Lowly $20 million Quad-City request for civic center grows into mighty $265 million package

Part of the regular, special exhibits at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago are these farm animals shown here. Lincoln Park Zoo, along with Brookfield Zoo, wound up receiving some of the funding in the $265 million package for civic centers and state parks approved by the General Assembly in spring. Photo by Richard Foertsch/Photoprose

Social debates in a democracy are usually resolved with compromise, negotiation, give-and-take: When the legislative battles are ended few walk away feeling truly victorious. The process by which the state's largess gets dispensed is similar but polar: It's not that no one wins but that everyone does. It's not give-and-take but give-and-give.

The legislature in June went on a $3.6 billion bond-funded bricks-and-mortar borrow-and-spending spree that will in the next few years build and fix things to be used for decades. Within that grab bag is a $265 million package of renovation, upgrading and construction grown from the seed of Quad-City legislators' three-year yearning for a $20 million grant. This is the story of how that seed became a tree whose fruit fell neatly into nearly every legislative district in the state.

Of all the downstate metropolitan areas the Quad-Cities' size, only the Quad-Cities lack a civic center, although that is partly the Quad-Cities' own fault. In the 1970s and very early 1980s, when state civic center aid was abundant, community leaders were unable to get the Quad-Cities' component municipalities to agree on where the plum would go or on how the local money would be raised. Then came the early 1980s' recession, which hit the manufacturing-intensive area with a double blow, as most of its factories manufactured farm implements and depended on the ravaged agricultural market. Recently, however, and slowly, the Quad-Cities have begun to recover. The shared hard times have bred cooperation, and from the industrial wreckage a thriving tourism business has risen —making construction of a civic center now both possible and appropriate.

Making it necessary was the fact that the Iowa half of the Quad-Cities was talking about building a civic center in Davenport, and everyone knew the Quad-Cities could support just one.

Making it difficult was the fact that Illinois' civic center program, which had sold about $100 million in bonds to help build a dozen civic centers, theaters and theater/office complexes statewide, had died in 1985. A statutory $100 million cap on outstanding civic center debt had been hit, and the state horse race tax — the source of funds for paying that debt off — had dropped 22 percent since 1980. In 1987 Quad-City lawmakers tried to raise the debt cap but failed. Ditto 1988.

On July 2, 1988, Sen. Denny Jacobs (D-36, East Moline), then only 18 months in the legislature, let Senate President Philip J. Rock (D-8, Oak Park) know what the civic center meant to him. He didn't quite threaten to vote against the Democrats' Chicago school reform proposal — the bill keeping the legislature from summer adjournment — but he phoned Rock during the recess before the vote and said dammit, he needed help. Rock, whose slim majority gave him just one vote to spare, said he understood. Six months later, when House Speaker Michael J. Madigan (D-30, Chicago) met at the start of the year with the balance of the Quad-City legislative delegation — Reps. Joel D. Brunsvold (D-71, Rock Island) and M. "Bob" DeJaegher (D-72, East Moline) — "civic center" was the first thing the

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two men said. Land along the Mississippi River had just been donated, and building demolition was set to begin. Brunsvold, DeJaegher and Jacobs knew they had to go home with $20 million or not at all.

In April, Brunsvold and Rep. Kathleen "Kay" Wojcik (R-45. Schaumburg) organized a 13-member coalition of representatives whose districts had civic center authorities ready logo. Schaumburg, just west of Chicago, a rich bedroom community awakening to a bustling business-based economy, wanted $20 million to build a place to play after work. The requests of other coalition members were much smaller, totaling $23 million, and were mostly downstate. A $100 million bond sale would fund them all and leave $37 million in an unallocated pool for civic center authorities that later solidify their plans and raise the local money required for grants. One hundred million dollars in bonds plus the concomitant interest could be paid off in two decades for $10 million a year.

In 1987 and 1988, while pushing ineffectively for a 40 percent income tax increase and watching education and other necessities flounder, Gov. James R. Thompson opposed the civic center program's resurrection, saying that if we couldn't afford the basics we can't afford frills. Most legislators agreed, and civic center backers faltered.

By this past January, however, it was clear that the state's revenues were enjoying a surprising rise; more than $800 million would be available for new spending in the fiscal year starting July 1, 1989. Thompson formally ceased two years of tax talk in February. On March 1 he proposed a budget that he said was, for a change, "decent," even "good." On March 28 he wrote the Quad-City civic center authority enthusiastically saying that, with just one catch, this would be a civic center year. The catch, ironically, involved taxes.

While $800 million would generally provide a good deal of fiscal breathing room, a powerful spending vacuum had developed since 1987, a vacuum from which none of the new $800 million could break free. Thompson said that to restart the civic center program — indeed, to do anything new — a new source of money was required.

