In the class wars that occasionally erupt in the Illinois legislature, James "Pate" Philip is the General of the Suburbs. Characterizing his suburban constituency as "a class of people," Philip told his Senate colleagues a couple of years ago: "We're hard-working. We pay our bills. We're not on welfare. We don't take public aid."

His remarks were fodder for arguments, admonishments and editorials, and they helped cement Philip's reputation as a Chicago-basher and champion of well-off suburbanites. This image, coupled with his pro-business, socially conservative philosophies, didn't exactly strike comfort in the hearts of his colleagues whose constituents weren't among the "class of people" he described. So when Philip was elected Senate president this year, many Chicago and downstate representatives braced for fights against a so-called "suburban agenda" based on Philip's characterization of the people who live there — people with steady jobs, ample bank accounts and a desire to see government less involved in their lives.

The fact that suburbs increasingly resemble urban demographics and experience problems once associated only with the inner city seems not to have had much influence on the legislative agenda promoted by Sen. Phillip ...

"The traditional agenda of the suburbs has been: Leave us alone and keep our taxes low," said Sen. Dan Cronin (R-39, Elmhurst). "But if you think about what's happened with the dramatic growth of our area, some of the challenges that have faced the city have moved our way.

"There was a time when everyone looked at the suburbs as places where everyone's wealthy and white," he said. "Those times are gone. We can no longer assume that those in the suburbs don't need help, too. In my own district, I've got a portion of River Forest, a wealthy Republican district. But I also represent Stone Park, which has a lot of poor blacks and Hispanics; Franklin Park, which is very blue-collar — a heavy union area; and Maywood, which is heavily black. There's just not one typical suburbanite anymore."

So while some lawmakers may have a "class" of suburbanites in mind when putting together their legislative docket, an agenda aimed solely at a constituency of white, upper middle-class families with manicured lawns and two cars in the driveway will leave out a significant, and growing, number of suburban residents.

No doubt the population of the Chicagoland suburbs once resembled a prototypical lawn-mowing, tennis-playing, car-pooling class of people. Today, that's not universally true. According to 1990 U.S. census figures, more than 210,000 people in suburban Cook and the collar counties fell below the poverty line. There are pockets of both prosperity and poverty. The village of Barrington Hills in Lake County, for example, fits a stereotypical upscale suburban profile with per capita income of nearly $60,000 in 1989. At the same time, census figures show the village of Ford Heights, south of Chicago, had a 1989 per capita income of just $4,660. The poverty rate there that year was 49.2 percent — more than double Chicago's 21.6 percent rate.

In several areas, unemployment is an enormous problem — especially in some of the inner-ring southern suburbs, where the economic growth that hit many northern and western suburbs didn't go. Some, such as Robbins, have seen jobless rates as high as 50 percent.

And just as some suburbs belie the image of universal prosperity, so do some undermine the notion that suburbs are ethnically or racially monolithic.

Sen. Judy Baar Topinka (R-22, North Riverside) said there has been an especially huge influx of Hispanic people moving into one suburb she represents — Cicero, west of Chicago. In 1980, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, Cicero's Hispanic population was less than 10 percent of the 61,232 people who lived there. Ten years later that number boomed to nearly 40 percent. According to Topinka, this migration has produced overcrowded housing as extended families crowd into apart-

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ment buildings or homes with limited space. "I'm serious...they're putting extended families, aunts and uncles and cousins all living in one house, with people sleeping on floors, in closets. It's a bit of a slum. This is not the traditional house in the suburbs with the little yard, two cars and 2.5 kids."

And various other suburbs have seen influxes of other ethnic groups.

Artwork from the magazine cover by Mike Cramer

"The five collar counties don't make up one big subdivision," said Sen. Steven J. Rauschenberger (R-33, Elgin), whose district largely is made up of Kane County. "There are some significant cultural differences. For instance, Elgin is the major refugee resettlement area in the state for people from Southeast Asia." Rep. Louis I. Lang (D-16, Skokie) said his district in north suburban Cook County has seen similar cross-cultural changes. "Over the last 10 to 12 years there's been a tremendous influx of Asian-Americans — Oriental, Indian, Pakistani," he said. "There are probably more Asian-Americans in my district than anywhere in the state. There's also a tremendous number of Jewish Russian immigrants who are not even citizens yet, and these are people who need housing, health care, clothing. The suburbs as a whole are very diverse, but even within the northern suburbs they're more different than people might think." Moreover, suburbanites hoping to find safer pastures have discovered that crime crosses city limits. Although overall crime rates in the collar counties have not risen substantially (or in some cases have declined during the 1980s), crime is apparently becoming increasingly worrisome in places once thought immune to the violence of the inner city. For example, the number of violent crimes committed in DuPage County jumped significantly between 1981 and 1991 — the most recent year for which statistics were available from the Illinois Criminal Justice Authority. The number of murders there during that decade rose to 18 from 13; criminal sexual assaults more than doubled, to 134 from 58; robberies climbed to 283 from 207, and aggravated assaults rose to 757 from 706.

