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.

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

In 1976 Quincy Republican Jeff Mays and Rockford Republican Lynn Martin ran for state representative.

Illinois House Republicans had been devastated in the 1974 Watergate elections. They held onto just 76 out of 177 seats.

1976 was a comeback year.

Common in both media markets was a radio ad telling how incumbent Democrats had

Both incumbents Mike McClain of Quincy and Zeke Giorgi from Rockford had taken a well-published tour of the Chicago Transit Authority.

With publicity from some of us folks in the suburbs who were still hopping mad about being forced into the Regional Transportation Authority, the two GOP challengers used the CTA bailout to lash their opponents. (Anything favoring Chicago is a sure winner outside of the Chicago metropolitan area.)

McCain lost and Giorgi ran third out of three for the only time I remember.

From the Chicago Tribune article above, printing on Saturday, April 17th, I’d assume that someone paid for legislators to come to Chicago to tour the CTA. If past practice holds true, visiting legislators were also treated to some more entertaining venues.

All members of the General Assembly used to have passes to all the museums in town, for instance.

I wonder if this decades’ ride on the CTA will yield results similar to those in 1976.

So, what’s the potential downside for voting for the Mike Madigan-Tom Cross CTA-RTA bailout deal?

$385,000,000 coming right off the top of the Illinois General Revenue Fund.

No replacement money identified.

More pressure to pass an income tax hike or a massive expansion of gambling.

Hey, we could follow South Dakota’s example and have little casinos where mom could gamble while the kids eat at McDonald’s almost within sight right through the archway.

But, let’s look at how a political opponent might characterize the proposal.

Say you are from Downstate, also known as anything outside of the six-county Chicago metropolitan area served by the Regional Transportation Authority.

$380 million divided by the state’s population of 12,831,970 (Commerce Department figure) is what?

$30.

So, an opponent could send a mailing to a Downstate legislator’s district saying anyone who voted for this deal voted to force a family of four to send $120 to Chicago.

Or robo calls could be made. Even cheaper.

I mentioned in an earlier post how Zeke Giorgi’s polling results went down because of RTA. Wasn’t it Jeff Mays that rode to office in Quincy when his opponent Mike McClain was charged with having been “taken for a ride by the CTA?”

Multiply $30 times a Downstate county’s population.

Here’s one.

Effingham County had 34,429 people as of mid-2006.

$30 times 34,429 means residents are being force to pay over $1 million to subsidize the Chicago Transit Authority.

Every year.

At least that is what an opponent could credibly assert.

Boy, could a “Yes” vote on this bill create some good campaigns.

And, probably some upsets.

If not this election cycle, then in some future year.

= = = = =

Enlarge the photo by clicking on it and you will be able to read the name of the casino.

So, what’s the potential downside for voting for the Mike Madigan-Tom Cross CTA-RTA bailout deal?

$385,000,000 coming right off the top of the Illinois General Revenue Fund.

No replacement money identified.

More pressure to pass an income tax hike or a massive expansion of gambling.

Hey, we could follow South Dakota’s example and have little casinos where mom could gamble while the kids eat at McDonald’s almost within sight right through the archway.

But, let’s look at how a political opponent might characterize the proposal.

Say you are from Downstate, also known as anything outside of the six-county Chicago metropolitan area served by the Regional Transportation Authority.

$380 million divided by the state’s population of 12,831,970 (Commerce Department figure) is what?

$30.

So, an opponent could send a mailing to a Downstate legislator’s district saying anyone who voted for this deal voted to force a family of four to send $120 to Chicago.

Or robo calls could be made. Even cheaper.

I mentioned in an earlier post how Zeke Giorgi’s polling results went down because of RTA. Wasn’t it Jeff Mays that rode to office in Quincy when his opponent Mike McClain was charged with having been “taken for a ride by the CTA?”

Multiply $30 times a Downstate county’s population.

Here’s one.

Effingham County had 34,429 people as of mid-2006.

$30 times 34,429 means residents are being force to pay over $1 million to subsidize the Chicago Transit Authority.

Every year.

At least that is what an opponent could credibly assert.

Boy, could a “Yes” vote on this bill create some good campaigns.

And, probably some upsets.

If not this election cycle, then in some future year.

= = = = =

Enlarge the photo by clicking on it and you will be able to read the name of the casino.

The Sun-Times reports Saturday that Senate President Emil Jones snuck a section in the bill to expand gambling to four new Illinois cities, including Chicago, as I read the article.

Dave McKinney reports,

“it would divert 2 percent of revenues from the four casinos to Chicago State University, potentially handing the school a $40 million windfall that would double its take from the state…

“In committee, Jones initially said Chicago State wasn’t in the legislation.”

When Senate Republicans pointed him to the specific section, Emil backed down

Boy, does that remind me of the original riverboat gambling bill.

There was Rockford’s State Rep. Zeke Giorgi presenting the bill.

It was night and I had finished my work for Central Management Services and was playing GOP House staffer.

The casino bill arrived. It was a long bill, just like today’s 218-page one.

I started reading it.

Before I could finish, the debate began.

State Rep. Margie Parcells took the floor to oppose the bill.

She asked Zeke about the promised $500 betting limit per cruise that was supposed to be in the bill.

As Zeke always did when he wanted to confuse people, he mumbled something about it’s being in the bill.

“Ask him what page,” I suggested to Margie.

She did, as I kept searching for the language.

Neither Zeke nor his staff could come up with a page or a section, but Zeke continued to insist that the $500 limit on losses each time a person went on a riverboat cruise was in the bill.

It wasn’t.

Zeke lied.

Just as Emil Jones lied about Chicago State University’s big payday should this year’s huge expansion of gambling be enacted.

No House Republican voted for the original gambling bill.

Now the GOP has been co-opted, dare I suggest, by campaign contributions from gambling interests.

There is more than one lesson in the how gambling has taken center stage in Illinois politics.

Lie and buy come to mind for starters.

The Sun-Times reports Saturday that Senate President Emil Jones snuck a section in the bill to expand gambling to four new Illinois cities, including Chicago, as I read the article.

Dave McKinney reports,

“it would divert 2 percent of revenues from the four casinos to Chicago State University, potentially handing the school a $40 million windfall that would double its take from the state…

“In committee, Jones initially said Chicago State wasn’t in the legislation.”

When Senate Republicans pointed him to the specific section, Emil backed down

Boy, does that remind me of the original riverboat gambling bill.

There was Rockford’s State Rep. Zeke Giorgi presenting the bill.

It was night and I had finished my work for Central Management Services and was playing GOP House staffer.

The casino bill arrived. It was a long bill, just like today’s 218-page one.

I started reading it.

Before I could finish, the debate began.

State Rep. Margie Parcells took the floor to oppose the bill.

She asked Zeke about the promised $500 betting limit per cruise that was supposed to be in the bill.

As Zeke always did when he wanted to confuse people, he mumbled something about it’s being in the bill.

“Ask him what page,” I suggested to Margie.

She did, as I kept searching for the language.

Neither Zeke nor his staff could come up with a page or a section, but Zeke continued to insist that the $500 limit on losses each time a person went on a riverboat cruise was in the bill.

It wasn’t.

Zeke lied.

Just as Emil Jones lied about Chicago State University’s big payday should this year’s huge expansion of gambling be enacted.

No House Republican voted for the original gambling bill.

Now the GOP has been co-opted, dare I suggest, by campaign contributions from gambling interests.

There is more than one lesson in the how gambling has taken center stage in Illinois politics.

Lie and buy come to mind for starters.