Are casino “promises” causing suburbs to hold off on serious development?

Every time I pass the northeast corner of Cicero Avenue and 175^th Street in suburban Country Club Hills (I have family that lives nearby), I can’t help but shake my head at the vast expanse of land that exists there.

Will people gamble their way into the red at this site?

That site has a large-scale strip mall that could grow into a shopping mall to its north, and Interstate 80 to the east. It is large enough that local officials say they’re saving it for the casino they want to develop.

THE ONE THAT would be the “south suburban” casino in the grand scheme of things by which Illinois state government ups the number of casinos operating in the state from 10 to 15.

Much of the attention on this issue has gone to the fact that one of the extra casinos would be placed in Chicago, and over whether a Chicago-based casino should be controlled by a city government agency (as in one whose director is picked by Mayor Rahm Emanuel) rather than the Illinois Gaming Board that oversees all other casinos in Illinois.

At times, the idea of a south suburban casino seems like an afterthought.

Yet when I think of the concept, I can’t help but notice the number of communities that are basing their economic future on the idea of something that isn’t currently permitted under state law!

IT MAKES ME wonder how many legitimate development opportunities are being passed on (or not even being contemplated) because everyone is banking their future on the idea of getting a casino.

Made worse by the fact that, at best, ONE community will get the dream. While some half-dozen proposals (at least, more may develop as time passes) are being considered.

There are going to be a lot of losers.

What happens to those communities who, years from now, have nothing to show for their casino dreams other than vacant land plots? Such as that one on Cicero Avenue?

PERSONALLY, I DON’T think much of the whole casino concept. I always thought of them as being for communities that were incapable of getting anything else to locate within their boundaries.

Which makes me wonder if places like Country Club Hills or Homewood (my father and step-mother, who enjoy the casino atmosphere and live just a few minutes from the proposed sites on Cicero Avenue or Halsted Street), or others like Ford Heights, Calumet City or Lynwood (which would like to put a casino right on the Illinois/Indiana border) have any kind of back-up plan?

I have heard from various municipal officials whose complaints about casinos focus on state government for taking so ridiculously long (how many years has it been now?) to make a decision.

Because they feel it puts them on hold. They can’t possibly contemplate real economic development – something that creates jobs better than being a coat-room clerk or a valet parking attendant.

AS FOR THOSE who want to argue the merits of being a black-jack dealer, I don’t really want to hear it. There are higher aspirations in life than dealing cards, and I always wonder about a community that is willing to settle for less.

Because that’s what the whole casino campaign amounts to – communities putting bets on their future in hopes that they’ll strike it rich. When anybody with sense knows that the “house” always wins! As in the casino itself.

Everybody else ultimately comes out the loser. Sometimes, I think these suburban mayors would be better off buying a Mega Millions lottery game ticket.

With all the technicalities and legalese and complications in the process of the state creating a casino, I wonder if the odds are better that they’ll win the big jackpot – as opposed to someday getting a casino.

  -30-

Some people never learn

Perhaps it’s the distortion of there being 96 counties in Illinois outside of the Chicago area that makes political people think it has more than the roughly one-third of the state’s population.


BRADY: Fixing funds? Or making enemies?

But it seems that at least one Republican gubernatorial candidate is determined to be the preference of rural Illinois, without any regard to what the urban part of the state thinks.

THAT’S THE IMPRESSION I got after reading the reports about William Brady’s thoughts about who ought to pay for pensions for retired school teachers.

Brady told the Arlington Heights-based Daily Herald newspaper he thinks that school districts ought to be responsible for any part of pensions caused by future pay hikes districts provide to their teachers.

Since salaries are going to increase in the future, it would mean a gradual shift in the funding of pension programs from state government to the local school districts – a concept that WILL tick off school superintendents all acros the state.

There already are enough officials who are prepared to symbolically strangle Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, for having suggested that perhaps one key to resolving the state’s financial problems is to have school districts take over full responsibilities for the pensions of their retirees.

I’M SURE THAT Brady, the state senator from downstate Bloomington whose bid for governor in 2010 failed because he lacked support in urban areas, thinks he has come up with the perfect compromise – since the state would continue to provide for the part of the pensions they’re already covering.

All I know is that I have dealt with enough schools officials across the state to know this is an untouchable issue to them. They say that threatening to alter Social Security funding is a “third rail” among the electorate that kills any candidate suicidal-enough to touch it?

One could probably say that this issue has the same effect amongst educators.

But in the Chicago suburbs, this will play particularly poorly. Because state funding for public education already is on the decline. The reaction of the school officials will be to turn to the shares of local property tax revenues they receive to come up with the money.

