care issues, grandparent's visitation rights, and single subject legislation. In one case filed against Chicago HMO, Justice Bilandic reinstated claims rejected by an appellate court decision that alleged that the insurance provider negligently assigned an excessive number of cases to one doctor, ultimately resulting in negligent treatment and injury to an infant. The court's rulings deemed that HMOs could be found liable for both medical malpractice and institutional negligence. Bilandic also wrote the opinion that severely limited the rights of grandparents under an Illinois statute that allowed grandparents to visit a grandchild over the objections of the parents. Unless the parents are deemed to be unfit, Bilandic ruled that they are presumed to be acting in the child's best interest and the state may not interfere with their decisions. Bilandic's decision in the case Johnson v. Edgar also sought to curb excessive state action, by forcing the legislature to follow the constitutional mandate to include only a single subject when passing legislation.

Throughout his career as a jurist, Bilandic won high praise from the legal community for his administrative work in the justice system. He restructured the Administrative Office of Illinois Courts, was involved in broad changes in the civil discovery rules, and was an advocate of mandatory arbitration. Bilandic supported the development of court ordered major civil case mediation and served as a liaison to the Alternative Dispute Resolution Committee. In 2001, one year after he retired from the bench, the Executive Committee of the Center for Analysis of Alternative Dispute Resolution Systems (CAADRS) honored Bilandic for his substantial contribution to the state's alternative dispute resolution systems.

After retiring from the bench in 2000, Bilandic stayed active in both the legal community, serving on the Chicago Bar Association Board of Managers, and in Chicago politics. In September 2001 the bipartisan Legislative Redistricting Commission was deadlocked on the issue of remapping the state legislative districts for the 118 House and 598 senate districts. Following the state constitutional provision for breaking a tie vote, Secretary of State Jesse White pulled Bilandic's name out of a stovepipe hat thus appointing him to serve as the ninth member of the Commission. Bilandic cast the deciding vote in favor of the democratic map that will remain in effect until the new census is taken in 2010. The Republican challenge to the process was denied by the Illinois Supreme Court as it was ten years earlier when the Democrats challenged the winning Republican map. In 1992, however, Justice Bilandic was not the deciding vote, but a member of the Supreme Court. In that case Bilandic dissented from the majority decision to uphold the map reasoning that because the creation of legislative districts affects the voting rights of state citizens, "when the establishment of legislative districts is accomplished in an arbitrary manner, the right of Illinois citizens to due process of law is violated."

Bilandic remained physically active to his death January 15, 2002. On Friday, January 11 the retired jurist engaged in a thirty minute swim. Saturday morning at two o'clock in the morning he suffered a mild heart attack. Through he was scheduled for a triple by-pass surgery on January 16, he died the day before of a heart rupture. Bilandic was seventy-eight.