First lieutenant governor
elected under new charter,
he occupies an office in
transition. He has sought
to serve as an ombudsman,
particularly for the aged
By MARGARET McGURK
Neil F. Hartigan
NEIL F. HARTIGAN, 37, occupies an important state office which is in the process of transition. He is the first Illinois lieutenant governor elected under the 1970 Constitution. Under the previous Constitution, the lieutenant governor presided over the Senate and he became governor in the event of the tatter's resignation, disability, death, or removal from office.
Under the new Constitution, he still is first in line to succeed the governor, but he has no legislative duties. Instead, the Constitution directs that he "shall perform the duties and exercise the powers in the Executive Branch that may be delegated to him by the Governor and that may be prescribed by law." The lieutenant governor's office has an annual budget of less than $500,
000 and a staff of fewer than 25, including five persons federally funded.Hartigan has been concerned with aging, energy policy, state fair administration, land reclamation, the St. Louis Metropolitan Airport, and Spanish-speaking community development. Previously he served as general counsel to the Chicago Park District, legislative counsel (to the General Assembly) for Chicago, and administrative assistant to Chicago's Mayor Richard J. Daley. He is a member of the executive committee, National Conference of Lieutenant Governors, and serves as Democratic comitteeman of Chicago's 49th ward. The "party" to which he refers in the interview is, of course, the Democratic party. The interview took place in Springfield on Thursday, September 4.
Q. What do you expect the lieutenant governor's office to become?
A. The new Constitution removed the legislative function from the office without specifying executive duties, so it's a matter of relying on the intentions of the Constitution writers and the discretion of the governor. What the legislature has done is to assign a number of statutory roles to the office.
In addition, I've received assignments from the governor. I told him the day of the inauguration I would work with him on any program he wanted. I still will.
Q. You've had problems developing a working relationship with the governor.
A. Look, that's not the important thing. I don't think the people of this state are concerned one bit about whether Dan parts his hair on one side and I part mine on the other. The thing is, this office and the governor's office will both be here long after we're gone. There are only six officials elected statewide in Illinois. That's six offices to represent 12 million people. In this job you could conceivably just pick up your check and go home. Well, I'm not that kind of guy. But the office needs definition, it should be put to use.
I'd prefer to have some constitutional changes, but the legislature can and has provided the statutory roles. They could expand the ombudsman function into an entire citizens' information service. We've been working with the smallest office and smallest staff of any elected official and look how much it's accomplished.
The lieutenant governor should also be informed of everything that's coming out of the governor's office. All the reports the governor gets should come here as well, so the lieutenant governor can be prepared to take over whenever the governor is out of state, or incapacitated, or what have you.
Q. How did you happen to choose aging problems as your special interest?
A. It came about largely as an outgrowth of the ombudsman work, which I continued after [former lieutenant governor] Paul Simon's model. We found so many older people calling who had no idea what to do to solve a problem. They were isolated. Programs were just not reaching them. What I wanted to do was to find out what we could do to make the programs already in existence work better. With one paid college student we looked for every program for the elderly offered in the state. We found 44 state services for the elderly. If we can't find the programs for the elderly, can you imagine an elderly person trying to find out what's going on?
What we do is take the area of aging and ask four simple questions: What is the program? How much does it cost? How many are served? How well does it work? We ask the consumers how well it works, the elderly themselves.
What we've done that's different is to talk about programs in business terms — cost effectiveness. We're measuring a social service, both qualitatively — which is traditionally what happens — and quantitatively. If you're spending $8 million, and you're serving 300 people, is that as valid a use of the money as taking the same $8 million and using it as a supplement to all the federal Title III and Title VII programs that serve the elderly — homemaker, health care, nutrition, transportation? In the latter case you're serving thousands. We're in a tax relief atmosphere, so we're not going to have any big new spending programs. How do we take the same amount of money and make it work better? That's what we've been trying to do.
Q. Cost effectiveness suggests moving people around, abolishing jobs. How do you overcome resistance from an entrenched bureaucracy against those changes?