When asked what most worries his constituents, Richton Park village President Rudy Banovich is quick to answer. "Right now our main concern is gang activity," he said of the growing community south of Chicago that is home now to about 11,400 people. "We need money for more police protection, What we're seeing is Chicago gang wannabes heading toward the southern suburbs, and we're trying to be pro-active in dealing with them."

Even the poshest of suburbs have been bracing themselves against criminal infiltration. Winnetka's New Trier High School north of Chicago, considered one of the best public schools in the country, has contracted with Winnetka's police force to have an officer spend time every day inside the school. "His 'beat' includes New Trier," said Dr. Henry Bangser, the school's superintendent. "By being there, he's letting our students know gang influence simply is not going to be tolerated. I'd say that's not something we had to worry about 20 years ago.

The fact that suburbs increasingly resemble urban demographics and experience problems once associated only with the inner city seems not to have had much influence on the legislative agenda promoted by Sen. Philip and other suburban lawmakers. Philip won praise for successfully pushing legislation beneficial to suburban interests: nearly $2.5 billion authorized for new suburban tollways in Lake, DuPage and Will counties; limiting increases in monthly welfare grants to $10 per family, and a referendum on property tax caps in suburban Cook County that will be placed on the ballot in 1994.

Even so, this was an agenda tailored pretty narrowly to a class of suburbanites that doesn't fit the reality of everyone living outside Chicago's borders. For example, if property tax caps are implemented in suburban Cook County — as several Republican lawmakers advocate — many communities could be left struggling to pay for essential services such as police and fire protection. "The difficulty with tax caps is that they severely limit revenue sources for many communities," said

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Schaumburg Village Board President Al Larson, who is president of the Northwest Municipal Conference. "In the poorer communities that's all they have, and they're straining right now to support their public safety areas, their fire and police departments. That's all they have to cut back on."

Larson said one agenda — a conservative one — has been put forth as representative of all suburbs when it actually represents the views of only a fraction of those who live there. Partly to advance alternative suburban interests, the Suburban Mayors Action Coalition was formed — a group of 110 suburban Cook County mayors that tries to present a unified voice on municipal issues. The group's creation, Larson said, was spurred by a feeling that their own suburbs' needs were not included in the agendas of suburban legislative leaders.

He cited property tax caps as an example. "For the politicians in Springfield, their push for the caps is a platform for them to run on," Larson said. "But I'd like to see them come back home and serve on village boards and school boards...and try to operate under property tax caps. I mean, that's a main source of income for a lot of these communities. [Republican legislators from the suburbs] want less government in their lives but then they have the audacity to want to tell us how to operate? That's hypocritical."

Sen. Grace Mary Stern, a Democrat from the northern suburb of Highland Park, would seem to agree. She said the suburban agenda Philip advocated isn't necessarily one her constituents would make their own — such as with property tax caps.

"The precipitous rise of property taxes is a concern. It's very alarming," she said. "We do need to some degree to relieve property taxes. But the right approach might be to take some of the burden of paying for education off property taxes and onto the income tax. People who serve on the local boards are concerned that property tax caps may keep them from providing the level of services that people want and need. Tax caps would be a problem for just about every unit of government."

Stern's district includes parts of Lake County, where tax caps already have been implemented. "In some cases it's meant that projects already under way have been stopped. I just would underscore the need for citizens who feel they're being overtaxed to let these local boards know. It's inappropriate for Springfield to be second-guessing local boards — though I guess not many people [in Springfield] share that opinion."

Similarly, Stern said, limiting increases in welfare grants probably wouldn't be very high on her constituents' agenda. "My district may be the most fiscally prosperous in the state, but it's one that supports charities, that cares about making sure the homeless have a place to sleep and that wants to get the kids of Chicago back to school," Stern said. "This is not to say they wouldn't want to see their property taxes reduced. But they're not concerned only about themselves."

Terry Link, chairman of the Lake County Democrats, said he thinks Philip is insensitive to the need of people and schools in suburban areas outside of DuPage County. "Pate Philip is interested in DuPage County, period," said Link. "We had a school district here that already passed a resolution to close. There are five or six others in need of help. The amount of money we need is relatively minimal...but [some suburban lawmakers] are more concerned about noise around the airport in DuPage and suburban Cook instead of educating kids." (The North Chicago school board, faced with a $1.5 million budget shortfall, voted in April to close and merge the district with other nearby, wealthier Chicago suburbs. The board later reversed its decision.)

Northern Illinois University Prof. Paul Kleppner, who heads the school's office for social policy research, offers an explanation for the gap between the suburban image pushed by those in power and the suburban reality.

