APPOIMTMEMTS
Philip J. Rock was appointed chairman of the Illinois Board of Higher Education.
Rock, an Oak Park Democrat, served in the Illinois Senate from 1971 to 1993. He
has represented independent colleges and universities on the board since July 1996.
The appointment requires Senate confirmation. Joan Fawell of St. Charles has joined
the Illinois Lottery as assistant director, a newly created position. She had been assistant director of the Illinois Funds in the state treasurer's office. Gregg Durham left
Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka for House Minority Leader Lee Daniels. He's the new
press secretary for the House Republican Caucus. He handled press for Topinka.
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O BITS |
Illinois politics lost an astute observer with the April 20 death of David H. Everson. He was 57. Associate chancellor of the University of Illinois at Springfield, Everson directed the Illinois Legislative Studies Center from 1979 to 1983 and was the longtime editor of Comparative State Politics. He also wrote several books on the Illinois electoral process. |
In addition to his academic pursuits, Everson drew on his knowledge of Illinois politics to write six murder mysteries set in the state capital. The following is from Everson's 1987 novel Recount: "Illinois has many internal conflicts. It stretches four hundred miles from southern Illinois, home of traditional politics; to the rich farmlands of central Illinois, where the pols literally ask: How will it play in Peoria?; to the second city where the machine lies mortally wounded but still dangerous. Illinois boasts hard-ball politics, loose political morals and the odd idealistic realist like Adiai Stevenson. ... Given the state's history of political wheeling and dealing, there is seldom a recession in my special branch of the private detective game. I gather political intelligence for the Speaker. Perhaps you think 'political intelligence' is an oxymoron. That just shows you've never met the Speaker."
Everson had planned to retire last month to devote more time to creative writing.
Robert Spencer
Robert Spencer, the man once charged with the mission of creating a public affairs
university in just 14 months, died April 30 in Bozeman, Mont. He was 78.
In 1969, the state hired Spencer, a history professor and former Vermont state senator, to create Springfield's Sangamon State University (now the University of Illinois at Springfield). The upper division university opened in 1970. Spencer served as its president until 1978, when he stepped down to teach government and public affairs until his retirement in 1988.
Former U.S. Sen. Paul Simon worked with Spencer to create the university's Public Affairs Reporting program in the early 1970s. Citing Spencer's practical and organizational talents, Simon remembered: "I had the idea but he launched it. In terms of putting SSU together, in my opinion he did a superb job."
DEPARTURES —
UIS chancellor will leave next year
Naomi Lynn, chancellor of the
University of Illinois at Springfield,
announced last month she will step down
May 31, 2000.
Lynn is the school's first chancellor, a title she took in 1995 when the former Sangamon State University became part of the University of Illinois. She was president of Sangamon State from 1991 until the transition.
University of Illinois President James Stukel said in a printed statement that "Naomi Lynn was absolutely the right person at the right time in the evolution of a university. She has displayed tremendous skill as both a university and community leader, and it will be difficult to find someone of her caliber to succeed her."
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Chicago
treasurer convicted In Santos' case, punishment was swift. She now faces 27 months to 33 years in prison. Her sentencing is set for July 27. She was charged with threatening a brokerage firm with loss of city busi- ness when it didn't contribute enough to her campaign for state attorney general and for requiring her employees to work on her campaign during office hours. Santos, 43, is expected to appeal the decision. She was acquitted of two counts of wire fraud and four other counts of extortion. |
38 / June 1999 Illinois Issues
Q. You 've said you want to he more
proactive about promoting business
here. What does that mean?
It means I've been on the road
quite a bit. From Frankfurt to the
Quad Cities to Freeport to south
Chicago. It's important for me to get
a sense of what kind of property is
available, what kind of site locations
there are for the new types of industry we want to attract to Illinois.
Q. Gov. George Ryan is proposing
an economic development tax credit.
What is that?
It's a tax credit for job creation or
investment [called EDGE]. Basically, if
a company creates 25 jobs or makes a
$5 million investment, it gets a tax credit
toward that investment equal to the taxes the employees would be paying. And
it lasts for up to 10 years. Most of the
states surrounding us have some similar
tax credit programs. And we were losing
out a lot of times because we didn't.
Q. So EDGE is designed to give
Illinois a stronger bargaining position
with businesses near the state line?
We've lost a lot of jobs to Indiana, to
Kentucky, to Missouri, all of whom had
these programs. If you look at what
Illinois has to offer, we could be beating
people a lot more frequently than we
are. But the EDGE-type program
has cost us several hundred jobs and
several business locations because we
didn't have it.
The governor has put some other tools in our budget. We got a $21 million increase. Seven million of that is for industrial training, which is critical [for] business retention and attraction. Workforce is a key issue for site location. It is eclipsing taxes and infrastructure to some degree. That is a 40 percent increase, and we anticipate it will train 12, 000 workers and be used by 450 companies.
We've also increased our technology funds and programs by $5.25 million. We will try to get more active in technology commercialization and linkages with entrepreneurial companies.
And we've got at least $1 million for two new overseas trade offices. In Illinois, one in eight jobs is dependent on exporting, and one in four manufacturing jobs is dependent on exporting. It's critical we pay attention to that. We used to be number nine in terms of exporting states and we've moved up to number six and we'd like to do better.
The governor also increased our tourism money by $5 million. And we will try to go after international and domestic advertising. Tourism is a $20 billion business in Illinois and we'd like to take it to $30 billion by the millennium.
Q. How will you do that?
We need to pull back and examine
our underlying principles. One thing
I'd like to do is outreach to business
travelers. I'd like to get them to stay
several extra days and experience what
we have in Illinois. I'd like to increase
the so-called bricks and mortar part of
tourism. We have some great attractions
around the state, but if there aren't
hotels and restaurants, you're going to
have drive-by tourism.
One example I use is Garden of the Gods in Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois. It's every bit as beautiful as Colorado, but nobody knows about it because there isn't a place to stay. It's a personal interest of mine to figure out how to do that.
Q. Do you have other goals?
I'm going to try to consolidate all my
workforce and training programs in a
new bureau.
At the national level there's been a
change, which all of us will have to be in
compliance with by next July. You have
to have a regional network of offices
that offer programs from all the different entities. Whether it is [commerce
and community affairs], or the Department of Human Services, [or] if you
have a higher ed institution or a community college, they should all be participating to ensure we're getting the
best training programs for the jobs that
actually exist. So we're trying to tie what
jobs there are in the marketplace with
the training programs that are being
provided. That's a positive step.
Illinois Issues June 1999 / 39
