By DIANE ROSS

The session: some smoke, some fire, no miracles

WHY DIDN'T the General Assembly defuse the Regional Transportation Authority crisis or reapportion the state into new legislative and congressional districts? Because decisive action was simply impossible on these two issues this session.

If that surprises you, you're suffering from the Great Expectations Syndrome (GES), the belief that any legislative action is better than no action at all.

Remember that with the Cult of the Cutback came the Doctrine of Accountability. That combination gave rise to a new populism that's still persecuting legislators and plaguing their political parties. This "accountability" suggests that politics is somehow blasphemy: that the legislator who votes for the deal his political party cuts somehow sins against his constituents. In sum, that the two-party system is not in the same league with motherhood and apple pie. Yet government, as we know it, is by majority rule, and the Illinois General Assembly, as we know it, is based on the politics of the two-party system. Demographically, however, Illinois is too diverse for a simple two-party system. Democrats control Chicago, Republicans control the area around Chicago, and the two parties split control downstate. In the General Assembly the only way the majority can rule is as Democrats or Republicans, or as factions joining forces on a "deal."

From the beginning of the session, the biggest and most political of issues was reapportionment. Would the Democrats or the Republicans control Illinois in the 1980s? How much clout would Chicago Democrats lose to suburban Republicans? But the Republicans controlled the House and the Democrats controlled the Senate this year, and no coalition met with success on reapportionment. That was why neither chamber approved the other's remap. Now it's up to the commission provided for by the state Constitution. By the end of the session, however, the Regional Transportation Authority had become the biggest and most political issue. Chicago Democrats, still the most powerful bloc in the legislature by virtue of their loyal numbers, wanted to keep the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) running at any cost. To do so, they appeared willing to vote for tax increases whether regionwide or statewide. But suburban Republicans had had enough of the RTA, which appeared to give all its money to city lines instead of the suburban lines. And they were adamantly opposed to any tax increases. Downstate Democrats and Republicans have always seen Chicago-area mass transit as a drain of the state treasury to solve a Chicago-area problem. They weren't willing to bail out the RTA even if the deal included funds for downstate roads and bridges. The wrong move would have cost any legislator outside Chicago reelection next year. So, it's not surprising that the General Assembly didn't move on RTA at all.

Yet, politics did "work" this session. The General Assembly took decisive action to keep revenue coming into the state treasury next year by rolling back a manufacturers' sales tax exemption and deferring a similar exemption for farmers.

Gov. James R. Thompson had threatened to veto $200 million in education appropriations if the General Assembly did not roll back and defer the tax relief. He needed the revenue to balance the budget, even at the cost of hurting pro-Republican business, which would split his party. The Democrats had nothing to lose; Chicago simply supplied enough Democratic votes to pass the bills in exchange for enough Republican votes to pass a public utilities tax increase for Chicago.

What's extraordinary about the 1981

2 | August 1981 | Illinois Issues

session is not what the General Assembly didn't do, but what it did do. Most notably, it approved Thompson's budget, reformed unemployment insurance laws, legalized multi-bank holding companies, and put some real teeth in the state's drunk driving law (see "Legislative Action," page 22).

But what produced the biggest headlines this year?

Are you still wondering why mild-mannered Democrat Doug Kane became so frustrated at the way Speaker George Ryan rammed the Republican remap through the House June 23 that Kane tried to force his way inside the walled speaker's rostrum? Because Ryan wanted to end Kane's career. Kane, a full-time legislator and the 50th District's only Democrat in the General Assembly, would have had almost no chance for reelection under the single-member districts Republicans drew for the Springfield area.

Are you still wondering why Mark Rhoads, young, gifted, and Republican, lost his temper when Senate President Philip Rock rammed the Democratic remap through the Senate June 28? Rhoads called Rock a "son of a bitch" and Sam Vadalabene, feisty downstate Democrat and former Golden Gloves contender, retaliated with an uppercut to Rhoads' Adams apple. All because Rock had refused to call Rhoads' remap for a vote, thereby erasing it from the record. And Rhoads, a real estate broker from suburban Western Springs, was no less than the reapportionment spokesman for Senate Republicans.

The final hours of June 30, when the action centered in the House, should have put all this lack of decisive action into perspective. Business finally got underway about 11:30 p.m., but the "show" was over by midnight. Ryan called first the manufacturers' rollback, then the farmers' deferral, then Chicago's public utility tax. Each passed with only token debate. The 1981 session was all over; there were no last minute miracles on reapportionment or the RTA. Legislators quietly spent another 24 hours cleaning up the calendars and went home.

August 1981 | Illinois Issues | 3