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STATE OF THE STATE

Abolish a commission?
Housecleaning, legislative style
by Donald Sevener

LLast spring, in an action as singular as it was — incredibly — unheralded, the General Assembly voted to abolish the Apple and Peach Marketing Program Temporary Operating Committee. And the Illinois-Indiana Bridge Commission. And — brace yourself — the Capital City Planning Commission.

Each of these hoards and commissions exists for a reason. Dismantling them will create opposition.

The demise of a state board or commission is about as rare around the Statehouse as a lobbyist without a money clip. The end of the Capital City Planning Commission, which hadn't made any plans for the capital in decades, came in what lawmakers call a "housecleaning" bill, legislation that repeals obsolete laws.

So, could sweeping away such dustballs of state government as the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Marketing Commission signal a trend?

Not likely.

Many dustballs remain. Last May, the Legislative Research Unit compiled a roster of boards and commissions it believed to be defunct but still cluttering state statutes. Among them: the Beekeepers Commission, the Horse Racing Receipts Advisory Commission, the Task Force on Degradable Plastics, the Sheep and Wool Production Development and Marketing Program Board, the Task Force on Minority Males and the White Goods Task Force.

More significantly, the General Assembly voted during its fall veto session to override the governor's veto of Senate Bill 1440, thereby creating the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Commission.

And so, the beat goes on. Another day, another commission.

In October, Illinois Issues published the first comprehensive look at appointments to state boards and commissions, entities that often operate so hidden from public view that writer Tom Brune characterized them as "the Shadow Government." Since 1991, Brune's investigation found, Gov. Jim Edgar has appointed more than 2,000 members to about 225 boards and commissions.

Now there is one more. And 11 more appointments.

The tale of its legislative enactment is a telling example of the compelling lure of the shadow government.

The story began not long after Kathleen Parker was elected to the General Assembly in 1994. Sen. Parker, a Republican from Northbrook, visited the Center on Deafness, an agency located in her north suburban district that deals with people who are deaf and suffer mental impairment,

Parker had some experience working with issues affecting disabled people, having chaired the mobility-limited committee for the Regional Transportation Authority and having been appointed by President George Bush to the Access Board, which set guidelines for enforcement of the Americans with Disabilities Act. During her visit to the Center on Deafness, she recalls, she told officials of the agency that "if there is an issue on which you need help, let me know."

In the spring of 1995, they let her know.

Representatives of the deaf community visited Parker to explain, she says, that "their particular disability was not being served well. They had lots of examples." There was the example of a Peoria deaf couple whose son died because they were unable to get through to 911 on the TTI system that enables the deaf to communicate by telephone. There was the example of a deaf man whose heart condition almost cost him his life because the hospital did not have a signing interpreter; his daughter saved his life by communicating his needs to the medical staff,

"So there are a lot of needs that they do have," says Parker, who notes that 26 states have commissions to work for, people with hearing impairments.

After a series of meetings organized by the deaf community throughout the state, advocates urged creation of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Commission, and Parker agreed to sponsor the measure in the legislature's spring 1996 session.

The legislation passed easily despite opposition from the Edgar Administration, which argued that it undercut, the effort to consolidate and stream- line social services through its plan for a Department of Human Services. Edgar amendatorily vetoed the bill— he said he would abide the creation of a new commission so long as its role was advisory, not policy-making. In his veto message, the governor complained that the legislation would "create a new executive agency to serve the

6 / January 1997 Illinois Issues

special interests of the deaf community," its role to "develop, recommend, provide, evaluate and promote programs and services to assist individuals who are deaf and hard of hearing.'' The governor told the legislature that creation of the new commission "is contrary to efforts to curtail the growth of bureaucracy and to the goal of human services consolidation which is proceeding in Illinois." And he called the measure "counterproductive to our efforts to alleviate the problems associated with fragmented and often redundant program delivery mechanisms which until this time have frustrated the providers and recipients of these services alike." He urged that the commission be set up simply to advise the new Department of Human Services.