He said conservative Republican power in the suburbs has built upon itself simply because it was there before urban diversity and social ills began to spill over from the city. In other words, the people who first settled in the 'burbs did fit the image that Philip promotes and they set up their own power structures, not unlike the political phenomenon that shapes many regions' politics, as it did in Chicago. "Once an area becomes strongly one party or another, it's difficult to recruit candidates and workers for the opposite party," Kleppner said. "That's really what happened to Democrats in the suburbs, the same as with Republicans in Chicago. It feeds upon itself. The dominant party is so strong it vanquishes the opposition party."

What's more, because suburban areas are so fragmented, their governments and politics don't get the same intense media attention that Chicago's do, Kleppner said.

"Republican suburban power is harder for voters to follow. It's out-of-sight," he said. "The media just don't give it the same kind of attention that Chicago gets." Therefore, the existing power structure gets to set the agenda because alternative voices are weak and obscure. Added Sen. Stern: "I'm sure there are people in Pate's district who feel the way those in mine do. He probably prefers to represent those making the most noise."

So if political power — at least in the state Senate — sits in the hands of those who pay their bills and prune their bushes, what does the future hold for those who do not fit the mold? With nearly a quarter-million suburbanites living below the poverty level, it seems unrealistic and possibly harmful to continue putting forth a so-called suburban agenda that represents only the needs of the privileged.

Yet to some people, the view persists that all of suburbia remains true to the myth of prosperity. "Look, the suburbs are the breadbasket of the state," said Sen. Peter G. Fitzgerald (R-27, Inverness) of northwest suburban Cook County. "My people really do want to be left alone. They get nothing out of state government. The only state government I have in my district is a drivers license facility. I think I've had one call from someone needing welfare help in the year I've been in office."

Kleppner of NIU speculated suburban factions eventually could splinter, with those whose districts have come to mirror urban areas forging alliances with the urban Chicago caucus. But a future that involves more class warfare in public policy debates between the haves and haves-not in the state could have surprising consequences. Suburban communities that increasingly reflect the diversity, problems and promise of the larger society could find themselves on the losing end on the legislative battlefield, scrambling for money to support basic services taken for granted even in most urban settings.*

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For decades, city dwellers have been moving from Chicago to the suburbs and suburban dwellers have been moving even farther out, carving new suburbs into land that just a few years ago was primarily farmland.

• While Chicago's population has dropped steadily for decades — falling from nearly 3 million to 2.78 million between 1980 and 1990, according to U.S. census figures — the reverse is true for the five collar counties surrounding the city: DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will. Each of those counties grew by more than 20,000 people in the same period.

And it appears the trend likely will continue for a while. According to a 1993 report by the Metro Chicago Information Center, a non-profit survey group, 12 percent of Chicagoans surveyed are thinking of moving to a suburb. Sixteen percent of suburban Cook County residents are thinking of moving within the suburbs, as are 12 to 20 percent of collar county residents (numbers varied by county). But only 1 percent of those surveyed in the collar counties are thinking of moving to the city.

As people have migrated outward from the city so have many businesses, both retail and corporate. The 1989 move of Sears' headquarters from downtown Chicago to Hoffman Estates, a northwest suburb, is just one example of how employers have branched outward and taken jobs and contributions to the tax rolls with them.

• The collar counties saw large gains in jobs during the past decade, according to the state's Department of Employment Security. In May 1983, 302,577 people were employed in DuPage County. That number jumped to 449,326 by May 1993. During the same period corresponding numbers jumped from 125,134 to 163,074 in Kane County; from 206,684 to 316,836 in Lake County; 66,663 to 102,128 in McHenry County and 144,088 to 197,115 in Will County.

But there are also thousands of people unemployed in the collar counties, including 23,928 in DuPage, 13,032 in Kane, 15,097 in Lake, 5,566 in McHenry and 15,323 in Will, according to figures from the Illinois Department of Employment Security for August 1993.

As the population has shifted, several suburbs have taken on a more urban flavor in terms of their ethnic and income level mixes.

• The number of Hispanics living in Elgin, in Kane County west of Chicago, nearly doubled — from 6,529 in 1980 to 12,513. The African-American population in Waukegan, in Lake County north of Chicago, rose by nearly 50 percent to 18,173 during the same period.

• According to the Illinois Department of Commerce and Community Affairs, DuPage County is expected to have a population of nearly 830,000 in 1995. Roughly 10 percent of those people will be minorities: 32,000 Hispanic, 12,000 black, and 40,000 "other," including Asian Americans.

• The collar counties are home to thousands of people living in poverty. Census figures show that in 1989 there were 20,948 residents of DuPage County living below the federal poverty line; 21,275 in Kane; 21,275 in Lake; 6,342 in McHenry, and 21,020 in Will.

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