Boom times appear to be rolling along everywhere, except the Midwest. Illinois leaders, afraid that the future is passing them by, launch a massive public works project to build a state-of-the-art transportation system and prepare the state for the future.
Bowing to local demands, the project throws money to every corner of the state for new highways and railroads. It costs millions to finance, and the state goes deeply into debt.
No, it`s not ”Build Illinois,” the ambitious, five-year public improvements project undertaken by Gov. James Thompson and the legislature in 1985 to help the state compete with others for new business and development.
It was the Internal Improvements Act of 1837, and it left Illinois with a half-dug canal, skeletons of bridges, rusting stretches of railroad lines and a $14 million debt that took the state more than a decade to pay off.
Lawmakers in the 19th Century learned a bitter lesson in the dangers of playing regional politics. The legislature wanted to revolutionize Illinois`
transportation system, but it got trapped in a giant pork-barrel effort that tried to provide something for every region of the state.
”The scheme came within an eyelash of bankrupting the state. I guess what we could learn from it is the foolishness of doing too much for too many instead of creating priorities for the things most needed,” said Univerity of Illinois professor emeritus Robert Sutton. He researched the Internal Improvements Act for a paper to be presented this week at ”Illinois: A House Divided?” a conference on regionalism that opens Wednesday at the University Club in Chicago.
Build Illinois may suggest echoes of the Internal Improvements Act. But there is a major difference, one that suggests the often divisive regional conflicts that have permeated Illinois for more than a century may be cooling. Party leaders have bitterly argued for two years running over what projects should receive appropriations through Build Illinois, resurrecting longtime regional antagonisms in the state over whether Chicago, the suburbs or Downstate are getting their fair share of the funds.
But when the legislature created Build Illinois, it gave tight control over the final dispersal of available funds to the governor. When money becomes available through bond sales, it is the Build Illinois staff, not the legislature, that decides who gets it first.
Gene Reineke, executive director of the Build Illinois program, said the $356 million that has been released by his office has been divvied fairly equitably to Chicago (9.2 percent), the suburbs (9.4 percent) and northern
(3.8 percent), central (6.8 percent), western (7.5 percent) and southern
(3.7 percent) Illinois. That leaves 59.6 percent in a pot for ”statewide”
programs.
Thompson and Democratic leaders have avoided an ongoing battle by agreeing to an informal parity in the release of funds, said State Sen. Howard Carroll (D., Chicago.) By releasing funds gradually–one Republican program for one Democratic program–Thompson and the leaders have avoided a regional free-for-all for the huge largess of Build Illinois.
The Build Illinois allocation system, argue those who support a lessening of regional competition in the state, may indicate that state political leaders are beginning to broaden their view of how state policy should be established.
A recent poll conducted by the University of Illinois and underwritten by The Tribune gave indications that the time may be right for such a change. Even though a sense of mutual distrust and competition continues to exist between regions, the poll found, Illinoisans no longer hold the sharp differences in attitudes that helped distrust prevail for more than a century. The poll results will be presented Wednesday at the conference.
Most state residents, the poll found, have rejected the stereotypes that onced classified downstaters as ”rubes” and Chicagoans as ”rude,” but they still distrust the motives of political leaders from other parts of the state. That distrust has long made it easy to curry political capital by playing on the perception of evils lurking outside one`s own back yard.
Rev. Andrew Greeley in a magazine story two years cried out for Chicago to ”seize the suburbs.” Roosevelt University professor Pierre deVise and others have called for a metropolitan government in Chicago and the suburbs that would pool resources and preserve the economic vitality of the Loop and Chicago neighborhoods.
Some people in the six townships of northwest Cook County once sought to secede from Cook County and form a new Lincoln County. Others suggested that Chicago secede from Illinois and become the 51st state. None of the ideas has succeeded, beyond fueling the fires of regionalism.
”There`s a feeling that all of us together must do everything to help the state prosper,” said Peoria Mayor James A. Maloof. ”I don`t mind competing with other states, but when we`re competing with our cities, we have to be careful.”
Maloof last February welcomed Harold Washington to Peoria in a rare Downstate trip by a Chicago mayor. Maloof, a Republican, sees that trip as ”a start” toward more cooperation in the often-antagonistic relationship between the city and Downstate.
Peoria also has pushed several cooperative efforts within central Illinois that could be models for breaking down regional mistrust in the state.
Ten cities and three counties have pooled funds for a joint Economic Development Commission that tries to woo business to the region.
”We`re all trying to do what we can for our own cities, but the economic development commission is supposed to be unbiased,” Maloof said. ”Since Peoria was the big kid on the block, there was a feeling that the other towns would have to kowtow to Peoria. I assured all the mayors that if we were to grow, we would have to grow as a region.”
Similar partnerships have been proposed by Chicago area business leaders who are concerned that growth in many suburbs may be coming at the expense of Chicago`s Loop and city neighborhoods. Illinois` haves, they reasoned, can`t afford to be smug toward the have-nots.
Barry Sullivan, chairman of the board of First Chicago Corp., suggested in a 1982 speech that Chicago area governments must volunteer to pool resources, leveraging each other`s financial strength through cooperative planning. Sullivan also suggested more cooperation between city and suburban business leaders on city problems and more business involvement in city government.
”We can no longer afford to dismiss the divisive attitudes as idiosyncratic and reflective of a highly individualistic population,”
Sullivan told the Metropolitan Planning Council.
The council and several affiliated groups are drafting a ”regional agenda” on issues from the environment to municipal infrastructure that will be releasd at a conference in January. The report, culled from workshops and interviews with civic, religious, education and political leaders, will suggest solutions that cross regional divisions.
The Commercial Club is developing a regional marketing scheme that would offer services to municipalities in the six-county areas, but that proposal does not suggest pooling resources.
”We`ve tried to get the interest of the suburbs and city people in a regional mindset,” said Lawrence Howe, executive director of the civic committee of the Commercial Club. ”They seem interested. But you take, for instance, Du Page County. You talk about regional economic development and the response is, We`ve got all the development we can stand. So they`re not really very interested in a regional approach.”
Some suggest that the state could break down regional barriers through more direct financial links that would tie development goals in one region to those in another. ”Why not have industrial corridors, where a Silicon Valley development would help provide funds for an entertainment center in the city,” said State Rep. Carol Moseley Braun (D., Chicago.)
Others say that, as long as local governments retain autonomy, they will never be lured into signficant inter-regional pacts that draw from their ability to control their own destiny. ”Look at the effort to consolidate all of the little school districts in Illinois,” deVise said.
Yet, the more obstreperous of the regional schism-makers haven`t been heard from much in recent years. ”Lincoln County” hasn`t made noise in the legislature since 1979.
And the University of Illinois polling indicates that few of the state`s residents buy the stereotypes of city, suburban and rural folks that once stoked the notions that the state was made of highly individualistic, and not- very-compatible regions. Illinois, perhaps, is ready to be Illinois.
