EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK Illinois Issues documents the way we were, the way we are by Peggy Boyer Long Inflation, unemployment and the price of gas were up. Confidence in government was down. Yet a handful of optimists persisted in publishing the first issue of a 32-page monthly, bearing on its logo the brave slogan, "The magazine that makes public business your business." That was January 1975. Even then, the slogan seemed a bit earnest, the design conspicuously austere. And the timing inauspicious. After all, the momentous events of our public life appeared to be past tense. Former Gov. Otto Kerner was in prison. The summer before, Richard Nixon waved goodbye to his presidency, and to the wreckage our national politics had become. The Vietnam War was about to grind to a close. A chapter had ended. What was left to add? But what is striking in hindsight is how much social and political change was happening in the back half of the cynical '70s, though in less dramatic fashion. What is striking, too, is how much the early editions of Illinois Issues --- how much the editions over the past 25 years — reflected who we were. In an introductory note on page 2 of that first issue, the staff announced that the magazine's writers would include "newsmen who cover government activities."

Close enough. At the time, there were about 30 reporters covering the legislature full-time, only one a woman. But then, there were only 14 women in the legislature. No woman had held a statewide executive post, or a seat on the Illinois Supreme Court.

What was commanding the attention of those writers that first year?

Phyllis Schlafly of Alton was attracting 5 million of the nation's listeners to her radio program, according to CBS, and to her message that "it is a wonderful right that a wife be provided with a home by her husband." She used that message, along with the apple pies she and her supporters delivered to lawmakers, to dash hopes for a federal Equal Rights Amendment.

Chicagoan Cecil Partee was elected the first black president of the state Senate. (There was only one black reporter in the Capitol press corps.) The battle between Chicago Mayor Richard 1 Daley's Democratic loyalists and supporters of independent Democratic Gov. Dan Walker would stretch the balloting for House speaker into three long weeks and 93 ballots. Democrat William Redmond of Bensenville was elected, but only after Republicans jumped the partisan aisle. A freshman from Elmhurst by the name of Lee Daniels was the first to break party ranks.

Unemployment stood at 8 percent, twice the number of unemployed people as one year earlier. State spending had topped $8 billion. That was, some worried, $138 million more than the state was taking in. The governor instituted a job freeze, which he said would save $15 million.

Officials looked to Illinois coal as a way out of the energy crisis, but despite the rising price of gas at the pump, the state's highway program was doing fine. Meanwhile, environmentalists worried about the byproducts of Illinois' growing "nuclear commitment."

Ag experts advised that crops fertilized with urban sewage were safe to consume, "unless a continual application resulted in a dangerous accumulation of heavy metals." Planners, worried about sprawl, warned that as many as 250, 000 people could be living in McHenry County by 1990. Economists argued Chicago was becoming a global city. (The Shah of Iran had visited and was "fascinated" with the way the city worked.)

And the guy who prosecuted Kerner was running for governor.

The magazine staff dropped the slogan --- and over the years it has updated the design -- but it's still making public business your business.

4 / October 1999 Illinois Issues