1980: Illinois at the crossroads

IT WOULD BE easy to write off Sangamon State University's "Crossroads '80" as just another conference on Illinois government and politics. The participants argued the same old state-of-the-state issues. They came to the same old crisis-in-confidence conclusions. Richard Nixon did it to the nation; the Illinois General Assembly did it to the state. A sound skepticism has become a cancerous cynicism. So what else is new?

After all, cynicism has been the bedrock of most discussions of Illinois government and politics since the notorious legislative pay raises of 1978. And the cynics have clout now. As Crossroads '80 convened in early October, the big issue was the proposed constitutional "Cutback Amendment" that promised to plumb the depths of voter disillusionment in Illinois. It did. Inspired, at least in part, by the 1978 pay raises, the Cutback Amendment passed. It will reduce the size of the Illinois House, eliminate its unique system of election by cumulative voting and end an era in Illinois government and politics as well. All this was accomplished by the first binding referendum to reach an Illinois ballot via public initiative.

So it's not that simple to dismiss Crossroads '80. But why did an academic conference in a capital city, the veritable seat of the cynicism about government, attract a crowd of over 500?

Maybe it was a sense of being there at the end of an era, of facing a real, not merely a rhetorical, crossroads. Maybe it was the fact that Crossroads '80 promised — and for the most part delivered — the kind of big-name speakers that make headlines when they square off on the issues. But the conference did more than make the obvious pitch for the 10 o'clock news. Perhaps its success lay in the strategy of pitting the professors against the politicians, the legislators against the lawyers, the reporters against the alsorans.

In the cutback debate, Patrick Quinn was up against Rep. Josephine Oblinger. Quinn, a one-time member of the Walker administration, is the leader of the Coalition for Political Honesty, which put the amendment on the ballot. Oblinger, a former director of the Illinois Department on Aging, is a first-term Republican rep favored to retain her 50th district seat. Quinn argued the theoretical point, accountability; Oblinger, the realistic one, that quality has no connection with quantity. And Oblinger met Quinn's truculent offensive with a feisty defense that turned what could have been a dry debate into a wickedly delicious contest of wits. Backing up Quinn was Barbara Fowler, government chair for the League of Women Voters of Illinois, which has wanted to cut down the House and cut out cumulative voting for 10 years. Backing up Oblinger was Dick Durbin, Senate parliamentarian and 1976 Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, whose placid, rules-reform perspective offset Fowler's assertiveness.

Also on the panel was Ron Michaelson, executive director of the State Board of Elections, whose ruling to keep the amendment off the ballot was overturned by the Illinois Supreme Court.

On the former governors' panel, Republican William G. Stratton, 66, and Democrat Dan Walker, 57, commented on the executive branch. Stratton, a two-term Republican who served from 1953-1961, has a 20-year vantage point; Walker, a single-term "independent" Democrat, is only three years out of office. One thing both shared was a relationship with the late Mayor Richard J. Daley, who took office under Stratton and died during Walker's term. Stratton was quick to assert that "I treated Daley the same as I did

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The state of the State
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1980: Illinois at the crossroads

everyone else," although he allowed that Daley was not as "politically potent" in those years. Walker described Daley as a "brilliant, complex, canny politician." He concluded: "We had mutual respect for each other, except that he couldn't understand independent politics. He couldn't understand downstate in a million years. He was a product of his times."

Stratton and Walker were admittedly free in their comments — not surprising for former governors. What was surprising, however, was that their stands on the issues were quite similar. But they drew apart in their appraisal of the state of the executive branch. Stratton, who left Springfield almost 20 years ago and is now vice president for corporate relations for the Canteen Corporation, said: "Once you escape it, you can look back on it with satisfaction." Walker, an attorney who has returned to private practice and has yet to make a clean break from politics, is more bitter, less serene than Stratton about his Springfield years. Ever since Watergate, he said, executive power has suffered from the "we-they syndrome": a governor handpicks his cabinet only to discover they become more loyal to the bureaucracy than to his administration.

