Though he has yet to give his personal backing to the plan, Gov. Jim Edgar warned legislators Thursday they are jeopardizing a $987 million expansion of Chicago`s McCormick Place by loading up the proposal with pet projects.
Already setting up vote trading for support of the expansion project, Downstate lawmakers have amended the McCormick Place legislation to include $250 million in new bonds for water projects and $100 million in new bonds for school improvements.
Downstate lawmakers also are expected to seek $49 million in new bonds for lake and river dredging and marina projects when the measure is considered next week in the Senate. In addition, suburban Republicans are considering $1 million in local property tax breaks for Arlington International Racecourse as a tradeoff for their support for the expansion project.
”If you raise the ante, you jeopardize McCormick Place,” said Edgar, who maintained he still does not know if the proposed Chicago and Cook County taxes that would fund the project would generate enough money.
”The proposals that have been added on take money from the state,”
Edgar said. ”That causes me concern, because I don`t want to see the state`s obligations increased any more. We have gone the bonding route to a great extent the last few years, and we`re at the point where we have to slow down, because you do have to pay off those bonds.”
In Chicago, Mayor Richard Daley said he was not surprised that the McCormick Place legislation was becoming a pen for legislators` pork projects. ”You have to get it passed, so if you need pork, if you need lamb, if you need beef, if you need fish, you put everything on there, chickens, whatever they want. You put it on there,” Daley said. ”It will be up to a lot of people down there.”
In the Senate chamber, meanwhile, lawmakers tentatively backed a plan that would eliminate the office of Cook County Regional Schools Supt. Richard Martwick in 1995. The plan was aimed at circumventing a measure pushed by Sen. Aldo DeAngelis (R-Olympia Fields), without Democratic backing, that would have eliminated the office immediately.
Democrats have argued that DeAngelis is carrying out a political vendetta against Cook County Board President Richard Phelan, who defeated DeAngelis for the post last year. Phelan has said he supports eliminating the office in 1995 under an agreement that Martwick will not seek re-election.
Senators also narrowly approved legislation that would extend for five years the state`s moratorium on new hazardous-waste incinerators. The legislation returns to the House for ratification of Senate changes.
In the House, representatives voted down a proposal to test whether moving the date of primary elections to September would encourage more voter participation. Rep. Thomas Homer (D-Canton) proposed moving the 1994 primary from March to the fall, but his colleagues voted it down, 75-38.
A day after the General Assembly sent the governor a measure to exempt professional ticket brokers from the state`s ticket scalping law, House members advanced a second, similar measure to the Senate.
And in a largely cosmetic move, the Democratic-controlled House Appropriations Committee voted not to accept several hundred million dollars worth of cuts to the Public Aid budget proposed in Edgar`s fiscal plan.
Welfare activists called the move a big step, but the fate of the services will be determined in talks between Edgar and legislative leaders.
”It doesn`t indicate the final package,” said committee chairman Robert LeFlore (D-Chicago). ”It`s just putting some things on the table so the people involved, especially the governor, know that there is a great need for continuation of these programs.”
