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Letters                                                      


The bergs, not townships, culprits of waste in government

Editor: I read with some humor but sad resignation the guest column by Michael Richardson in the March issue. It was humorous to me that Mr. Richardson is "chair of the township study group." Evidently he hasn't learned from his studies about the status of townships or what really is the gist of the problem that he purports to address. The sad resignation comes from a realization that such zealots are mortally afraid to tackle the real waste in Illinois government.

Townships are an integral part of the fabric of the state. As the state is subdivided into counties, so are counties subdivided further into townships.

Some years ago, when they were more needed for local purposes, cities and villages were created by the legislature. They were chartered to enable a small cluster of citizens, who began to live next to each other, dotted around the state, to further tax themselves for additional services they wanted for their own purposes, namely, police, fire or other services not provided sufficiently, to their liking, by the county. The townships, at the time of the creation of cities and villages, did not have the power to provide such services. This was unfortunate as history has taught us.

These "creatures of the legislature" grew, and now some townships have been totally urbanized by them. Such an urbanized township may have anywhere from one to twelve or thirteen of such entities within its boundaries. Some are as small as three or four precincts. This occurrence was not contemplated, early in our history, when the legislature created the bergs. Each such city or village has its own police department, fire department, health and building department, etc., etc., etc. Each has elected officials and administrative levels that have to be paid. They duplicate physical plants and equipment and each have taxes, for this and that, ad nauseum. We don't need all these munchkin governments plus special districts within a township.

Actually, the concept of coterminous townships teaches us a lesson in good government. They also solve the problem that Mr. Richardson purports to address. What's a coterminous township? Well, for the information of the study group, it's a township whose borders are coterminous with one city or a village government. There are quite a few of these already existing in Illinois. Experience has taught them, and should teach Mr. Richardson, and his study group, that that's good government. Such a township/governmental unit is the perfect size for administration and delivery of services. The abolition of these numerous and ubiquitous little creatures that clog up the tax bills of the citizens of the state is what's needed. The consolidation of their services into a unit of government already existing, the township, is good government. What's more, they would be acting within the fabric of the state that our forefathers contemplated and created. This includes the townships that Mr. Richardson wants to abolish. The governmental size of a township is a size that's manageable, perfectly sized for a governmental unit and would be cost effective.

Anthony F. Spina
Spina, McGuire & Okal, P.C.
Elmwood Park


Tax saving by abolishing townships is hollow claim

Editor: I look forward to receiving my copy of Illinois Issues each month for the even-handed coverage on a variety of issues which you provide, and the March 1993 issue was no exception.

I found Michael Richardson's arguments and conclusions in that issue about the need to abolish township government unpersuasive, and particularly his claim that "a significant tax saving would be realized in all regions of the state" should township functions be transferred to cities and counties.

I remember the last time we in Illinois were sold on "streamlining" Illinois government some 12 years ago — by cutting back on the size of the Illinois House. We were promised cost savings, fewer bills filed and an increase in meaningful competition for House seats.

On that topic, an Illinois Issues article in July 1991 by David Everson concluded that "[n]one of the proponents' claims were realized. The Cutback did not save money, reduce the number of bills introduced in the House or increase competition for House seats." What it did do is consolidate more and more power in fewer and fewer hands.

Abolishing townships strikes me as a panacea which will lead to disappointment when the expected efficiencies fail to materialize. The townships, as a general purpose government, appear to be filling an import-


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4/May 1993/Illinois Issues


Letters                                                      


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ant gap in the area of meeting human needs through their services, particularly to youth and to the elderly, and are local and approachable in responding to problems which larger and more removed governments have great difficulty in addressing.

Looking at the issue from the standpoint of remedying at least some of the ills of society through human service networks, I don't think we need to compound the already high stress of our citizenry by losing a "layer" of government which is exceptionally responsive to the everyday concerns of our communities and their people.

I am more than willing to pay the minuscule amount of taxes which go to fund townships in order to preserve what in some places is the last sign of functional communities.

If the city of Chicago had functioning townships, and the township boundaries still exist there, by the way, it would serve democracy and public dialog well for the same reason that the Illinois House served us well before the Cutback: More voices, better answers. This is true all over the state when it comes to that dialog and the mix of services coming out of it.

Some economies are illusory. Abolishing townships appears to be one of them.

Daniel B. Hanna
Executive Director Mental Health and Mental
Retardation Services Inc.
Aurora


Lincoln and Douglas equal in campaign principles

Editor: In James McPherson's review (Illinois Issues, January 1993) of Robert Johannsen's Lincoln, The South, and Slavery: The Political Dimension, I believe that he has developed a straw man to review. After describing some of Stephen Douglas's political machinations and some of what he considers Lincoln's more upright approaches to political campaigning, McPherson (in his last sentence) writes, "In view of this outcome the reader may well ask which of the two men 'shaped and directed' his convictions for 'political exigencies and motivation.' " McPherson is faulting Johannsen for not examining Douglas's political motivations, and such a criticism ignores the fact that this is a book about Lincoln, and not about Douglas.

Johannsen maintains that the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates demonstrate Lincoln's political expediency as much as his principled opposition to slavery. McPherson suggests that Lincoln's position in the debates was based solely on principle, saying, "A more accurate (than Johannsen's) reading of the evidence" suggests that Lincoln chose to put his career in jeopardy rather than recast his antislavery convictions. That claim is simply not defensible in the context of 1858. Every old pol in Illinois thought that the Republicans either had a majority of the voters or at least had the best chance to beat Douglas in two decades. It was Lincoln's task to campaign in such a way as to reap those votes, that is, to run against slavery. Consider:

  1. By 1858, huge numbers of Illinois Democrats had deserted their party for the new Republican one precisely and solely because the Republicans were antislavery.
  2. The Republicans had won the governorship in 1856 and by 1858 had won a considerable number of township and county posts that had been Democratic since 1835, and all of those successes could be traced to the antislavery attitudes of voters.
  3. On top of that. President James Buchanan had used the tools of the presidency to destroy Douglas's political power after Douglas took a (principled?) stand against the proslavery Kansas constitution, using his position as chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Territories to block "Old Obliquity" Buchanan's demand that the constitution be approved. Douglas was politically wounded, without patronage, and hounded by Democrats who sensed the possibility of federal jobs if they joined the president's cause.
  4. Moreover, if Lincoln wanted the support of the antislavery Republican party for the presidential nomination in 1860, he had no choice but to adopt a strong antislavery stance. That his convictions also impelled him in that direction does not mean that he put his career on the line by standing by them. Quite the contrary: Lincoln could not have led the Republican party if he had not taken a strong stand against slavery.

These considerations do not diminish Lincoln. He remains the greatest person produced by the English speaking peoples in the 19th century. But he was not, despite McPherson's defense, more principled than Douglas. He may have been more correct, morally, on the question of slavery, but he was not a more principled campaigner.

Thomas Seism
Political Science Department
Eastern Illinois University
Charleston


Readers: Your comments on articles and columns are welcome. Please keep letters brief (250 words); we reserve the right to excerpt them so that as many as space allows can be published. Send your letters to:

Caroline Gherardini, Editor
Illinois Issues
Sangamon State University
Springfield, Illinois 62794-9243

May 1993/Illinois Issues/7


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