Letters

In defense of election 'reform' veto

EDITOR: As a lifelong Democrat and as chairman of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners (a nonpartisan agency), I find myself in the unique position of rallying to the defense of our Republican governor. But right is right and wrong is wrong: Governor Thompson was absolutely correct in his amendatory veto of H.B. 2475.

Unfortunately, your correspondent, Charles N. Wheeler III, who I know as a fine reporter, was misled by those who had passed off H.B. 2475 as a "reform" measure when its impact would have been just the opposite. Mr. Wheeler in his recent column in Illinois Issues (December) points up the potential abuses in the door-to-door canvass or verification of registered voters. However, he failed to note that the potential for vote fraud would have been many times greater had the door-to-door canvass been eliminated and replaced with a mail canvass, as required by H.B. 2475.

The fact is that both the Election Board and the Illinois Committee for Honest Elections have conducted studies of the mail canvass and found that in the city of Chicago the error factor was as much as 70 percent. Admittedly, there is room for improvement in the door-to-door canvass which has a 10 percent error factor, but replacing it with an even more inaccurate and potentially abusive system is not the answer.

Gov. Thompson's amendatory veto of H.B. 2475 was encouraged and is supported by knowledgeable election officials as well as former Illinois Atty. Gen. Ty Fahner, chairman of the Illinois Committee for Honest Elections, former U.S. Atty. Dan Webb, who conducted the most exhaustive study of vote fraud in Chicago in history, and Cook County State's Atty. Richard M. Daley.

The governor is to be commended for his actions on this bill, not criticized.

Michael E. Lavelle
Chairman
Chicago Board of Election Commissioners

[While Mr. Lavelle is certainly entitled to his belief that in its original form H.B. 2475 would not have had a salutary effect on election procedures in Cook County, the measure was deemed an important step toward reform by other knowledgeable elections experts, among them Rep. John W. Countryman, a former chairman of the State Board of Elections and, like Gov. Thompson, a Republican.

In any case, whatever one's view of the bill's merits, there can be little argument that the governor's amendatory veto drastically changed the measure's thrust, and it was with this latest example of gubernatorial legislating that the column especially sought to take issue. — Charles N. Wheeler III.]

Block grants and DCCA

EDITOR: I wish to take issue with the report on block grant distribution in The state of the State article in the October issue, at least with respect to the block grants administered by the Department of Commerce and Community Affairs.

The Community Services Block Grant allocations are made on a formula basis which provides funding based on the percentage of the state's poverty population residing in a particular county. For example, Cook County has 57.3 percent of the state's poverty population and receives 57.3 percent of the funding allocation. This has indeed resulted in a significant decrease in the funding to Cook County because the county received a disproportionate share of the funds under the previous categorical grant program administered by the Community Services Administration. Under that predecessor program, Cook County received 74 percent of the funds, and the people in 42 of the state's 102 counties received no assistance at all.

Under the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, the Hull House study took only part of the data that were available to reach their conclusions. The study ignored both the Public Housing Authority and the Direct Payment components of the program and used only the local application part of the program. Had the full program of assistance been used as the basis, the study would have shown that 57.2 percent of the funds were allocated to the people of Cook County.

Also with regard to the energy assistance program, I do not concur that a "fair share" should be defined as "the correspondence between the county's proportion of the state's poverty population and the proportion of funds which the county received from the total funds allocated to Illinois. . . ." Under this program, the formula allocation not only considers the proportion of poverty population, but also includes fuel costs, heating degree days, percentage of elderly poor and other such relevant factors in determining the areas of the state with the greatest need for assistance.

February 1986/Illinois Issues/5

Again, limiting my comments to those two programs administered by the Department of Commerce and Community Affairs, the finding of "unfair" or inequitable allocation of funds is inaccurate. With respect to the implication that state administration costs exceed previous federal levels, that is a comparison of apples to oranges. Previous federal administrative costs were not reported in the same manner as are the state costs. Not only does the Department of Commerce and Community Affairs administer the Community Services Block Grant program within the 5 percent limit established by the law, but in the energy assistance program, state administrative costs last year were approximately 3.2 percent, significantly less than the 10 percent allowed under that law.

Your reporter states that "This report leaves the impression of a study with many unanswered questions but at least one clear conclusion: The block grant system is uneven, and it fails to deliver as it should in too many areas." I suggest that he is correct that it leaves many unanswered questions, but faulty research makes any conclusions invalid.

Thornton Ridinger Manager
Division of Economic Opportunity Department of Commerce and Community Affairs

Hull House responds

EDITOR: I am very happy to respond to Thornton Ridinger's criticism of the findings in the Hull House Study, "Tracking Federal Dollars: Categorical Grants, Block Grants, and the Issue of a Fair Share for the Poor of Illinois."

First, let me say that Mr. Ridinger was at all times very cooperative with our researcher, Dr. Mary Sparks, in providing as much information as was available. Let me also congratulate the Department of Commerce and Community Affairs (DCCA) on the fact that it was the only department we could determine that took poverty into account as a factor in determining need.

Now, let me respond to specific comments which Mr. Ridinger makes. He points out that, in the Community Services Block Grant for the categorical year studied (federal fiscal year 1981), Cook County received a disproportionate share of funds. Our researcher clearly acknowledges this on page 25 of the study. In terms of "fair share," of the six block grants studied, Community Services was the only one for which Cook County received more. For the other five grants studied, Cook County and several other counties received considerably less.

