Three State Police cars stop a car on I-55 near the Normal (Illinois State University) Exit in McLean County.
No loss of any consequence to McHenry County to Governor Pat Quinn’s announcement that 400 State Policemen would be laid off.
We didn’t have any in the 1990’s until I asked Governor George Ryan’s Director of the Department of Law Enforcement why we had none.
The next year he appeared before our Appropriations Committee he announced that we would get a couple.
Downstate they are more important and play the role the county sheriff’s deputies play here.
And they do issue a lot of tickets.
In the Chicago area, most motorists know the State Police by their presence on Chicagoland’s Interstates.
That started in 1975 newspaper articles are saying.
What they are not saying is why the State Police all of a sudden started issuing tickets and handling accidents on the Tollways and other multi-lane roads.
It was a deal cut with the first Mayor Richard Daley by Governor Dan Walker.
And, it was part of the multi-element deal that created the Regional Transportation Authority.
Most won’t remember, but Rockford State Rep. Zeke Giorgi could not get his beloved lottery idea passed until the state needed money—about $60 million—to finance the RTA.
The lottery was not passed to help finance education, no matter what is impressed upon your mind. The money was only directed to education during the 1980’s when legislators got tried of answering the question,
“Wasn’t the lottery passed to finance education?”
By coincidence, the lottery was estimated to being in about the same amount.
So, the two were joined at the hip.
I was one leading the charge against passage of the RTA, but, considering my father’s mother’s Watling relatives won the London Lottery in about 1830 and used the money to come to the US of A, I thought I would be a hypocrite to vote against it.
I waiting until I could be the 89th vote. With 177 members at the time, 89 votes were required for passage.
As another part of that deal, Walker wanted to sell lottery tickets at O’Hare Airport.
Daley told him he could, if the state would assign State Policemen to patrol the expressways.
It probably helped that the 1976 primary election had made Walker want to curry Daley’s favor.
Now, one of Walker’s lieutenants, Pat Quinn, has come full circle.
The primary is over, Quinn has won and now Quinn has obviously alienated the second Mayor Richard Daley.
If you would like to learn more about Quinn’s role in the Walker Administration, the stories below will tell you:
The Pat Quinn of the Dan Walker Days – Part 1 – Primary Campaign
The Pat Quinn of the Dan Walker Days – Part 2 – College Days
The Pat Quinn of the Dan Walker Days – Part 3 – General Election
The Pat Quinn of the Dan Walker Days – Part 4 – Quinn’s View of the 1972 Campaign
The Pat Quinn of the Dan Walker Days – Part 5 – What Quinn Thought of Walker’s Term as Governor