Chicago Tribune Editorial: 'First, let's protect us!'

Chicago Tribune Editorial: 'First, let's protect us!'
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
October 14, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/chi-1014edit1oct14,0,7106906.story


Democratic leaders of the Illinois legislature know this much: Their inflated claims of passing bold ethics bills during their spring session didn't bamboozle anyone. When angry voters scorned the pols' self-praise and continued to demand real reforms, the leaders realized they had better try to make peace with Illinoisans before the 2010 elections. Hence this week's planned consideration in the Senate of a bill that would let citizens add a recall amendment to their state constitution.

Problem already: The proposed amendment would let voters recall a governor -- but only a governor. Other state executive officers, legislators, mayors, council members, county board presidents and commissioners -- under the proposed amendment, they'd all be lovingly insulated from recall by the Springfield Dems.

This notion that citizens shouldn't be able to dismiss the officials whose salaries they pay is nothing more noble than a statehouse full of incumbents sheltering themselves.

Senate President John Cullerton, don't fall for the governor-only recall bill that House Speaker Michael Madigan dumped on your chamber. If your Democratic members litter next year's ballot with this amendment, they'll have earned a new motto: "First, let's protect us!"

In 2008, 26 state senators -- 25 of them Democrats -- deprived Illinois voters of a chance to vote a broad recall amendment up or down. For some of them, the intent was to protect then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who hadn't yet been charged with crimes but who had become the governor who couldn't govern. This year, 61 representatives -- every one a Democrat -- voted to bury in their chamber's Rules Committee a proposed amendment that would have permitted recall of state executive officers and legislators.

Instead, House members tried to look reform-minded by coughing up this lame little governors-only amendment. The Senate may consider it Thursday.

Oddly, Gov. Pat Quinn, long a champion of recall, has said he'd consider a governor-only recall amendment a victory because, well, you know, Illinois has to start somewhere.

Governor, the Dominicans at Fenwick High School in Oak Park taught you better than this. Constitutional amendments aren't evolutionary creatures to be tweaked incrementally every now and then. They're difficult to adopt or change. If you still believe in recall -- that is, if you don't just want to pretend you're satisfied with a piddling amendment that protects every officeholder but one -- then demand a broader recall amendment.

Someone needs to remind Quinn, Cullerton and Madigan that their ethics legislation fell woefully short of what the Illinois Reform Commission proposed. Their budget dodged difficult decisions and didn't fundamentally reform how the state spends money. They're stewards of a badly indebted government that specializes in . . . borrowing money.

We doubt that those failings would provoke citizens to mount recall campaigns against the Democrats who run the statehouse. But voters ought to have that right.

Just as voters should have had the right to recall one former officeholder. Were it not for those FBI wiretaps, this fall veto session would open with one Rod Blagojevich still at the badly listing helm of state government.