'He's got an answer for everything. If it's a technical question, he reminds the audience of the words his father taught him: "I'll find out" '

"Everybody here who wants to hear more discussion of the Lincoln reservoir, raise your hand," Walker said. "Everybody who wants to get on to another subject, please raise your hand." He won the showdown and was applauded.

'Some of them are very rough'
Walker admits that not all of the sessions are easy. "Some of them are very rough," he said. "I've been to some, I'll tell you, where I really took it on the chin." Not all of the questions are from grizzly cynics, either. In Kincaid, for example, someone asked him how many miles he walked during his statewide campaign trek. And someone else asked: "How do you like your job?" At a session at a junior high school in Jacksonville, a young girl charmed the audience with a question about school lunch menus. When the Governor politely said he would take up the natter with Superintendent of Pubic Instruction Michael Bakalis, she replied "Well, it seems you get too much of what you don't like and not enough of what you do like."

Generally the questions are serious. At many sessions, the majority of the 20 to 25 questions asked concern social services, schools and highways. A person might ask about a specific veto of a mental health provision or about a specific policy at the local State hospital or about his general approach to providing services to the mentally retarded. A number of questions deal with the Department of Children and Family Services and the Governor's philosophy regarding unfortunate children — perhaps the volume of questions in this area helps explain last summer's resignation of the department director, Jerome Miller. Questions about schools — financing, discipline and busing — are not uncommon. And roads.

"He knows the highway situation all over our State," says Jim Dunn, a public relations aide who sometimes attends the sessions. "He can answer off the top of his head. He walked them; he knows them."

Walker might review his notes to make sure he has the correct road project in mind, and then gives a quick reply. "It's a subject I feel pretty strongly about," the Governor said early in his administration during a session in Marion. "I walked a lot of those roads and I know the condition that they're in. I remember the state of the roads particularly in southern Illinois, if you'll forgive the personal diversion. Those narrow roads, you've driven over them, where there is no shoulder, there is only a concrete curbing and then a bank. This may bother you when you are driving your automobile along that road, but think about walking along that road, and having to climb up that bank every time two automobiles come by. I have budgeted for more money, substantially more money, for a good road program for the State of Illinois. And as I said in my budget message, while we will build some freeways — both the statewide and interstate with federal assistance — my highest priority goes to the upgrading of the non-freeway roads. What I am concerned about are the roads that the children ride over when they go to school in a bus or a car; the road that the housewife rides over when she goes to the store to do her shopping; the roads that the man and woman ride over when they go to work; the roads that the farmer rides when he goes to the market; the roads that families drive over when they go to visit their friends or their relatives. We are going to have a major program to up-grade those roads and I'm going to see that every section of this State gets its fair share, whether there are a small number of people living there or a large

Accountability Sessions

1973
Chicago — February 8
Clinton — February 26
Marion — March 15
Rock ford — Mrch 27
Lockport — April 24
East St. Louis — April 26
Peoria — May 24
Paris — May 29
Havana — June 29
Streator — June 25
Mount Vernon — August 8
Chicago — August 23
Moline — August 30
Champaign — September 24
Kincaid — October 10
Hillside — October 25
Waukegan — November 20
Watseka — December 4

1974
South Holland — January 31
Chicago — February 20
Chicago — February 21
Chicago — February 28
Chicago — March 12
Chicago — March 14
OIney — May 14
Granite City — May 22
Berwyn — July 23
Quincy — July 24
Freeport — September 4
Jacksonville — September 10

Illinois Issues/January 1975/13