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Politics



Hoping for loaves and fishes



By CHARLES N. WHEELER III

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When the 86th Illinois General Assembly begins its biennial run on January 11, don't be surprised if there's a familiar air to the new production. Barring an unlikely but always possible surprise in the Senate, the same crew of legislative leaders and the same governor will be embarking on their fourth consecutive session, perhaps an unparalleled record for longevity. All but a handful of the rank-and-file lawmakers also are veterans, thanks to a 95 percent return rate for incumbents.

Most of the items expected to be on the new legislature's agenda are holdovers as well; indeed, more than half of the first three dozen prefiled bills are retreads.

Classic battles of yore will be joined again: the docs against the trial lawyers for caps on medical malpractice awards, for example, or the employers' groups against the unions over worker's compensation changes, or the banks against the insurance companies for a greater share in the financial services markets.

As that esteemed popular philosopher Lawrence P. Berra might put it, were he a legislative observer: "It looks like deja vu all over again!"

There will be one difference, though, that Yogi and other Assembly watchers would likely find in the new session — a sharp increase in political intensity because of the coming Chicago mayoral election and the 1990 race for governor. And that heightened political atmosphere can be expected to make it more difficult for lawmakers to deal successfully with the state's long-standing problems, in at least two ways.

Initially, the legislature is unlikely to do much of anything until a new Chicago mayor is chosen in April. Then, whatever does happen seems sure to be colored by gubernatorial politics, no doubt to the detriment of the public interest.

Heading the list of unfinished business, of course, is the legislature's chronic unwillingness to fund adequately the services that are needed or to pay for the promises that are made. To his continuing credit, Gov. James R. Thompson for the third straight year plans to ask for higher taxes so the state can pay old bills and meet new commitments.

All the fiscal sleight-of-hand and budget legerdemain employed by legislators in recent years have failed to provide enough for education, human services, and other obligations, no matter how the numbers were shuffled. The current spending plan, for example, shortchanges senior citizens, corporate taxpayers, medical providers and state workers who have paid their medical bills by more than $200 million, according to Thompson's Budget Bureau. So those folks will have to wait at least until mid-summer for circuit breaker grants, tax refunds and health care payments or reimbursements to which by law they are entitled. And that money will have to come off the top of revenues for fiscal year 1990, which starts July 1.

There are other pressures as well. For example, complying with a new federal law that requires proper placement and treatment for the mentally ill and developmentally disabled will add about $50 million to an already strapped mental health budget.

Or consider welfare. Besides the stacks of unpaid bills the Public Aid Department will carry into fiscal year 1990, there's also a crying need for a cost-of-living increase for recipients, whose monthly grants have been unchanged for four years. In 1977, the average monthly AFDC payment here was $270 per family, about 10 percent above the national average; this year, at $304, it's 17 percent below the national norm.

What about the Children and Family Services Department, whose child abuse investigators already have caseloads far above recommended levels while reports of abuse and neglect continue to pour in?

Should the new Canton prison, scheduled to open late next summer, be mothballed because there's no money to hire guards, even though the corrections system is seriously overcrowded?

And don't forget education, where the


8 | January 1989 | Illinois Issues


state's failure to shoulder its funding responsibilities has helped force a number of local school districts into the statutory equivalent of bankruptcy, caused tuition hikes that threaten to price middle-income kids out of college, and precipitated a "brain drain" among top university faculty.

Though hardly all-inclusive, the foregoing laundry list illustrates the demands for services — none of them frivolous or unwarranted — that will confront lawmakers.

A strong case also can be made for new initiatives in several areas, including affordable housing, medical care for the uninsured and sound pension funding. None of them should be contemplated seriously without new revenues, however, lest the public once again be misled into believing that proposals alone represent progress, as has occurred with the school reform package and the Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan. Both are worthy concepts, withering away for lack of dollars.

Some legislators, of course, have steadfastly said "no" to both higher taxes and new or expanded programs, and their consistency is commendable. The problem lies with their colleagues who want to spend the same dollars over and over, in a sort of budgetary version of the miracle of the loaves and fishes.

And while the governor's commitment to the fiscal facts of life is clear, there's been precious little reassurance thus far that those who covet his job won't be looking under cabbage leaves for the wherewithal to pay for the worthwhile programs they're bound to endorse.

Moreover, anyone who claims it can all be done through "natural growth" or "cutting waste" is either a dissembler or a dolt, neither of which should be deemed an asset for a would-be governor. Of course, those wishing to advance their political ambitions while skirting the tax question can hide behind any number of motherhood and apple-pie issues sure to be before the legislature.

But it's the tax question that will separate the statesman from the demagogue, the candidate who's serious about public service from the politician looking for a more prestigious spot at the trough.

Charles N. Wheeler in is a correspondent in the Springfield Bureau of the Chicago Sun-Times.


January 1989 | Illinois Issues | 9


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