George Ryan
by Jennifer Davis
Illustration by Mike Cramer
How we did it
Illinois Issues' Statehouse bureau chief Jennifer Davis, projects editor Donald Sevener and I mapped out coverage of the governor's race and Sevener's essay on leadership in June. We then spent one month arranging time to sit down with each candidate. We asked each for an hour and a half, and told each our approach would differ from the standard campaign question-and-answer session: We would ask a few open-ended questions, giving each candidate a chance to reflect at length on key issues facing Illinois. The interviews were conducted by Davis in July and August. Each was edited only to smooth the spoken to the written word. George Ryan's interview is printed in full. Glenn Poshard's interview was trimmed for length. However, the content of that interview was not changed; rather, we cut additional examples or elaborations on a point.
Peggy Boyer Long
Illinois Issues talked with Republican George Ryan July 29 on Springfield's Lost Bridge trail after a trailside press conference.
Q. What role should the governor play in state government?
The role of the governor is to be the leader. The governor leads the programs. He leads for all the issues that face the state, looks for solutions to problems that come up, looks for new ideas and new thoughts to help people who need help. That's what government is about: helping people.
Q. Are there any past governors you would emulate?
No, I think everybody has their own style. I can tell you, I go back - as far as being politically, governmentally active - with Dick Ogilvie, Jim Thompson, Dan Walker. Sam Shapiro, for a short period, was from Kankakee. And Otto Kerner was before that. But I didn't really have much contact with Otto. And Jim Edgar. I think everybody but Dan Walker was pretty much a good governor.
Q. You can be a leader in different ways. You can be like Thompson, who had an open-door policy, who was willing to go on the legislative floor and push for issues, or like Edgar, who was more formal and kept some distance from the legislature. How do you see yourself?
I would say that if I see a problem that needs to be solved, I'll do what I have to do to help get it solved - if that means working with the General Assembly or calling for help. I have experience in the Illinois House, as you know. I've got 10 years there, got a good idea how it works. And I'll do what I can to pass proposals or defeat proposals that I think have to be passed or defeated.
Q. What do you see as your role in shaping the future of the state as a whole?
I think education has to be one of the areas. I don't think there's any question that with the new technology and the changes that are going on in this country, people have to be educated and ready to take the jobs that are going to be available. It's going to take education to do that.
Our dropout rate is too high at the high school level, and we need to keep young people ready to learn by the time they're into kindergarten and know how to read by the end of third grade.
So I think education is really the thing that is going to help the future, not only for Illinois, but probably the country.
Q. What is the most pressing issue that you see for Illinois and how would you address it?
I think, certainly, education, and I said that. I think that guns and crime are an issue nationally. I don't come to that issue as a newcomer. I started my fight against guns, automatic weapons, when I was lieutenant governor several years ago. But I think guns and the use of guns are totally out of control, and we've got to have stiffer penalties for the people who misuse guns.
I proposed that in my policy paper.
Q. We have chosen five issues as key to Illinois' future: education, transportation, crime, technology and economic development, and welfare and workforce. We'd like to listen in on your thoughts about these issues.
I want to hire 10,000 new teachers. I think we need to do that if we're going to have young people educated in classrooms at the size that they can be educated, to learn to read and do math.
Twenty-five percent of the population in this country is illiterate. That means they can't read, write or do math above the sixth-grade level. What the future holds is for people to fill the jobs that we're going to be creating. And I think that's what is important.
So I think education is the key to a lot of things. It's the key to the crime rate, it's the key to economic development, it's the key to job opportunities. And it's really primary to reducing the prison load.
Transportation is an issue that never ends. It's one of those things that you
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have to continually look after. We need to improve our mass transit systems, hopefully to get more people, especially in the urban areas, out of their cars and onto the trains. We need to improve our highway system. I don't think there has been a mile of new road laid in the last eight years. And there is some concern by planners that we need new roads and we need to improve the ones we've got. And bridges.
There are several areas in the western part of the state where we need to connect some roads. Areas in the city where we need to improve the highway system. There's a place called the Highway Strangler there where eight lanes come into one. And there's 80,000 people, commuters who use that every day to get in and out of the city. That needs to be corrected. But transportation is an ongoing problem and requires constant care and dollars.
Just two or three weeks ago the president signed a bill where Illinois got $300 million for highway funding and got, I think, $130 million for mass transit. That was the good news.
Before they signed the bill, we used to get one dollar and three cents back for every dollar we sent in in motor fuel tax monies. Now, after they signed the bill, we only get 92 cents back for every dollar in motor fuel tax. So that's not good.
We need to increase our efforts at the congressional level to make sure we get our fair share back from the federal government, not only in transportation dollars, but all dollars - for Illinois now ranks 48th. We need to step up the pressure. I think the governor can do that. Step up the pressure on the Congress to make sure we get a fair share at least of our gas tax dollars, and for all dollars.
There isn't any question that we've got a lot of technology and technology centers in Illinois. We've got one at the university. High-tech at the Beckman Center is on the burner and cooking. But we have to encourage people to invest in those kinds of programs that create technology.
Venture capitalists are what we need. We need to encourage people. We need to have some tax incentives to have people invest their money to create the kind of technology here in Illinois that needs to be created because it will provide the kind of jobs that we need. High-tech is a very important industry. And we need to spend a little more time developing it here in Illinois.
Crime. I'm against it (laughs). That's another thing you constantly have to be on guard against.
The crime rate in Illinois has dropped, but we still have far too many young people homicides. I think we're second in the nation in teenage homicides as a result of gun violence. Three hundred and twenty last year. We lose, I think, one child a month as a result of gunfire in Illinois. And our prisons are too full. We're talking about building more. That goes back to education. If we could educate more people, there would be less crime.
Community policing programs are programs that work well. We want to help develop those programs. And work with law enforcement throughout the state.
Q. Do we need to build more prisons?
I think right now we do - the one that's on the board in the Savanna area. We'll see when that gets built what we need. I hope someday we can tear them all down.
Q. Welfare-to-work and workforce issues?
Welfare-to-work is something that sounds good in a campaign or for people to talk about, but it's sometimes very tough to implement. Howard Peters, director of Human Services, has done a great job. I think I heard today that they moved some 44,000 or 45,000 people off of welfare into work.
To do that, you've got to create a lot of things. You have to have good child care available for people to move from welfare to work. You have to have some training programs to help them
transfer from welfare to work. And you have to have transportation available to get them from home to their jobs. So it's a coordinated effort, but it's an important one.
And I think it takes somebody like Howard Peters who knows and understands the delicate balance to make sure that it works. You can't let it get out of hand. I think it's worked pretty well thus far, and I'm anxious to see how it will do in the next few years.
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