Selected State Reports

State Documents

■ Governor's Task Force on Block Grant Implementation: Final Report, Office of the Governor (no date), 90 pp.

In November 1981 Gov. James R. Thompson appointed a 24-member task force to advise him on the implementation of the seven federal human services block grants and to make recommendations for both those programs and the overall human service delivery system. Human services include health, income assistance, employment and social services. After 10 months of study and public participation, the task force came up with 51 recommendations which are divided according to whether they should be implemented in 1-3 months, 3-6 months, 6-9 months, or 9-12 months. It also suggests that all the recommendations should be implemented by a person designated by the governor and located in the Office of the Governor.

Other Reports

■ Economic Changes in Illinois, 1965-1981 (34 pp.) by William R. Bryan and Larry E. White; A Comparative Evaluation of Illinois's Economic Performance (30 pp.) by J. Fred Giertz; Modeling the Interaction Between Regions in Illinois (28 pp.) by Geoffrey J.D. Hewings and Sigurd Haller. Special reports prepared for the Chicago United Association (January 1983) and available from the association, Suite 1300, 6 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago 60602 (copies are free, but there is a limited supply).

Data presented by Bryan and White show that economic activity in Illinois expanded more rapidly between 1972 and 1979 than in the 1967-1972 period, and that there has been a slowdown since 1979. This confirms the widespread belief that the state's share of the national economy is shrinking, and that within the state, manufacturing is declining as a portion of the industry mix.

In his monograph on the comparison of Illinois' economic performance with the rest of the nation, J. Fred Giertz suggests that the state's proportionately less rapid growth rate is part of a general process of convergence of incomes, which has been going on for many years. The process is not entirely understood, but it seems clear that it is not easily affected by public policy actions.

Hewings and Haller present a fairly technical discussion and then propose a three-region interindustry model that they say could be used to identify: 1) the flows of activities between the regions of the state and 2) the direct and indirect consequences of the changes in activity levels in the private and public sectors. The model is based on data that show a strong interdependence between what happens in Chicago and events in the rest of the state.

■ Illinois Motor Vehicle Travel and Related Data, Illinois Department of Transportation, Office of Planning and Programming (no date), 7 pp.

In the decade between 1969 and 1979 vehicle registration increased in Illinois at a much greater rate (39.3 percent) than the population (only 1.6 percent). There was also a 21.8 percent increase in driver's licenses and a 23.7 percent increase in fuel usage. With the help of numerous pie charts, bar and line graphs, and closely set type, this modest brochure presents an enormous amount of information. Separate sections deal with daily vehicle miles of travel, urban and rural miles of roadway and travel, truck weight data and truck fuel type. A thought-provoking essay at the end deals with fuel shortages and price increases in 1979; it is entitled, "Travel and Fuel. . . The Energy Crunch!"

Items listed under State Documents have been received by the Documents Units, Illinois State Library, Springfield, and are usually available from public libraries in the state through inter-library loan.         Anna J. Merritt

May 1983 | Illinois Issues | 31