Desperate for new money for the O’Hare Airport expansion boondoggle, the Daley administration is placing its hopes on a 63 percent increase on a tax imposed on airline passengers.

Under legislation already passed by the House, airport operators, such as Chicago, would be authorized to increase the airline passenger facility charge (PFC) by $2.50, to $7, generating an estimated $87.5 million annually for the expansion.

Chicago, unable to get the airlines on board to help finance Phase 2 of the O’Hare expansion, is looking forward to the passage of the bill in the Senate. Rosemarie Andolino, the city’s aviation commissioner, told the Chicago Sun-Times that that increase “could give the city the ability to borrow money based on those new revenues. ‘This would give us more access to revenues for completion.’”

Perhaps more, but hardly enough without the cooperation of United and American airlines, the airport’s two major tenants. Both have said they have no plans to participate the financing of the second phase. The Daley administration has previously said that Phases 1 and 2 are so integral and entwined that all its the promises about increased efficiencies, reduced delays and greater capacity cannot be met without Phase 2.

Andolino and the city have adamantly stuck by the fiction that the entire project can be completed under $9 billion (original estimate was about $6 billion), but further analysis has demonstrated that when all the promised improvements, including a western terminal, western access, an O’Hare by-pass road—as well as the aviation and runway-related improvements—an included, the cost balloons to well-over $14 billion and could reach as much as $20 billion.

The O’Hare expansion, in other words, is a greater source of patronage and insider deals than the 2016 Olympics could ever be.

The story of the 63 percent increase in the PFC has been barely reported in the Chicago media, although through the years they have dutifully repeated Mayor Richard M. Daley’s promise that the expansion—like the Olympics—wouldn’t cost the taxpayers anything. He’d have everyone buy the idea that because the phase passenger facility charge doesn’t contain the word “tax” that it’s not really a tax.

In fact, the levy is just that, tacking on an extra charge on the ticket of every departing passenger. But the increased tax is not enough to generate the needed revenue. Other revenues would have to come from federal grants and general airport revenues, and they still are not enough to cover the added cost.

The House bill, containing the tax increase, faces an uncertain in the Senate, whose agenda has been packed to the gills with health care reform and other “more pressing” matters. The Senate version, which has been stalled in committee, along with other transportation and infrastructure bills, does not contain the PFC increase.

Despite all the delays and uncertainties, however, Daley pressed ahead with the destruction of Bensenville’s east side, now a virtual ghost town. The land is not needed immediately for the expansion.

The legislation (HR 915) is called Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Act of 2009.

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Dennis Byrne is a regular columnist for the Chicago Daily Observer