Chicago Tribune Editorial - Tell them, Governor

Chicago Tribune Editorial - Tell them, Governor
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
May 19, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0519edit1may19,0,56311.story


If only the governor of Illinois understood that he needs to stop letting himself be buffeted by the mighty power-turbines of Springfield that desperately want to survive this legislative session intact. When he ought to be setting this state's agenda by urging its people to talk with their legislators, Pat Quinn instead . . . reacts.

One day the teachers don't like his budget proposal, so Quinn caves. Another day he suggests, preposterously, that the excesses have been wrung from state spending. On Monday, he propounded his doomsday budget -- a list of horrors that allegedly will befall Illinois if the governor doesn't get an income-tax increase -- increasingly, the only cause that animates him.

Governor, the legislative leaders and the unions and the special pleaders and the other forces that plan to outlast you have you pulling and pushing so many levers simultaneously that you're going nowhere fast. You are blessed with an extraordinary gift: an electorate that's furious with lawmakers you're desperate to influence. Yet those citizens see you offering detached, often bloodless commentary.

We wish the Republicans in the legislature had laid out a rival budget: They could have identified the areas that need cutting, the places to find new revenue, the way for this deadbeat state to pay its bills while controlling its expenses. But the minority party has been so timid and unimaginative on this score that, when voters decide how thoroughly to broom the Statehouse in 2010, the Republicans will be hard-pressed to claim they even tried to exert the leadership that comes from offering the best ideas.

Instead, many of the best and gutsiest budget proposals have come from The Civic Federation of Chicago, a group that doesn't even have a vote. Delve into its recent analysis and you'll find billions of dollars awaiting any politicians who worry less about their careers than about solving problems that were made in Springfield. Even as you and yours talk of raising taxes, why does no leader in the Statehouse explain why, for the last two decades, state government has been growing at twice the rate of inflation?

Governor, we see a state government that is a broken expression of the people's will. We see an unfixed legacy of scandal and corruption. We see legislative leaders telling us what reforms they want to adopt, rather than listening to what voters want.

Governor, what are you going to do about that? Will you stop wandering from camera to microphone as if looking for someone to love you? Will you stand up and tell Illinois legislators that their constituents will be in full fury if they keep trying to negotiate their way around key elements of an agenda produced by the Illinois Reform Commission you instituted?

Tell the lawmakers, Governor, that you'll think about signing whatever budget they send you -- after you sign the powerhouse reform legislation they had better produce.

We understand that you succeeded a governor who reveled in poking his finger in the eye of everybody else in Springfield. The state doesn't need another one of those.

But right now, Governor, Springfield looks like the most feckless place on the planet -- and you're not setting yourself apart. Lawmakers are behaving as if this is a year for -- pardon the Rod Blagojevich epithet -- business as usual.

If you can't deliver the Reform Commission's agenda, if you can't follow common-sense tips on how to chop unsustainable spending, then -- what? You and your legislative leaders want to stand on that record of failure and try to frighten the recession-hammered people of this state with your ginned-up doomsday budget? You and the lawmakers want to tell us you'd rather raise the income tax and head home for the summer?

Tell the leaders, Governor, that you're walking away from their game.

Tell them to pass the reform agenda.

Tell them to slash non-essential spending.

Then tell the people of Illinois that Springfield works for them -- so they need to demand that their legislators clean up this government now.

If you want reform, Governor, fight for it. If you then want a tax increase, fight for it. If you want to look like a guy who's just angling to make friends for the next election, keep letting the people who see you as a short-term placeholder set your agenda.