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Governor's vision for Illinois children: A dream worth a tax increase?



By CHARLES N. WHEELER III

"I touch the future. I teach." Challenger astronaut Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher in space.

In beginning an historic fourth term, Gov. James R. Thompson also has chosen to touch Illinois' future through its children. Sketching in broad strokes his vision of the state's destiny, the nation's senior governor focused his inaugural remarks on youngsters, particularly those at risk of losing the chance for a happy, productive life because of home environment or other circumstances.

"If we lose the child," Thompson warned, "we lose the adult — to mental hospitals, penitentiaries, crime, poverty and ignorance." Urging those present to "adopt the class of '99," he cautioned a high toll in high-school dropouts, drug users and teenage pregnancies "if we don't take those four-year-olds under our wings now, and nurture, support, and guide and love them until 1999."

The governor said his sights were "aimed at the end of this administration, indeed, to the end of the next decade, and beyond."

As befits a dream, the governor's inaugural address lacked a certain clarity; there were few details to spell out how his goals were to be realized. Such substance, of course, can be added to the gossamer images in Thompson's upcoming State of the State message. Posing a greater threat to the governor's hopes for the future is the harsh budgetary reality of the present. January's shimmering vision may prove to be little more than a mirage when the cold, cruel numbers of next year's budget are laid out in March.

Consider some of the outlays that Thompson's plans to nurture the class of '99 might require in next year's budget.

First and foremost, the governor wants to "reach down to all youngsters in need so that every child at least gets close to the same starting line for formal education." That call for early childhood education echoes a major theme of the 1985 school reforms. The legislative commission that developed the blueprint for reform pinned an $85.9 million price tag on preschool and kindergarten programs, but the legisature in the first year allotted only $9 million on a pilot basis. This year's budget includes $12.7 million for early childhood programs, compared to the $58.8 million called for by the State Board of Education. State school Supt. Ted Sanders initially recommended $74.7 million for next year, a $62 million boost that was the largest chunk of the $102 million increased Sanders proposed for reform programs.

But the needs of many youngsters in the class of 1999 go beyond schooling. Child care experts, for example, estimate that as many as 19,000 abused and neglected children may not be receiving adequate services from the state child care agency. To reach them could cost another $20 million a year.

Welfare reform, too, is "at heart about children," the governor noted. But to make the Public Aid check a "way station between economic opportunities," as Thompson wants, has its own costs. Day care services, must be expanded if welfare mothers are to leave the home for the workplace; health care must be kept available if they are to take minimum-wage jobs with no fringe benefits.

Nor are these dreams the only ones vying for scarce dollars.

4/February 1987/Illinois Issues


Early childhood education and other reform programs account for only a portion of the new money state education officials are seeking. In all, Sanders requested $335 million in new funds, including $84 million for general state aid. And that does not take into account any revisions in the current school aid formula, slated to sunset August 1, which could cost hundreds of millions of dollars more.

Higher education, too, is seeking $131 million more to help fund faculty pay raises and expanded scholarship programs, while advocates for the poor want a cost-of-living increase in basic grants that could cost another $60 million or so a year.

And the governor himself has acknowledged that he must pump more money into the mental health budget to improve the quality of institutional care or face a takeover by the federal courts.

Other areas also demand attention. Costs of negotiated 4.5 percent pay raises for state workers could approach $100 million next year and extra money will be needed to meet expanding debt service costs. In addition, local governments hard hit by the loss of more than $200 million a year in federal revenue sharing will be looking to the state for help.

Other costs are lurking as well, including some on which the price tags — though impossible to project — could be staggering, such as caring for a steadily growing number of AIDS victims and removing asbestos from an unknown number of schools and other public buildings.

Balanced against these spending demands is the reality of a state economy still struggling to merge from recession. Even the most opimistic revenue expectations for next year fall far short of needs.

"We cannot continue to be manacled by the tyranny of the short-term focus imposed by unrelenting annual budgets and biennial elections," Thompson asserted in urging his listeners to look to the future. Despite such stirring phrases, however, unyielding fiscal pressures seem certain to fetter the dreams the governor so eloquently expounded.

Still, there are options. "I think a fourth-term governor has some political capital to spend in moving others ahead to the future," Thompson observed, "and I intend to spend it." To shape the future of Illinois by touching the lives of the class of 1999, the governor may well have to use those intangible resources to convince the legislature and the public his dreams are worth a tax increase.

5/February 1987/Illinois Issues



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