THAT MEANS THE local school districts would need more money. Which they will turn to their local residents to raise. Which means an increase in property taxes overall – it only takes one government entity in a community (whether City Council, school board, park district, sewage district, etc.) to cause a homeowner to pay more when their property tax bill is due.

And for those who rent, the landlord will think nothing of passing along the property tax increases they pay onto their tenants.

In suburban districts where local tax levels already are high, the residents will grouse and gripe about paying more. In those districts where the local economy is declining (particularly many districts in southern Cook County), there just won’t be any additional money to cover such expenses!

There already are significant discrepancies between school districts that make it impossible for all children in this state to get an equal quality level of education. Does this threaten to make it more difficult for certain school districts to obtain, and keep, quality educators?

THE WHOLE POINT to having the state cover the cost of pensions was meant to equalize that factor. Every teacher ought to have a shot at a pension they can live off of in those years after they stop working. Having the state handle this issue for everyone was meant to balance things out.

Which is why it is the quirk of the process that the Chicago Public Schools teachers do not partake in state pension programs. They opted out years ago, figuring out a way to do better by their former faculty on their own.

Which means Madigan may be on to something with his past hints that maybe the Chicago schools pensions should be shifted to the state. Of course, that’s not going to happen. The increased costs to state government would harm it even more.

Plus, the thought of having to pay more because of Chicago schools would offend rural Illinois politicos, almost as much as Brady will offend the suburban officials who think they will get hit with more costs because of his pension-shift theory.

  -30-

Political people can’t get themselves to like each other under any circumstances

Why is it that I believe Gov. Pat Quinn actually has a chance to get himself re-elected to another four-year term? Perhaps it is because of the distaste and confusion Republicans have for each other.

DURKIN: Now an important person

I wonder seriously if the partisanship within the GOP will keep them from uniting behind a single candidate – no matter who gets the Republican nomination.

AND FOR ANYONE who tries to tell me that I’m exaggerating this distaste, I’d argue it was perfectly on display in recent days what with all the bickering that took place within the ranks as they tried to pick a new leader of the Republican caucus in the Illinois House of Representatives.

For the record, we now have the concept of “Illinois House Minority Leader James Durkin, R-Western Springs.” The GOP caucus convened in Springfield on Thursday, and a majority of them picked the west suburban legislator over Raymond Poe – who for nearly two full decades has been the legislator who represents the rural area around Springfield.

Tom Cross, the state representative from Oswego, has led the GOP caucus for the past decade. But he gave up the leadership post immediately so he could focus his attention on his dreams to run for Illinois state treasurer.

In one sense, this became a battle of suburban versus rural – with the suburbs prevailing. That shouldn’t be a shock, since the suburbs of Chicago (if one counts the Cook County portion with the people who live in the five surrounding counties) account for nearly half of Illinois’ population.

THE PEOPLE WHO were eager to see Ray Poe get the post were largely motivated by the idea of wanting a legislative leader who came from a very un-urban (the people who actually think Springfield itself is a large city) part of Illinois.

POE: Too rural? Pro-union?

But following the afternoon vote at a Springfield hotel, the Republicans chose Durkin – who in 2002 tried running for the U.S. Senate seat; only to lose to Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill.

By comparison, Poe has never been anything but a Springfield-area legislator. Although he has the reputation of being a good cook (and I recall one time back when I lived and worked in Springfield when he brought the portable kitchen out to the Statehouse and cooked for the legislators, staffers and other Capitol hangers-on – including myself and the rest of the press corps).

The people who wanted Poe are probably going to be peeved at the reality we now face – all four legislative leaders of the Illinois General Assembly are from Cook County. The Democratic leaders are both from Chicago, while state Senate Minority Leader Christine Radogno is from southwest suburban Lemont.

NOW WE GET a House Republican leader from the land out near Brookfield Zoo.

MADIGAN: Ready to battle Durkin?

During this dispute, we had the Illinois Family Action group coming out strongly against Durkin, claiming that giving him the leadership post strengthens the chance that a bill to legitimize marriage for gay couples will actually become law.

Even though Durkin himself was among the political people who had said they were reluctant to back it.

Although Poe has his own critics when it comes to the issue of revamping the way pension programs are funded by state government. He didn’t vote for the plan preferred by Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, that would have called for larger sacrifices by the unions – because his fellow GOPers would have disowned him if he had backed anything that was Madigan-affiliated.