It was Stratton who put his finger on what is perhaps the state's No. 1 problem: fiscal management. "When people say government ought to be more businesslike, I don't think they know what they're talking about," he said. "Government's not there to make a profit. It's a service organization. The bottom line is to get your money's worth in services." Walker, who has been accused by his Republican successor of nearly bankrupting the state, defended his record by pointing out that he served during the worst recession since World War II (see "Rostrum," June 1980).

The judiciary was the only branch represented at the conference by its current chief officer, Joseph H. Goldenhersh, chief justice of the Illinois Supreme Court. Goldenhersh, apparently believing the judiciary to be in need of defense, identified it as "allegedly" the third equal branch of government. He cited the vast differences in appropriations for the cabinet agencies, the legislature and the courts, pointing out that of the state's $12 billion budget, less than $100 million goes to the judiciary. He went on to call on the legislature to correct this disparity by voting cost-of-living pay raises for the state's 700 judges. The chief justice expressed "shock" that people who know a lot about the executive and legislative branches know nothing about the judicial. In response to a question concerning the national Republican platform's call for appointment of judges who oppose abortions, Goldenhersh said: "I don't think judges are entitled to the luxury of personal opinions on moral issues. It's their sworn duty to follow what the law is."

Squaring off in the debate on merit selection of judges were Jeffrey Ladd, an attorney and former Constitutional Convention delegate, and Frank Kopecky, an associate professor with SSU's Legal Studies Program.

Ironically, it was Ladd, the practitioner, who argued the idealistic, "pro" point, that appointive judges would be less political because they would no longer need a political party to gain the bench. Kopecky, the theoretician, took the realistic "con" counterpoint, that elective judges remain less political because they win their seats by partisan ballot, but retain them in a nonpartisan election. Both agreed the real issue is getting merit selection as a constitutional amendment on the ballot again. (It was defeated at the polls when the 1970 Constitution was ratified.) To be on the ballot, merit selection must be proposed by the General Assembly, where the powerful Chicago Democrats have steadfastly opposed it. Here, Ladd argued as a realist, imputing legislative opposition to the Democrats' desire to handpick Chicago judges. Kopecky took the idealistic tack that it is the plethora of merit selection plans that has diluted the potency of the various coalitions to challenge the Chicago Democrats on the issue.

But it was a non-media event that allowed Crossroads '80 to score a coup of sorts. A panel discussion of the legislature's conservative self-reforms automatically took a back seat to the debate on the relatively radical Cutback Amendment. Among those who took a retrospective look at the legislature was House parliamentarian David Epstein, who casually cut down the case against the House. His most telling point: if anything, the House is too accountable (see "Legislative Action," p. 25). Quinn would have been no match for Epstein, whose speaker's chair perspective might have made even the pay raises palatable. Epstein's style was offhand, laced with humor, skeptical, but not uncommitted. The legislator's Committee for Representative Government should have hired Epstein to mount a one-man crusade against Quinn.

Perhaps Crossroads '80 succeeded because only such a cross section of groups could tackle the real issue: the dichotomy of government, the idealism of democracy versus the realism of politics, theory versus practice, mandated programs versus appropriated funds.

And maybe it was the fact that Crossroads '80 gave the people who have paid their dues to earn their living in the marble orchard of state government a chance to talk about it. All of these people talk shop anyway, from the hearing rooms of the State House to the "opera house" around the corner. But it's usually lobbyists who talk to lobbyists, legislators who talk to legislators, lawyers who talk to lawyers. Specifically, the conference challenged this cross section — professors, legislators, bureaucrats, judges, teachers, governors, lawyers, students, lobbyists, reporters and liaisons — to examine what has changed, what has remained the same, and why, in the 10 years since Illinois adopted a new constitution. And that meant plenty to talk about.

24/December 1980/Illinois Issues