There were, politically, a few candidates. A natural gas tax loophole that out-of-state purchases slip through could be closed. The hotel/motel tax could be raised. "Sin" taxes, such as those on alcohol, can, like sin, have a certain appeal. And then there was computer software: A court had said the state sales tax statute did not cover sales of software; simply changing the statute to say it did would raise about $25 million a year.

Sen. Dawn Clark Netsch (D-4, Chicago) sponsored a software tax bill and passed it out of the upper chamber; she predicted with the new $800 million was so tightly obligated to current concerns that lawmakers would go after her software money like "hungry lions fighting over a little scrap of meat that's left over on the carcass."

Some senators tried pulling the meat into their den by tying the software tax to the revival of another moribund program, the Illinois Residential Affordable Payment Plan (IRAPP), which had subsidized winter heat for the poor from 1985 until April, when its one-time appropriation ran out. Supporters devised a new IRAPP to cover more people and capture $24 million a year from the federal government at an annual $24 million cost to the state. Thompson had generally endorsed the plan but had sung his civic center song: A new, annual, $24 million expense required a new, continuing source of money; Senate IRAPP backers stuck on their IRAPP bill a software tax provision identical to Netsch's.

Civic center backers in the House, on the other hand, had other ideas.

When the IRAPP bill went to the lower chamber, Democratic leadership had the tax provision stripped; Netsch's stand-alone bill died in committee. Majority Leader Jim McPike (D-112, Alton) told the civic center coalition that as far as House Democratic leadership was concerned, the software money was the civic centers'; but to enhance the plan's chances for success, he said, the coalition should broaden its scope: A 17-member bipartisan group (other legislators had added their districts' civic center authorities to the list, drawing $11 million from the unallocated $37 million pool) was nice but was 43 members too few for success in the 118-member House.

Taking McPike's practical advice, the coalition hooked up with the Department of Conservation, which was pushing a $100 million state park plan featuring at least one project in each Senate district downstate. House Democratic leadership quashed business opposition (businesses buy the bulk of costly software) by including in the bill the continuation of an expiring tax break for business investment. The last piece of tape was in place; the package was wrapped neat as a present.

The Democrats' point-man on the deal was 16-year veteran Rep. Richard A. Mautino (D-74, Spring Valley), who was getting a $2.5 million civic center grant, and when done he said he was proud: It was May and the rank-and-file had produced a massive, bipartisan package that was ready to pass when it should, not in the end-of-session's swirling, deal-thick air. He brought the package to Leader McPike, who brought it to Speaker Madigan, who asked for just one change — that the $28 million left in the unallocated pool go to Chicago's giant McCormick Place convention center. The war horse was due for expansion and refurbishment, Madigan said; it produces more economic activity than all the state's existing civic centers combined, and Chicago was otherwise getting nothing from the deal. Republicans, already jittery, balked.

They were already jittery from the previous week, when Madigan had rendered Republicans superfluous by introducing his 20 percent income tax hike one morning and sending it to the Senate that same afternoon with only the votes of Democrats. To the jumpy GOP, Madigan's civic center shift could understandibly have looked like showy, exhibitionistic muscle-flexing. The reasons they gave for their opposition varied.

Some noted the deal's rank-and-file origins and said Madigan was meddling pettily. Others said the speaker's tax hike was already sending Chicago $94 million, and enough was enough. Some argued partisan equity and said the package's allocated $172 million favored Democrats heavily, an imbalance Madigan exacerbated. Some said the Democrats should pass the software tax the same way they passed the income tax hike — alone: Madigan was unwittingly slipping nooses around his members' necks, the argument went, and this was just more rope. Some compiled a list of existing civic centers' bottom

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lines, pointed to all the red ink, and asked whether we really needed more.

The reason the Democrats gave for the GOP opposition was that House Minority Leader Lee A. Daniels (R-46, Elmhurst) was feeling peripheral, frantic and peeved; to show that by God Republicans count, he was demanding that his members oppose a bill giving them civic centers or state park projects.

The package came up for its House vote on May 26, the deadline for bills' passage out of their chambers of origin. Mautino implored Republicans to vote their districts on this district-specific bill. McPike argued that the speaker's request was fair, that Chicago has a quarter of the state's people and was getting an eighth of the bill's money. DeJaegher, panicked, frantically rambled. Wojcik, her Schaumburg $20 million dangling, adamantly voted "present." Not one of the 51 Republicans voted "yes," and 23 Democrats withheld their support, largely because they would get nothing if the bill passed. Of the 23 Democratic holdouts, nine were from the 14-member, all-Democratic House Black Caucus, 13 of whom are Chicagoans. Black caucus member Paul Williams, of Chicago, explained: "We weren't at the table. It was a big table with big dollars. What can I say? We want to be at the table. A lot of times we get bought off with the thought that it's going to Chicago. But Madigan's stuff in Chicago gets fixed up. My stuff doesn't get fixed up."

