Chicago By MILTON RAKOVE

THE BROUHAHA over the financial problems of the RTA and CTA transit systems in the Chicago metropolitan area has publicly exposed a raw nerve in the bodies politic of the City of Chicago, its suburban environs and the State of Illinois. The fight over the RTA's financial crisis is an external manifestation of a steadily developing deep internal sore which is threatening the long-term health of the city, the suburbs and the state. The current problem is financial, but its underlying causes are political and its probable consequences are governmental for the city, the suburbs and the state.

There has long been, in Illinois, an informal understanding between the politicians and public officials who represent and govern the diverse constituencies of the three major parts of the system — Chicago, its suburbs and downstate. Those politicians and public officials, recognizing the divergent character of their local electorates and the conflicting interests of their areas of the state, have traditionally paid lip service to the feelings of their constituents by publicly assailing the attempts of the other two areas of the state to secure state aid and largesse for their local needs. But, privately, they have been more realistic about the need to pacify all of their populations, to protect themselves from genuine reformers and insurgents in their local bailiwicks, and to deal with each other sensibly and cooperatively in the interests of the state as a whole and in recognition of their own private interests as politicians and public officials.

Thus, in the past, Democratic Mayor Edward Kelly of Chicago could deal with Republican Gov. Dwight Green; Mayor Richard J. Daley could work out mutually advantageous arrangements with Republican Governors William G. Stratton and Richard B. Ogilvie; and legislative leaders like Chicagoans John Touhy, Arthur McGloon, William G. Clark and George Dunne could bargain and negotiate with downstaters and suburbanites like W. Russell Arrington, Paul Powell, Clyde Choate, Arthur Bidwill and Gerald Shea. In the public policy area, Daley could support Stratton on a state sales tax, provided Chicago got a percentage of it and Daley got control of the budget in his city. Ogilvie's state income tax could get Chicago's votes in the legislature, if Chicago got its fair share, while Ogilvie got all the credit for passing it. The RTA could be created to bail out the CTA, if the suburbs could be given some subsidized service, if commuter railroads could be subsidized, if money for downstate roads and better-than-Chicago subsidies for public school bus transportation could be guaranteed, and if the state could stay out of local personnel practices so that the local politicians could be guaranteed sufficient patronage to maintain their local political power bases safely.

In normal times there were thus sufficient perquisites for everybody involved in the deal. The Democratic machine could have Chicago, unchallenged by the Republicans for the mayoralty and the city council. The machine would also have all of the major Cook County offices with their attendant patronage and perquisites. The Republicans could have the local governments in the suburbs of Cook County and almost all of downstate, unchallenged by the Democrats. And they could share power in Springfield, alternating control of the governorship and the legislature, sometimes seriously contesting for those. But no matter who won, they were secure in the knowledge that the pie would have to be cut up realistically among the various factions with each given, if not a fair share, at least an adequate piece.

The understanding has been undermined by three major developments: the massive decline in the City of Chicago's population vis a vis the suburbs and smaller cities and towns of down-state; the deterioration of the quality of the Chicago Democratic machine; and the financial crisis confronting the state government and all local governments in Illinois as a consequence of President Ronald Reagan's budget cutting program in Washington.

The concatenation of those three developments is behind the current tumult over the RTA financing program. Chicago's bargaining position vis a vis the suburbs and downstate has declined significantly and will continue to do so due to the certain loss of political power in the forthcoming legislative reapportionment. The deterioration of the Chicago Democratic machine, which began in Daley's last years, was clearly demonstrated in Mayor Jane Byrne's primary victory in 1979 and has been further exacerbated by its poor performance under Byrne's leadership in the Kennedy-Carter presidential primary fight and State's Attorney Richard M. Daley's double victory over the machine in 1980. The machine is no longer the force to be reckoned with as it was in the Mayor Daley years in Chicago. And President Reagan's budget cuts have reduced the pie so much in Illinois that there is not enough to go around anymore for both the state government and local governments all over Illinois.

It is too early to say that all previous bets are off politically in Illinois or that all previous understandings are null and void. But the game is different, the rules are changing and the future is, at best, uncertain. □

36/May 1981/Illinois Issues