By ROBERT W. KUSTRA
State control shifting from Illinois reshapes urban role THE NATION'S urban areas have discovered in recent years a renewed commitment on the part of state government to play an active role in the solution of major urban problems such as housing, transportation, education, welfare and the environment. As Illinois begins to respond more forcefully to its urban needs, there appear to be at least three major policy thrusts which have guided the state's role. First of all, Illinois finances, at ever higher levels, an increasing number of local government functions. In the last four years, the financial posture of Illinois state government has been a weak one. Although there are many reasons for this, there is no question that local demands on the state budget have drained it in areas such as mental health, education, mass transit and welfare. The revenue structure simply could not withstand the major increases in spending for local services. In one area alone — school aid — the state budget has doubled since 1970. Fortunately, the newly enacted state income tax of 1970 has proven to be a most productive revenue measure; so much so, in fact, that it has recently surpassed the sales tax as the number one revenue producer for the state. It has played a large role in keeping Illinois solvent in the last few years. As a further indication of the state's willingness to share the burden of local government costs, one-twelfth of the state income tax receipts are set aside and returned to Illinois cities on a per capita basis. This program was proposed by former Gov. Richard B. Ogilvie before the passage of the federal revenue sharing program and represents another Illinois commitment to its cities. Donald Haider, in an article on the fiscal crisis of America's cities published in "Fiscal Scarcity: A New Urban Perspective," 1976, by Ballinger, documented the fact that state governments were reversing a long pattern of fiscal neglect toward their cities: "By 1974, states were spending 56 per cent of their budgets — $45 billion out of a total of $81 billion — in aid to localities compared to 44 per cent in 1954. During the same 20-year period, local governments' dependence on state funds rapidly increased — from 42 per cent of locally extracted revenues to 58 per cent."
In a sense, the budgets of the major urban industrial states have become urban budgets, and Illinois is no exception. The greatest drains on the state's treasury — public aid, school aid and transportation — are essentially urban costs. Better than three-fourths of state school aid goes to the six Chicago area counties of Cook, DuPage, Lake, Kane, Will and McHenry and eight downstate counties with urban populations (Winnebago, Peoria, Rock Island, Champaign, Sangamon, Macon, Madison and St. Clair), and the other 88 counties share the other one-fourth. Although the state receives considerable funds from the federal government for welfare, the public aid grants clearly go to urban residents. In the case of the General Assistance program, which receives no federal funds but provides over $15 million to 66,295 persons, Chicago pays only 8 per cent of the General Assistance cost and the state picks up the rest. According to one analyst. General Assistance is really a Chicago program picked up by the rest of the state. It was noted in a recent Illinois Issues article (May 1977) by Gary Adkins that 91 per cent of General Assistance payments are made in Cook County and over two-thirds of the state food stamp recipients live in Cook County alone. If local governments had to depend only on the property tax, they could never support such expensive programs. Broad-based taxes such as sales and income, however, are productive enough to sustain such state efforts. Intergovernmental effect A second policy thrust of the state's new urban role is its intergovernmental nature. There are several aspects to this phenomenon. Much state involvement in new urban programs has been required by federal laws which place the state in charge of administering many programs. Also, a federal initiative sometimes encourages the state to expand a federal program and develop new thrusts. Illinois embarked on a coastal zone management program in response to federal legislation and the action of other states. Once Illinois defined its shoreline problems, its approach was specific to Illinois. Federal and state efforts in ocean-bordering
ROBERT W. KUSTRA 22/ May 1978/ Illinois Issues states bore little resemblance to Illinois' problems and solutions.Even though federal money was involved, the state fashioned its own unique response to the problem. Such was also the case with Illinois' social services planning legislation which, though influenced by the federal government, was drafted by state legislators and amended by the Illinois Bureau of the Budget which would have to implement it. Within Illinois, there have been a number of intergovernmental cooperation agreements between the state and its local governments. There is hardly a governmental function at the local level which does not rely in some way on the expertise, authority or revenues of state government. One of the last vestiges of local autonomy remains the zoning power, but even here a number of states, including Illinois, have considered land use legislation. Where it has passed, the zoning power has become restricted and the state has entered into a partnership with local governments. Local governing boards have full authority where only local interests and impacts are involved while the state asserts its authority over land use/ growth policy decisions having more than a local impact. Cooperative agreements Illinois also encourages local governments to cooperate with one another and with state agencies. The 1970 Constitution encourages local governments to participate in cooperative agreements with each other and with other agencies of government. The Constitutional Convention's Local Government Committee, which drafted the provision for intergovernmental cooperation agreements, pointed out that it wanted to overcome the partial, confusing and fragmented nature of existing statutory provisions and to provide necessary financing authority for cooperative endeavors. In 1973, the Illinois General Assembly and the governor approved a law which also encouraged intergovernmental agreements among local governmental units (Illinois Revised Statutes, 1973, Ch. 127, sec. 741 et seq.). It contained an important clause which expanded the constitutional provision by allowing state agencies to enter into cooperative agreements with local