McHenry County Blog

Every once in a while I’ll hear someone say that the lottery was passed to finance education.

If I have time, I’ll correct that impression.

When I attended my second New Members Conference put on by the Legislative Research Council, veteran member Zeke Giorgi was a luncheon speaker.

There I learned Chicago Aldermen are allowed to carry concealed guns by sitting at the same table with then-Alderman Rickey Hendon when someone mentioned he was packing in the Holiday Inn East.  Hendon told us it was dangerous in Chicago.  (I don’t know if he carried it on the Senate floor, but there was one organization Democrat who did so in the House.)

Giorgi gave some helpful hints and then passed out the front page of the Chicago Sun-Times the day after the lottery passed.

It said that the lottery was passed to pay for the Regional Transportation Authority.

Now, Giorgi, the sponsor of the lottery, certainly promoted it as a way to fund education.

And most people think that is why it passed.

But, that’s just not correct.

Northwest Herald guest columnist Scott Reeder, who admits he heard adults carping about how money from the lottery was being “stolen” from education, is one who needs correcting.

The thesis of the Illinois Policy Institute’s Scott Reeder’s guest column is that any money government takes is interchangeable with other money. In other words, earmarking cannot be counted upon to mean anything. Good analysis, but he has a misconception that the lottery was passed to finance schools. It wasn’t. It was passed to finance the RTA and actually brought in the amount projected during the first year–about $67 million.

He has a good excuse for not knowing.

After all, he was a kid when the RTA and the lottery were linked in passage.

This doesn’t mean a lot to anyone but the candidates themselves, but the lottery results are in for length of terms for State Senators.

With four-year terms, the two 2012 winners in McHenry County are

• Pam Althoff  (Term lengths are 4-2-4)
• Dan Duffy (Term lengths are 4-2-4)

Karen McConnaughay drew a two-year term.  Her other terms this decade will be four year terms.

Here are the results of the Secretary of State’s length of term lottery for all districts:

Above you can find the years when State Senators get four and two year terms. Click to enlarge.

There’s a lot of profit in gambling, so maybe the Illinois Lottery might be interested in advertising on one of the four Crystal Lake Virginia Street Tax Increment Financing District monuments.

Who knows?

The Lottery might rent all eight sides.
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Photoshopping by one Heck of a Guy blogster Allan Showalter.

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

The Pat Quinn of the Dan Walker Days – Part 6 – Why Did Quinn Leave State GoveThe Pat Quinn of the Dan Walker Days – Part 7 – Afterward

The lottery was enacted to pay the state’s share of Regional Transportation Authority financing.

Didn’t know that did you?

The lottery was enacted to pay the state’s share of Regional Transportation Authority financing.

Didn’t know that did you?