Parker says that when the governor amendatorily vetoed the commission bill, "We realized we'd be swimming upstream because the reorganization of social services was going the other way." Instead, it was the governor who got swamped. SB 1440 was the only veto to be overridden during the fall session, and he lost by margins typically seen only at the United Center on nights Dennis Rodman is pulling down rebounds. Indeed, part of the decision to amendatorily veto the bill was strategic. Edgar knew that an outright veto would stand no chance of being sustained, but he reasoned he might be able to sway votes for his veto if he compromised by agreeing to an advisory commission rather than reject the creation of a new commission entirely. He reasoned wrong.

The point is not that Edgar was right and the legislature wrong, or even that the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Commission is unworthy of joining what is clearly an already bloated roster of boards and commissions; the new commission may well be needed, and its work could prove valuable. Sen. Parker contends that the deaf have made a strong case that they need an independent commission with policy- making powers because their peculiar communication needs have made it difficult for them to get their advice listened to in the past. The point is that the legislature and the governor cannot say no (Edgar was willing to go along with creation of an advisory commission). And so the shadow government grows and grows, growing costlier and costlier.

Brune's investigation found that taxpayers dole out $4.5 million just to cover salaries, per diems and expenses for commission members. Spending by the shadow government runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe more. The Deaf and Hard of Hearing Commission is expected to cost $250,000 in federal funds for its operation alone (then state dollars when the feds' money runs out), plus an estimated $1.2 million to $2 million annually for the programs it runs, according to a fiscal analysis of the legislation.

Even so, legislators voting on a bill to help deaf people or help any people (fill in the blank with almost any adjective), don't think twice. In fact, they scarcely need think at all. On the one hand, they see an organized interest group — with the ability to stage demonstrations at the Thompson Center in Chicago, the power to pack legislative galleries, and presumably the wherewithal to be handy at election time — advocating the creation of a new board or commission to help people. And on the other hand, they see ... nobody.

There is no organized opposition, no countervailing special interest clamoring not to create a commission for deaf people, no credible watchdog (like a Taxpayers' Federation) asking: Hey, wait a minute — do we really need a new commission? For a legislator, notes James Nowlan, "That's an easy decision." Politically speaking, says Nowlan, a political scientist with the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, "It's no cost — it's only politically beneficial."

Indeed, it is so easy to create new commissions (and so hard to block them, as the governor discovered) that the Edgar Administration is worried that the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Commission might become a catalyst for advocates of other groups to seek their own independent body to push their agenda. "The reality," says Howard Peters, deputy chief of staff for the governor, "is that there are other people with a particular disability that we haven't singled out — those with a vision impairment, a mobility impairment. It certainly is a problem if other groups come forward and say they should have a commission to represent their needs based on the experience with the commission for the hearing impaired. Hopefully, we will not fragment services in that way."

If it is easy to create new commissions, it is nearly impossible to get rid of them.

"Every one of these boards or commissions exists for a reason," notes Mike Lawrence, Edgar's press secretary. "If you go to dismantle them, there will be opposition. What a legislator faces is people intensely lobbying to keep a commission and nobody lobbying to kill it."

As Brune's exhaustive investigation revealed, there are many reasons that a special interest, a campaign contributor, a defeated lawmaker or a board member would lobby intensely to preserve a board or commission.

In many instances, appointment to a board or commission brings a special cachet, conferring enhanced status that itself can be trafficked into tangible benefits.

Some boards function as a sinecure for a governor's political friends. Others have real power and spend real money — control over hundreds of millions of dollars is at stake with some commissions, including those that rule state pension funds. In other instances, special interests want a say in the people appointed to regulate certain professions — or, equally important, want a commission to oversee licensing requirements that forestall competition.

So it is not surprising that a new commission will set up shop in Springfield this year. What is surprising is that beekeepers, shepherds and the makers or marketers of white goods have yet to mobilize forces to avoid losing, like apple and peach growers, their own piece of the shadow government. 

Illinois Issues January 1997/ 7