McHenry County Blog

In May Illinois Statehouse News had a couple of paragraphs about the Illinois League of Women Voters that are worth repeating:

“Jan Dorner, president of the nonpartisan Illinois League of Women Voters, which represents about 3,000 women and men voters [emphasis added] in the state by hosting political debates and other educational opportunities, said members are sensitive to the “war on women,” mainly because many of them battled issues of birth control and abortion rights decades ago.“It’s not our priority,” Dorner, 60, said about reproductive-rights issues. “I have a 31-year-old daughter. I’m sure it’s not on her radar. Our members are older, and they fought this fight, what, 30, 40 years ago. When they see this stuff come up again, it makes them nuts.”

During the fight over the Regional Transportation Authority in 1974 I was infuriated that the Illinois League endorsed the referendum.

My mother had been an active member of the League, so I got regular downloads of their meetings.

I had attended local meetings in which members educated themselves before some inner meeting of state leaders decided which way they should lean.

As I remember there was no consensus process before RTA was endorsed.

Local chapter members ended up debating us local legislators.  I remember they did so with their Chicago talking points in Carpentersville and Crystal Lake.

Here were local women selling out their neighbors.

It infuriated me.

So, when the women’s group opened its membership rolls to men, I joined.

My goal was to make sure the League did not ignore their members again.

How silly of me.

When the income tax hike came up in the 1980′s, there was no consensus process.

The League’s Board just endorsed the increase.

Guess they had studied the topic back when Governor Richard Ogilvie pushed through the original income tax in 1969.

Income tax good.

More income tax better.

My wife was active in the Crystal Lake-Cary League of Women Voters during the early 1990′s.

She was even on the Board.

Other members made it clear they were uncomfortable with a Pro-Lifer being so active.

That chapter has been since merged with the McHenry-Woodstock chapter.

Membership decline probably.

And that brings me back to the information in the StateHouse News article.

Statewide membership is down to about 3,000.

When my wife was active, the State League had over 10,000 members…maybe 12,000.

By then the ERA fight had been lost; abortion had been the law of the land since 1973.

Gone was the interest in juvenile court watching in McHenry County, which surely made the judges observed better jurists.

Long gone were the women who sat, but did not participate, in school board meetings.

This past election cycle, the McHenry County League of Women Voters didn’t even hold a candidates’ night.

Fulfilling that role was the McHenry County Young Republicans.

Want to bet on whether they’ll decide to hold a candidates’ forum for the 52nd state rep. district?

I’m betting they will.

 

Didn’t the “Lone Ranger” television show start with something like that?

When the extension of the CTA from Jefferson Park to O’Hare was being considered, it was right after the Regional Transportation Authority was shoved down the throats of suburbanites.

We lost the paper ballot referendum by less than 13,000 votes, I would remind folks, and the newly-formed Illinois State Board of Elections refused to order a recount, not a surprise because all of the Establishment favored RTA’s tax hikes to bail out the Chicago Transit Authority.

There was no need for a tax hike for mass transit in McHenry County. The Chicago & Northwestern commuter service was not losing money.

Indeed, since more people walked to work then than took mass transit, one could better argue for a shoe leather subsidy than one for people who made 50% more than the average household in the county.

The fight against the creation of the RTA locally (the referendum got over a 90% vote in McHenry County with the only precinct–one in Downtown Cary–reporting a favorable results–and, in that, an election judge told me they reversed the results when they made out their report) stimulated my interest in mass transit expenditures.

I watched proposals for the Franklin Street Subway (eventually scrapped) and the extension of the Chicago Transit Authority to O’Hare.

On June 22, 1978, I held forth on the House floor on the subject. Since I mentioned passenger service to O’Hare and Mayor Richard Daley has just proposal to build an express CTA line to the airport, I thought you might be interested:

“This will cost $175 million to build. It will again provide virtually no new transportation opportunities because there now is express service from the Jefferson Street Station to O’Hare Airport.

“Alternatives could be put into operation probably in less than a year and cost less than $20 million.

“May I cite the most tempting of alternatives?

“The Milwaukee Road has a West Line running to Elgin, which passes within one mile of the O’Hare Airport terminal.

“The primary purpose of the O’Hare extension is to bring workers to the O’Hare office and business complex surrounding the airport.

“It’s not to bring passengers.

“In fact, according to Joby Berman, who has been the mass transportation expert for the last three governors, which must mean she has something going for her…and I think she has a great deal going to her.

“The cars which the CTA intends to spend $600,000 apiece for to run along this line to O’Hare Airport are not even going to contain facilities for luggage. (emphasis added).

“That means the primary purpose of the extension to O’Hare is obviously not to take airline passengers from hotels to the airport.

“Incidentally, if that were the primary purpose, one should consider that 95% of the hotel rooms where people use airlines are on Michigan Avenue, not down in the Loop anymore.”

I argued the money to be spent on the extension could be spent on mass transit elsewhere, the South Suburbs being one, or on highway construction.

In addition, I pointed out the line would not pay its own way as far as operating expenses went. The estimated operating deficit at the time was $7.151 million.

A pre-Speaker Mike Madigan, whom I debated the RTA referendum on WBBM-’s At Issue, was the one arguing against my amendment.

Although the Democrats were in control of the House in 1978, its being after the 1974 Watergate wipe out, the amendment got 57 “Yes” votes. Not nearly enough in the 116 vote House, but respectable, it seems to me.

There is a certain irony in the man who controls concrete maker Material Service heading up the effort.

He was also the person who appeared on WTTW’s Chicago Tonight when the new runway for O’Hare was announced.

Does anyone but me see a certain convergence of Crown’s private interest with his public role?

Chicago Sun-Times reporter Fran Spielman didn’t think it was worth mentioning. Neither did the WTTW moderator.