With reference to Home Energy Assistance Grants, in "Tracking Federal Dollars," we not only state, but underscore, that, while complete data were made available for FFY 1981, complete data for FFY 1983 were not provided: "This study is able to compare and report on only those energy assistance grants allocated to local administering agencies" (page 20).

Perhaps more interesting, and certainly more controversial, is the proposal to transfer 10 percent of the energy assistance funds to a loan program for small businesses. This, at a time when there were 38,173 households which had been disconnected by the major utility companies in the state.

With regard to the concept of "fair share," this is a point on which we are quite open to dialog. However, we are not at all clear on DCCA's formula for the energy assistance program. It may be that DCCA's current and complex formula is a better one for them than the one proposed for this study. But unless specifics on the DCCA formula and its practical applications are provided, we are again confronted with insufficient data for evaluation.

Ridinger concludes his letter with the statement that "faulty research makes any conclusion invalid." The research is not faulty. Nor are the conclusions invalid. Rather, they are limited by the data made available to us by the various departments of the state. In fact, the inability of various departments to provide comparable data and clear criteria for the allocation of funds was a major finding of this study. Without such, there is little or no public accountability to the citizens of Illinois. Independent researchers remain dependent on the quality of data provided by the state.

We are grateful to Mr. Ridinger for his comments regarding DCCA and will be happy for further dialog regarding his department. However, we must not lose sight of the total picture. Our major findings still hold. For the specific years studied, poor counties received a larger percentage of funds under categorical grants than they did under block grants. A more accurate evaluation of equity could be achieved if there were some minimum common standards for distribution of funds and minimum common reporting procedures to make tracking federal dollars possible.

Ann Seng, Director
Research and Advocacy Department
Hull House Association

DCCA's rebuttal

EDITOR: I will limit my comments to an issue Ms. Seng raises that was not previously discussed — "the proposal to transfer 10 percent of the energy assistance funds to a loan program for small businesses at a time when there were 38,173 households which had been disconnected by the major utility companies in the state."

In fact, the Department of Commerce and Community Affairs over a two-year period transferred $3.6 million from the energy assistance block grant (about 1.3 percent of the funds received) to the Community Services Block Grant Program to establish the Fixed Rate Financing Fund. This program provides low-interest loans to expanding small business that agree to hire low-income persons at a rate of not less than one person for each $5,000 of public investment.

This money, with an additional infusion of $2.3 million in Community Services Block Grant funds, has leveraged more than $40.4 million in private capital, has created 1,202 jobs for low-income people, and has saved an additional 597 jobs that would have otherwise been lost, thus forcing those workers into unemployment. The success of this program demonstrates what all of us in the human services field should be striving toward — to not only provide limited help to the poor and disadvantaged in coping with the conditions of poverty, but more importantly, to actually help bring people out of poverty and to make them self-sufficient.

Concerning the number of households that had been disconnected by the utility companies of the state, I would note that the transfer of funds cited above did not affect the amount of money in the emergency services component of the Energy Assistance program -the part of the program that provides assistance to households that have been disconnected from their energy source.

Thornton Ridinger
Department of Commerce and Community Affairs

IBM and VDT report

EDITOR: Your October story, "VDT Regulation: What Hath the Computer Wrought?" seriously misinterprets a report on visual display terminals prepared for IBM by A. W. Guy and wrongly charges IBM with witholding information on that report.

This is unfortunate since Dr. Guy's basic conclusion is VDTs are "safe to use." He makes this point clear in the preface to his report by saying: "I do not feel . . . that unshielded VDT emission levels represent a potential health hazard."

Dr. Guy does not recommend shielding terminals for health or safety reasons. He says shielding — as contained in all IBM VDTs for performance reasons —is desirable because it reassures those who perceive a problem, a perception he feels is not supported by valid scientific evidence.

Your readers also should understand that IBM has not displayed a "lack of candor" in discussing Dr. Guy's findings. The doctor has reported those findings at several scientific forums over the past year. He prepared an initial summary and a detailed report on his work, and IBM has made both available to all requesting them.

Had you contacted us prior to writing your story, we would have made this information available. We would appreciate your bringing it to the attention of your readers now. Peter F. Judice Director of Information International Business Machines Corporation [No misrepresentation was intended, nor did any occur. In the summary of Dr. Guy's report, released in October 1984, there was no mention of his recommendation about shielding older VDTs. Only later, after the publication VDT News obtained a copy, was the full report made public. As to why Guy thinks older VDTs should be shielded, here is what he said in the full report (but not in the IBM summary): "The localized (electric) fields at the surface of an unshielded cover of a VDT nearest the flyback transformer can reach extremely high values. Since these fields have a capability of inducing much greater currents in an exposed user of the device than the relatively low magnetic field emissions it certainly is desirable to shield the cover of the VDT." Clearly in this instance, Dr. Guy is talking about something far more substantial than the mere perception of a problem. —Robert J. McClory.]

Chicago

By PAUL M. GREEN

Instead of his regular column this month, Paul M. Green has written a feature article on Democratic slatemaking for statewide and Cook County offices. Please turn to page 12 to read "The Democrats' biennial ritual: slatemaking."

6/February 1986/Illinois Issues