POLITICS

Should two statewide
offices be consolidated into one?

by Charles N. Wheeler III

The proposed constitutional amendment cleaved the Senate and is pending in the House. If lawmakers agree, it would be submitted to voters for ratification in November.

In space flight, redundancy is an indispensable virtue. Duplicate equipment and backup systems are prudent investments when venturing into the cosmos, NASA experience has shown.

One does not have to be a rocket scientist, however, to realize that a similar level of redundancy can be an unnecessary vice in the mundane world of state government.

That's why the state's two top fiscal officers — Comptroller Loleta Didrickson and Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka — are backing a plan that would combine their jobs, saving taxpayers as much as $12 million in the process.

"There's so much administrative duplicative efforts, it's silly to go on," says Topinka. In simplified terms, the comptroller keeps the state's books and writes the checks to pay the bills, while the treasurer manages the money, investing it on a daily basis. Both offices — and the governor's Bureau of the Budget — maintain similar records tracking the money flow. The proposed merger would consolidate the state's accounting and investment duties into a single financial office — still called the treasurer, Topinka explains, because that title is more familiar to people.

"When people think money, they think treasurer," she says. "People don't know what a comptroller is. They think it's something that raises airplanes off a runway."

A constitutional amendment to make the change cleared the Senate last fall and is pending in the House. If lawmakers there agree, the proposal would be submitted to voters for ratification in November. If approved, the merger would take effect in January 2003, the completion of the term of the next comptroller.

Topinka believes the time is right for consolidation because both of the current officeholders — Didrickson and she — are encouraging it, and without such agreement, the plan can never pass. Neither of the incumbents would be affected by the change. Didrickson is running for the U.S. Senate while Topinka is seeking re-election for what she says will be her final term as treasurer.

The notion of combining the two financial offices into a single entity is not new. Indeed, some delegates to the Sixth Illinois Constitutional Convention tried unsuccessfully to eliminate both offices as elected posts, in favor of letting the governor name professional managers to oversee the books and handle investments. Ironically, leading the charge at the time was Dawn dark Netsch, who two decades later became comptroller, the first woman elected to statewide executive office in Illinois history. At Con-Con, Netsch and her allies contended that the duties assigned both offices were largely ministerial, with little discretionary policy-setting. They argued that allowing the governor to appoint the positions would make the chief executive more clearly accountable for the state's fiscal management.

Some opposing delegates, though, believed that two independently elected offices would provide an important check-and-balance mechanism that would help prevent future financial misdeeds. Still fresh in their minds was the case of Orville Hodge, a former auditor of public accounts — the office replaced by comptroller in the 1970 Constitution — who in 1956 was found to have misused some $1.5 million in state funds. Other opponents contended that taxpayers would demand to elect those officials who handled public funds, while some spoke of the value of the offices as a political training ground for higher office.

While those arguments may have made sense to most delegates in 1970, Topinka says they are not as compelling today. While each office keeps its own books, "it's all done electronically and the numbers are all the same," she says. No real oversight exists between the offices. The treasurer, for example, does not determine the propriety of a particular check before countersigning it, but only looks to see whether there's enough in the bank so that it won't bounce when it's cashed. In like fashion, the comptroller has no say about how the treasurer invests the money.

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Instead, true oversight of both offices is provided by the auditor general, an independent officer given authority by the 1970 Constitution to investigate the receipt and use of all public funds. Moreover, internal auditors in state agencies, the Legislative Audit Commission and legislative appropriations staffs are further safeguards against the misuse of public funds.

Nor does the desire for a sort of minor league for would-be candidates for higher office justify the cost of duplicate bookkeeping, extra office staff and a second $97,000-a-year salary, with its attendant fringe benefits. In fact, neither comptroller nor its predecessor, auditor of public accounts, has proven much of a step ping-stone — since 1950, its alumni have fallen short in four tries for

An argument against the change is the notion that taxpayers want to elect directly those entrusted with public funds. Placing it on the ballot would let voters decide.

governor and a U.S. Senate bid. (Past treasurers, however, include one governor and two U.S. senators since 1950.)

While Netsch has not endorsed the proposed amendment, she has no problem with combining the offices. But her four-year stint has convinced her that the duties of comptroller are critical. "I don't think that you need both offices, and I don't care what you call the independently elected fiscal officer," she says. "But it's important that you have an independent voice. With me as an independent voice, especially during those four years when we were so stony broke, it served as a check on the executive and the legislature as well."

A more fundamental argument against the change is the notion that taxpayers want to elect directly all those entrusted with public funds. Placing the proposed amendment on the November ballot would let voters themselves decide whether such redundancy is still a good idea.

Charles N. Wheeler III is director of the Public Affairs Reporting program at the University of Illinois at Springfield.

Illinois Issues February 1998 /43