governments. Agencies and local governments have responded with enthusiasm to these constitutional and legal incentives provided by the state and have entered into agreements dealing with urban service areas such as streets and roads, transit systems, waste disposal and drainage, water supply, recreation systems and facilities, and economic and industrial development. As recently as 1968, James Banovetz, an expert on local government affairs in Illinois, accurately reported in a pamphlet, Perspectives on the Future of Governments in Metropolitan Areas, published by the Center for Research in Urban Government (CRUG) of Loyola University of Chicago, that there was little in the way of intergovernmental cooperation in the Chicago area. Yet, eight years later another CRUG pamphlet, Interlocal Associations in Northeastern Illinois, authored by Elizabeth Warren documented hundreds of intergovernmental agreements in northeastern Illinois. The change in the constitutional, legal and political climate which generated such intergovernmental activity is a remarkable phenomenon in Illinois government. Local governments in the northeastern Illinois urban region may not be ready for metropolitan government, but they are willing to compensate for the lack of efficiencies and economies lost by passing up the metro approach by entering into intergovernmental agreements in planning, information sharing, discussing, lobbying and engaging in the actual delivery of services. Regional organization The third policy thrust of the new state role in Illinois' urban areas is the contribution which Illinois state government has made toward strengthening the regional approach to urban problem solving. There can be no doubt that federal grants, regional in scope, have encouraged and in some cases demanded an emphasis on regionalism in northeastern Illinois. State government, however, has also had an important role to play by breathing statutory life into a number of regional entities such as the Cook County Council of Governments, Regional Transportation Authority (RTA), Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission (NIPC), Metropolitan Sanitary District and the Chicago Area Transportation Study. Crucial decisions regarding the construction of highways, quality of air and water, availability of mass transit facilities, and water and sewage service are all determined by these agencies. Occasionally, these agencies have taken on highly controversial issues such as the case of NIPC's regional planning program in housing and land use. In a bold attempt to encourage the construction of low and moderate income housing in the suburbs, NIPC announced publicly the names of a number of municipalities which failed to meet NIPC's established housing quotas. Critics became enraged that a regional agency such as NIPC might even think that it could dictate such policies to independent suburbs. Such actions do not escape the watchful eye of anti-metropolitan government groups opposed to any attempt by a regional or metropolitan agency to expand its authority. In the 80th General Assembly, NIPC's planning efforts created such a stir that the Illinois House voted to establish a joint legislative committee to investigate regional government in northeastern Illinois. In similar anti-metro action, a bill was introduced to allow McHenry County to withdraw from the RTA. Gov. James R. Thompson even hinted that he might support counties that want to drop out of the RTA, but the governor backed down later in response to angry proponents of a regional approach to mass transportation. The spectre of metropolitan government still haunts suburbanites. Although Illinois has made some advances in providing for regional mechanisms to handle urban problems which transcend local political boundaries, such regional efforts can be expected to move slowly. State and federal architects of such plans must take into account the arguments of their critics who fear some future supergovernment for the six-county Chicago area. There is a delicate check and balance- system operating in Illinois between the legislative and executive branches, and suburban legislators are ready to react with punitive legislation any time they perceive local interests being smothered by a regional or metropolitan force. Policy control Illinois' increased responsibilities in financing local government, its encouragement of intergovernmental coordination and its support of regional May 19781 Illinois Issues/23 approaches to urban decisionmaking all combine to move Illinois into a new era of state-local relations. These developments will require students of intergovernmental relations in Illinois to reexamine their beliefs and assumptions about what ought to be the proper relationship among Illinois governments and agencies. One favorite local government reform which will be subjected to the scrutiny of local government experts is home rule. Thomas Anton has already assessed the changing nature of the state-local relationship in "Toward a New Conception of Local Responsibility," published in Partnership Within the States: Local Self-Government in the Federal System by the Institute of Government and Public Affairs, University of Illinois, Urbana, and concluded that: "the political significance of home rule is clearly diminishing in precisely those policy areas — education and housing — which many have thought to be beyond the centralizing pressures affecting other municipal activities . . . [therefore] an increase in [education and housing] policy control by higher levels of governments, through the normal process of allocating funds and requiring that the funds be utilized according to higher level standards, is hardly surprising." This study of state-local-relations supports the Anton conclusion and demonstrates that Illinois has taken initiatives in a number of policy areas in addition to education and housing. In transportation, social services, environmental protection and housing, Illinois provides financial resources and managerial expertise with which to formulate and implement urban policies. However, this increased state activism should not sound the death knell for home rule in Illinois. Home rule will continue to serve Illinois cities and counties in narrow policy areas where, prior to 1970, they were restricted by state legislative supervision over such matters as personnel practices, financial mangement, taxing power and general government organization. But home rule will be of little value to Illinois' metropolitan areas seeking metropolitan solutions to the problems confronting its urban areas. Regional