The Democrats harrumphed and threatened to start shuffling money to get enough Democrats to pass the bill on their own; the Republicans warned that the GOP governor would then strike Democrat pork tit for tat. Both threats were vapid. This was concrete, not policy; give-and-give, not give-and-take.

The now acrimonious talks were moved to the governor's office, Deputy Gov. James R. Reilly presiding. McPike spoke for House Democrats, Minority Whip Robert W. Churchill of Lake Villa for House Republicans, Denny Jacobs for Senate Democrats and Forest D. Etheredge of Aurora for Senate Republicans. Four meetings were held.

Madigan made the first offer, though it wasn't to Republicans: He agreed to give $15 million (later upped to $18 million) of the McCormick Place money to the Chicago public library board to upgrade its branches. The move was (shock) politically smart: Much of the construction was planned for black neighborhoods, likely winning the bill black caucus support and leaving the Democrats just seven votes shy of rendering Republicans superfluous again.

After that change there was a ratchet effect; each succeeding "compromise" drove up the deal's cost. The first notch clicked on June 7, when Daniels' chief of staff wrote Madigan's chief of staff and said let's spend more money. He proposed adding $20 million for civic center construction and $8 million for renovation; he jovially noted that "if additional projects. . . are desired, we might want to increase [that $28 million] figure accordingly." He also mentioned a $20 million Historic Preservation Agency package that "at this point we have no position on. . ., but [which] I am sure. . . will appeal to members on both sides of the aisle."

Democrats said Daniels wanted the $20 million for DuPage, the collar county he comes from, because Madigan was helping Chicago. Daniels denied demanding the money. McPike disputed Daniels' denial, saying the deal was stalled only because "I don't want to give Lee $20 million." Eventually, Daniels got the $20 million he was not asking for and which McPike did not want him to get. In exchange, McPike — widely-judged the finest negotiator in the legislature and credited by Reilly with being the package's main sculptor — got another $20 million added, largely for Democrat districts: $6 million went to Chicago park district fieldhouses; $10 million in civic center maintenance money went to DeKalb, the home of Patrick Welch, the most electorally vulnerable Democratic senator; $500,000 in maintenance money went to Rockford, home of Democrat Zeke Giorgi, the longest serving House member; and $3.5 million went to Peoria, whose civic center is running a large, nonpartisan deficit. The package totaled $240 million.

The historic sites proposal got nowhere; it was mainly for downstate, which the package wasn't exactly shortchanging. The Republicans requested recreating a pool of unallocated funds for future civic centers; Democrats said no — control of that disbursement would fall to the Republican administration's Department of Commerce and Community Affairs. Republicans requested and got $10 million for open space land acquisition, an important issue in the suburbs, and $15 million was added to renovate two zoos, Brookfield and Lincoln Park, the former in a suburban Republican district, the latter in a Chicago Democratic. That was the last ratchet. The package now totaled $265 million for civic centers, state parks, Chicago parks and libraries, open space and zoos. The appropriations were inserted in other, much larger spending bills. The measure with the software tax, the investment tax credit extension, and the raising of the $100 million civic center debt cap was called on June 30, the last full day of the session. It passed the House 7340, garnering support from 35 percent of the Republicans and 81 percent of the Democrats. It passed the Senate 53-5. Thompson signed it July 14.

Technically, the package ended very much as it began: $100 million for civic centers, $100 million for down-state state parks, the bonds repaid in 20 years with $20 million a year from the software tax. The money for McCormick Place, the zoos, the open land acquisition, the park district fieldhouses and the libraries will come from Build Illinois, 1985's $1.3 billion capital improvement program, which would have run out of money this year had it not received, with little debate, a $700 million infusion of new bonding power.

The unavailability of the software tax did not affect the other projects that had sought it. Thompson okayed the new $24 million IRAPP, explicitly noting he had not received the new revenue source he had requested. To fund housing for the poor, the legislature doubled the tax you pay when you sell your house and created a low-interest loan fund. To upgrade downstate sewage plants, about $100 million of the Build Illinois expansion will be used. Where the remaining half-billion new Build Illinois dollars are going is another story entirely.□

Harvey Berkman covers state government from Springfield for Lee Enterprises, which publishes the Southern Illinoisan in Carbondale, the Decatur Herald & Review, the Kewanee Star-Courier and the Quad-City Times.

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