Legislative Action                                                       

Hasn't "gridlock" become one of the most popular political cliches of the '90s? The word has been thrown around so much that it's probably giving "government waste" a run for its money as the quickest buzzword to use to make an American voter's blood pressure rise a notch.

A good example of gridlock in government involves the ongoing attempt to make the state's air a little bit cleaner by cutting down the number of cars — and therefore the nitrous oxides and hydrocarbons they emit — on roads in Illinois' busiest regions. Not a new concept. People have been advocating carpooling and mass transit for decades, right? Wasn't it all part of the "Give a Hoot, Don't Pollute" campaign that Generation X-ers grew up singing about? Doesn't anybody remember Woodsy Owl?

Yet it seems discussion of this issue may in some ways be just getting started all over again.

Let's back up a minute. Three years ago, the 1990 amendments to the federal Clean Air Act were signed into law. This was no easy task; it took years of debate and arguments between a host of interest groups and members of Congress before compromises were reached that seemingly everyone could live with, or could at least try to live with.

One of the reasons it took so long to get them passed was because the amendments were expected to make some actual improvements rather than just look good on paper. They imposed strict controls on pollution problems like acid rain and urban smog. But they also attempted to allow regions different lengths of time to reach target air quality standards depending on how bad the air quality was.

Those who had farthest to go — and would have to spend the most money — would have more time.

To few people's surprise, the air quality in Chicago and the surrounding area — including suburban Cook County; the entire five "collar counties" of DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will, and portions of Kendall and Grundy counties southwest of the city — was rated the worst in the state in terms of its ozone pollution. The East St. Louis area didn't rate too well either. So both of these regions were required by the federal government to reduce smog-causing emissions at least 15 percent by 1996. And the entire Chicagoland region had to reduce the number of cars on the roads.

The pollution-reducing measures were made clear in November 1990, when the amendments were signed into law. But here we are three years later with state and federal officials debating how many Chicago-area cars should get off the road.

In March, Gov. Jim Edgar signed Illinois' so-called "employer trip reduction" measure (PA 87-1275). It called for every employer in the Chicagoland region with 100 or more employees to cut by 25 percent the number of trips those workers make in their own cars during morning rush hour. This legislation will be used as a basis for the formal plan that will be submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) for approval. (See Illinois Issues, April 1993, page 16.)

Even when it was passed, several people were skeptical of its chances for approval by the federal agency. Among them was Ron Burke, director of environmental and occupational health for the Chicago Lung Association. "It is not approvable by the US EPA," he said when the measure was approved by the legislature in January. "[It] represents something that's dead on arrival." Sure enough, the US EPA since has sent the Illinois Department of Transportation a letter rejecting a crucial point of the plan.

The problem that the US EPA has identified, as Burke and others foresaw, is the formula used to figure out how many car trips employers would have to reduce. As passed, Illinois' legislation called for large employers to reduce the number of cars their employees drive to work so the average number of passengers in employees' cars during rush hour would be 25 percent above the average number of passengers in all Chicagoland cars during rush hour. This worked out to a target of 1.36 riders per car, which would be a 25 percent improvement over the regionwide average of 1.09.

This formula was used in part because it represented an agreement between Chicago and suburban employers who will have to change workers' solo commuting habits. It set what each side saw as reasonable targets for reducing cars on northeastern Illinois roads.

But the US EPA said the target set by the state is too low. That's because the formula does count public transportation riders when computing employers' averages but does not count those riders into the regional averages. If the same formula had been used in both computations, the result would have been a higher rider-per-car target — closer to 1.7 riders per car — and a lot more work for employers.

This seems to be a classic example of poor communication between various levels of government. Some state officials said US EPA staffers indicated the formula passed through the Illinois General Assembly would be acceptable. That seems like a point that could have been determined with a couple of phone calls between people at the state and federal level. Apparently that was not the case — a situation possibly complicated by changing leadership in Washington as well as the Illinois Senate. Unfortunately, the miscommunications that instead took place may mean months of difficult negotiations will be set back, or even wasted.

Others might see this situation as a case of public officials not wanting to bite the bullet and set the more strict public policy. Whatever the case, if meetings between the federal and state bodies yield no agreement, Illinois officials may be put in the position of fighting for waivers on the targets they have set or starting over. They say higher "driver-removal" targets would be difficult to pass through the Illinois legislature, much less to get employers and employees to comply.

Amid all of this intergovernmental shuffling, the fact remains that one of the most traffic-clogged areas of the country still lacks a firm, final plan to get any cars off the road. Now that's "gridlock" in action.*

November 1993/Illinois Issues/27