A. Make sure that when you say cost effectiveness you emphasize that it's both qualitative and quantitative evaluation. Some people say you can't measure a social service by cost effec-
January 1976 / Illinois Issues / 9
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First lieutenant governor |
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tiveness. You can, and it isn't inhuman if you measure it by listening to the consumer. We haven't made any radical changes in the personnel area yet. What we have done is research the programs thoroughly and found where they're not working.
Q. What about the patronage situation? Could the state get by without patronage employment?
A. To me, patronage is a word that has taken on imagery over time. There were severe abuses to the patronage system. In a sense, I've been a patronage employee all my life.
There was a fellow who tried to "vise me" — you know, get rid of me, fire me politically — three times. I thought it was terrible, so I've never gone in for that kind of thing. To me, the qualifications should be it. Does the man or woman have the capacity to fulfill a government job? The cynics say that's foolish. I don't agree. I have the capacity to fulfill the government jobs I've held.
Government service should not prohibit someone from participating in politics. My experience, having to come in contact with the public, is an asset in government, because you find out if the government programs are working or not. So I'd put quotes around the word patronage.
Q. Why did you go into politics?
A. First, there's a distinction between politics and government. Politics is the process of getting elected.
I came to government mainly because of President Kennedy. He was saying that you could get involved, that you had an individual responsibility and you could bring about change. I believed it then and I believe it now. If I can get into a position in my neighborhood where I can do something, I have the potential to affect the lives of 70,
000 people. If it's at the city level, it's 3.5 million, and the state, 12 million.I decided to get into politics by choice. People say, "Well, your father was in it." Well, my father was dead. There's nothing deader than a dead politician. We were out of it, okay? I did it by choice. There are very few sons or daughters of political figures in politics anymore because of the nature of the life. It's a very difficult life in many respects, but I chose it because I felt that if you're not in the room where the decisions are being made, when the candidates are being supported, you don't have as much impact.
I worked in the mayor's office in Chicago. Nobody else in the office was in politics. That maybe comes as a shock to you. But if you look at the department heads in the city, they aren't in the party. They're professionals. I did both.
Q. But can government professionals be effective without political power?
A. Yes. What I'm trying to do is research a program thoroughly on a bipartisan basis, then getting a broad private sector of support, press support as well, then going to the members of the legislature with the strength of a good idea. For example, aging. The strength of a good idea is what passed the bill creating the Department on Aging.
Q. Have voters become permanently cynical about government?
A. There will always be a certain amount of skepticism to live with. It will take a combination of two things to bring back confidence. First, people in government and people in communications, the news business, have to reach an understanding of how to get across the valid as well as invalid things in government. Second, it will take the emergence of a strong figure, a leader like a Kennedy.
Q. Your personal attitude relies on a strong faith in good people coming to government, but is politics attracting principled individuals now, or merely ambitious ones?
A. Ambition is a definable word. I think there's a distasteful kind of ambition that ignores what you should be trying to accomplish, and I shy away from the word in that sense. But if you're performing, you should want to advance at the same time. Before Kennedy, if you had one son or daughter who was going to be a doctor or lawyer and another one who wanted to be a politician, you'd take that second kid out to, the woodshed. John Kennedy made it decent. He made this an honorable profession, something you could come to with social convictions. We're about 180 degrees away from that now.
Q. Why do you stay with it? How do you keep your enthusiasm?
A. When you see people helped by programs that you've helped establish, you figure it's worthwhile. Sure, we've, got four children, no economic independence, a net worth after 15 years in government of less than $20,
000. I've had offers of double the money, good professional opportunities. The human reward of working with people one at a time and seeing it get done, that's the kick.Q. Have you contemplated getting out of government?
A. Absolutely. Contemplated it a great deal. Because of the economics. And some of the things associated with this life are very distasteful.
Q. Such as?
A. Well, in Chicago, I was handling liquor licenses. Said to be the most vigorous enforcement program in the history of the city. One day — this is just an example, there's a list as long as your arm — three guys pull up in a car, grab my wife Marge, who was eight months pregnant at the time, pin her against a wall and say, "Hartigan, tell your husband we're going to kill him." If you're non-lunatic, you give a lot of thought whether it's worth it. And what about the four kids? You shouldn't interview me. Go interview my wife.
10 / January 1976 / Illinois Issues