By ED NASH
A veteran newsman, who has covered state
politics since 1959, Nash was recently
hired as public information officer by the
Department of Education and Registration.
Uniting to solve mutual problems at home and with the legislature
Urban Counties Council
WHAT does Lake County do about a
potential influx of school-age children
when a developer wants to build a
middle income subdivision with no
guarantee of helping to finance their
education?
How about Peoria County when it is
faced with the required task of collecting
tax funds for all taxing bodies without
reimbursement for its time and effort?
Or what happens when St. Clair
County is hit with an increased tab for
workmen's compensation insurance?
And how is Winnebago County
supposed to finance higher wages,
ordered by the state, for all its judges?
These are issues which may not have
much impact in Johnson County in the
rural southern part of Illinois or in giant
Cook County which is in a virtual
governmental world all its own. But
they do, indeed, affect the rapidly
growing "urban counties" whose populations and problems are far divorced
from the Johnson Counties of the state,
and yet are different enough from
Chicago and its surrounding county to
merit special legislative attention.
The trouble has been that the laws of
Illinois are generally divided into two
basic sets: one for Cook County and the
other for the other 101 counties. This
means the same laws govern, for instance, DuPage County (pop. 491,882)
and Pope County (pop. 3,857). Realizing the mutual interests of "urban
counties" in solving problems and
monitoring actions the General Assembly might take which would affect this
type of county, the Urban Counties
Council of Illinois was created with five
dues-paying member counties some five years ago. It has now blossomed to
include 24 counties, composing about
75 per cent of the state's population
outside Cook County.
The council's brochure says its purpose is the cooperation of its participating members so that "they might
engage in those activities which by
mutual association, common experience and combined efforts and planning
will lead to the solutions of problems of
member counties."
Its executive director, Arthur R.
Gottschalk, a former state senator, puts
it more bluntly by explaining that, after
the Illinois Constitutional Convention,
there was "great dissatisfaction among a
number of county board chairmen of
the larger counties with the failure of
county governments to organize effectively or present their case effectively to
the convention or the Illinois legislature." Therefore, Gottschalk points out,
some of them felt there was need for an
association "to represent aggressively
the interests of county boards, giving
special attention to the unique problems
facing county boards in urban counties."
Dwight Magalis, who heads the Lake
County Management Services Department and is in constant contact with the
Urban Counties Council, is even more
direct: "It creates, and seeks sponsors
for, its own legislation; it supports and
takes positions for or against proposed
legislation — and fights as many bills as
not."
The idea of such a council goes back
to the early 1960's, when Lake County
and neighboring McHenry County
banded together in a bi-state effort with
Kenosha County, Wis., to coordinate
activities on problems concerning the
three counties.
In 1964, Lake, McHenry, DuPage,
Kane and Will counties — the five
"collar counties" around Cook County—joined together in an informal Urban
County Problems Council with a purpose not far afield from the present
council: "To plump for state legislation
benefiting the entire area ... the third
basic area in Illinois." As the late Melvin
C. Mullins, a Lake County Board member and the Problems Council's first
vice chairman, put it, "It is erroneous to
describe Illinois as being divided into
just Cook County and Downstate
Illinois .... the large areas outside
Cook County form a definite third part
of the state."
Behind the concept
Nevertheless, the concept of an
association of like-minded, larger counties outside Cook County lay relatively
dormant throughout the rest of the
1960's and only got into gear after the
new Illinois Constitution was drafted
and became effective in mid-1971. A
year later, Lake, DuPage and Kane of
the "collar counties" and St. Clair and
Madison counties in the East St. Louis
area became the first dues-paying
members of the newly incorporated
Urban Counties Council of Illinois.
Since then, the council's membership
has expanded into other parts of the
state and now also includes the counties
of Adams, Champaign, DeKalb, Jackson, Kankakee, Knox, LaSalle, Macon,
McHenry, McLean, Peoria, Rock Island, Stephenson, Tazewell, Vermilion,
Whiteside, Will, Williamson and Winnebago. Although it might seem that
some of these counties would not
qualify as an "urban county," the
council opens its doors to any county in
Illinois with more than 100,000 people,
or any county whose "urban population," according to the Bureau of the
Census, exceeds 30,000. All the members pay dues based on their population.
It isn't that the counties of the state have
August 1977 / Illinois Issues / 23
been neglected through the years, but
there is the feeling they may have been
forced into the legislative back seat by
the highly persuasive and powerful
Illinois Municipal League.
County governments have had the
Illinois County Problems Commission
to handle their interests for 20 years.
Composed of equal numbers of the
Illinois House, the state Senate and
"public" members, the commission was
formed through the efforts of the late
state Sen. Daniel Dougherty (D.,
Chicago), who was the first chairman
and a member until his death last year.
Initially, the commission was quite
active and had a viable rapport with
county officials and county board
members, as well as considerable success in getting passage of effective
legislation. But then came a period of
relative inactivity.
In 1973, one year after the Urban
Counties Council was formed, state
Sen. Karl I. Berning (R., Deerfield)
became chairman of the commission.
An office was established and staffed; public hearings were held; a legislative
report was instituted; and the commission was an active force again. Still,
many thought the commission had a
"fatal flaw" not of its own making: it had
to represent every county in the state,
including Cook County and all of
Downstate Illinois.