or metropolitan issues will be faced successfully only with the full authority of a broadbased the government to assume some of the financial burdens of its local governments, to provide constitutional and legal incentives for intergovernmental cooperation, and to encourage the creation and maintenance of regional entities capable of fashioning solutions to Illinois' urban problems. If home rule does not represent the threat to state authority which some of its supporters may have expected, that may be due in part to the subtle shift in policy control which has taken place in state government. The home rule concept assumes a state legislature-municipal relationship. Historically, it was the state legislature which bestowed powers The Illinois experience also suggests that the states have the potential to serve as the keystone of the American federal system in urban areas and functions on cities. Formerly, students of the state-local struggle focused on state legislative action when drawing up their score cards. Even today the state legislature can grab the headlines of any major metropolitan daily with an action which affects that area's cities. But executive memos, position papers and directives flowing from state agencies in the executive branch often go unnoticed and unrecorded by the media in spite of the ever-increasing influence of those agencies. The legislature represents only one instrument of oversight and control in state government today, and in some states, a rather weak one. Control over local governments, their problems and solutions in some states has shifted from the legislative to the executive branch. Administrative oversight by the state bureaucracy has largely replaced the traditional pattern of direct legislative supervision of local government. Although the Illinois General Assembly has distinguished itself by dealing with tough urban issues such as redlining, social services planning and mass transportation, state agencies in the executive branch such as the Illinois Department of Transportation, Environmental Protection Agency, Business and Economic Development and Governor's Office of Manpower have as sumed new responsibilities for Illinois' urban areas. Recent attempts to pass land use planning and management legislation by the Illinois General Assembly and the Congress highlight this shift in policy control. Both attempts to pass land use legislation met the same fatal fate. The 701 program of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), however, which distributes federal planning funds to state and local governments, requires a "land use element" containing some provisions of the land use bill. Consequently, the Illinois Department of Local Government Affairs, which is charged with preparing the 701 program, is now compiling a land use plan quite similar to the one required by the defeated bill. In short, although home rule may have freed the cities from direct state legislative supervision, it can do little about the new set of bureaucratic controls now exerted by state agencies implementing federal laws. States' role Students of urban politics do not have to search very long for pessimistic commentaries on the role of the states it urban areas. Alan K. Campbell has said that the states, of all parts of the federal system, have performed the poorest, and that there was no sign of a breakthrough in state-urban action. Campbell's comments were made in 1970, not very long ago, in The States and the Urban Crisis published by Prentice-Hall. And yet, the period since that time has been a busy one for many states, including Illinois. New urban initiatives have come forth in Illinois which have demonstrated the state's willingness to solve its urban problems.. If Campbell were writing today, it is likely that he would have more encouraging statements to make about the role of the states. The Illinois experience also suggests that the states have the potential to serve as the keystone of the American federal system in urban areas. Encouraged by federal policies which make them the key decision points in the allocation of federal assistance, the states have accepted their new responsibilities and even expanded their involvement in various urban programs. Rather than view the states as mere conduits through May 1978 /Illinois Issues which federal dollars flow into local treasuries, students should now analyze them as significant mechanisms for control, policy direction and accountability in the federal system. Just recently, Dan W. Lufkin, former commissioner of environmental protection in Connecticut, recorded his favorable experiences in Connecticut in Many Sovereign States published by David McKay Co. in 1975 and hailed the states as the national government's most important resource for problem solving. Lufkin relates a story which emphasizes the importance of accountability— one of the most valuable commodities which Illinois has to offer. As commissioner of environmental protection for Connecticut, he received a letter from a little girl who was concerned about the survival of a family of osprey birds nesting in Connecticut. The little girl was invited to Lufkin's office for an outline of the state's efforts to preserve the osprey. As the little girl was saying goodbye to the commissioner and his assistants, she told the commissioner, "If anything happens to my osprey, I'll know who's to blame." Lufkin, commenting on the little girl's warning, said, "That told me everything I needed to know about state government. No airy promises. No passing the buck. No place to hide." Illinois' potential Whatever else Illinois can offer citizens of its urban areas in the way of expertise, authority and funding, none can be as valuable as the accountability function. Illinois' greatest asset in formulating and implementing urban policies in northeastern Illinois and other urban areas of the state is its proximity to local and regional problems, the access which it provides its citizens through the state's governmental institutions, and its responsiveness to urban needs. These are valuable resources for a state to discover after years of distant and sometimes irresponsible federal policymaking forced on state and local officials by the Washington bureaucracy. Future urban policies in Illinois should stress the solution of regional and metropolitan problems while assuring that local preferences are taken into account and that viable and functional local governments are respected in the design and implementation of those policies. May 1978/Illinois Issues/25
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