This doesn't mean the newly evolved
Urban Counties Council and the long
established County Problems Commission have been at legislative loggerheads. Berning, a former Lake County
Board chairman and former commission chairman, said, "I'm basically in
favor of the Urban Counties Council
program. I think the council performs a
useful service to the large counties and a
very, very vital chore in keeping on top
of legislation both advantageous and
detrimental to the larger counties." And
Kane County Board Chairman Philip
B. Elfstrom, who was one of the council
incorporators, is also a commission
member with Berning. Elfstrom is also
the council treasurer. The other officers,
which are from every area of the state,
are President Victor P. Canty of St.
Clair County, Vice President John E. H.
Cassens of Whiteside County and
Secretary Richard W. Aubry of Rock
Island County. Like all the other 20
directors of the council, they are the
chairmen of their respective county
boards.
The council's work is cut out for it in
the current session of the General
Assembly. The preliminary council
legislative program includes such proposals as: H.B. 702, to reimburse
counties for collecting taxes for every
taxing district within the county; H.B.
1468, to provide for a county levy for
workmen's compensation insurance
costs; and H.B. 32, to require the state to
pick up the full tab for paying judges.
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It rankles counties, especially the
large ones, which have higher costs, that
the new Constitution eliminated the fees
a county used to be paid for collecting
the taxes for all the districts in the
county. The counties also have complaints against the General Assembly
because the legislature increased workmen's compensation but did not prescribe how counties are to pay for it, and the legislature gave the judges a pay raise and decreed the counties should
pay it. H.B. 32 proposes that the full
salary of circuit and associate judges be
paid by the state. At present counties
pay $7,500 of circuit judges' salaries and
$4,500 of associate judges' salaries.
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For years, there have been efforts to
require that developers provide for
schools and open spaces when building
subdivisions. Although such a measure
is not a specific council proposal, it will
doubtless continue to be a concern of
urban counties.
In the 1971-72 legislative session, two
of three proposed laws would have
authorized non home rule municipalities and counties, as a condition of
approval of a subdivision plat, to
require the subdivider to dedicate land
for school purposes, or make cash
payments in lieu of such dedication. The
two bills. Senate Bills 658 and 659,
sponsored by former Sen. Harris W'
Fawell (R., Naperville), passed the
Senate but died in the House amidst strong opposition from the homebuilding industry.
Other initial council legislative proposals include: reestablishing county
board powers over landfills (H.B. 58
and H.B. 59); requiring fiscal notes on
proposals that would impose costs on
counties and other local government
units, school districts and community
college districts (H.B. 1268 and S.B.
154); creating possible special levies for
specific county purposes such as holding
elections (S.B. 203); publishing county notices (S.B. 312); collecting taxes (H.B.
702) and paying unemployment insurance benefits (H.B. 1519). H.B. 1519
would apply to all units of local government and was amended to include
school districts. Five of these 12 bills
were sponsored by legislators from
Cook County; the remaining sponsors are from counties within the Urban
Counties Council.
In the past, the Urban Counties
Council has been instrumental in securing passage of laws that consolidated
county board primaries and elections
with the regular primaries and elections,
increased the general county fund levy
ceiling by 20 per cent, authorized
counties to perform certain urban
services and permitted counties to
charge other taxing districts for extension and collection services. The last,
though, was found unconstitutional,
The council also says it played a key role
in killing bills like one to usurp county
planning and zoning authority and to
have the counties pay for increases in jurors' fees.
In addition, Council Executive Director Gottschalk says the council negotiated with the state in an unsuccessful effort to increase payments to county
nursing homes. And it presented legislation to change the method of special
census counts for municipalities which
24 / August 1977 / Illinois Issues
had discounted the increase related to
normal population growth in unincorporated areas annexed to a municipality. The change resulted in a significant increase in state revenue sharing
funds which are distributed on the basis
of population.
Several years ago, former state Sen.
Jack T. Knuepfer (R., Elmhurst), who
sponsored many council proposals, had
a wide-ranging bill that probably
included most of what the council
considers "urban services." A sampling
of the "urban services" Knuepfer would
have authorized counties to provide
includes water supply and distribution,
disposal of -sanitary and storm water
sewage, police and fire protection,
forestry, libraries, public health, street
and sidewalk construction and maintenance, street lighting, public transportation, parks and recreation, refuse
collection, planning and zoning, public
utility systems and mosquito abatement. The proposal died in legislative
committee.
Perhaps now, however, the urban
counties are about to get more attention
than they have had. Both James R.
Thompson, the Republican who won
the governorship, and Michael J.
Hewlett, his unsuccessful Democratic
opponent, saw fit to meet with the
Urban Counties Council before the 1976
election. Thompson indicated his
awareness of problems relating to
county financing, including unfair
treatment of counties in the new Constitution and the improper treatment of
counties by both the state sales and
income tax distribution formulas. And
he noted that the sales and income tax
base for counties was the unincorporated areas only, while most county
services are provided on a countywide
basis. Hewlett pointed out that many
fiscal problems are imposed on counties
by state government decisions. And he
stressed that counties rely mostly on real
estate taxes, fees and fines for their
several funds, rather than the income
and sales taxes which are more responsive to inflation.
As another step in its evolution, the
Urban Counties Council may be getting
even larger. Under consideration is a
Proposal for non-urban counties to
become limited or associate council
members. This might provide even more
impetus toward full recognition and
benefits for the "third part of the
state."
August 1977 / Illinois Issues / 25