ONE-TIME ILLINOIS ATTORNEY General Ty Fahner, who now heads the Civic Committee, said Poe is openly hostile towards business interests? How, you may ask.

He’s not appropriately anti-union enough for them. Although considering that a disproportionate share of Poe’s constituents (compared to other legislators who don’t live near Springfield year-round) are state government workers, it could be argued he was merely voting along with their interests.

Which, the last time I checked, is what a legislator is supposed to do.

These kinds of arguments are not limited to the now-complete political brawl for a legislative leadership post.

QUINN: Another term in sight?

IN THE GUBERNATORIAL campaign, candidates William Brady and Dan Rutherford are likely to be the ones who want the 96 other, as in not the Chicago-area, counties to give them significant votes. While Kirk Dillard and Bruce Rauner may be counting on the overwhelming number of people who live in the overall Chicago area (about 65 percent) to back them.

Yet I can’t help but see a whole lot of sore losers who will have trouble uniting.

Which is exactly what the "Mighty" Quinn privately (he’ll never admit it) must be praying for when it comes to the primary and general election cycles we’ll experience in ’14. This, along with state Rep. Kwame Raoul, D-Chicago, putting to rest on Thursday any speculation that he'd run for governor as a Democrat are definitely pluses for the incumbent.

  -30-

Residency issue, in reverse?

Usually when we hear of residency being an issue in government, it involves those people who have some requirement related to their jobs that they live in the city of Chicago proper – but try to have a more suburban lifestyle.

RAKESTRAW: No longer suburban

We’ve all heard of the enclaves of city workers (with a large percentage of police and firefighters) on the southwest and northwest edges of the city – allowing them to live within blocks of the city limits and suburban communities.

NOT THAT I have anyone choosing to live in a suburb. It’s their life, and if they’re willing to endure the lengthier commute to get into downtown Chicago, so be it.

But it is a reality that makes the current residency controversy on the Metra commuter railroad board all the more ironic.

For in that board’s case, there is a member being asked to resign his post because he is not in compliance with the residency requirement. For the Chicago Tribune has figured out that the board member actually lives not only in Chicago, but is one of those people living in a high-rise that gives him a wonderful view of Millenium Park.

He’s right in the heart of the action.

BUT SINCE HE was given a seat on the Metra board by Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, it seems she believes he must have a suburban Cook County home address – even though he believes he merely has to live somewhere within the county (either city or suburb).

For the record, I have never met Stan Rakestraw (the Metra board member in question). He used to be a nursing home administrator, but now operates SCR Medical Transportation, Inc., along with his wife, Pam. I don’t know how good a performance he provided in his service on the board that oversees those commuter trains taking people from the outer suburbs into downtown Chicago (and include some stops in the Far South and Southeast sides of Chicago).

Published reports indicate that Rakestraw got the appointment back at a time when he still had a home address in suburban Flossmoor. Although the Tribune reported that the house was damaged by fire, and his response was to move to a downtown-based condominium.

PRECKWINKLE: Needs a Metra member

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. In my wildest fantasies, I wouldn’t mind living that close to the action of urban Chicago. If he can swing it financially, more power to him.

AND HE CERTAINLY isn’t gaining that wealth from the political appointment – the Metra board post only pays $15,000 annually.

But there is the fact that the Metra board was meant to be a suburban dominated entity; as a counterpart to the Chicago Transit Board that oversees the CTA buses and elevated train lines and has a Chicago-dominant board.

In the case of the Metra board, Mayor Rahm Emanuel gets one appointment to Preckwinkle’s five – with the understanding that only the mayor gets to pick a city resident. The heads of county government in the five surrounding counties each get one appointment.

Which makes for a 10-1 suburban/city ratio on the Metra board. That may be a bit much (and goes a long way toward explaining why Metra is willing to let its stops in the city deteriorate).

BUT I ALSO comprehend the idea of regulations that ought to be followed. Maybe we ought to consider a change in the composition of these boards? To that end, Gov. Pat Quinn created on Thursday a 15-member commission to study mass transit boards -- one of whose members is former U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald. A move that had many political cynics pleased.

But until some sort of action is taken, the regulations are going to have to be followed. Which is why Rakestraw peacefully resigned his post Thursday afternoon, instead of putting up a political fight. He does, after all, serve at the pleasure of Preckwinkle, who to her credit asked for Rakestraw’s resignation once the situation was brought to her attention.

Although we all should admit that, relatively speaking, this is a minor infraction by a government appointee. We can only fantasize that this is the worst thing we will see one of our officials commit.

  -30-

City vs. suburb – Are there troubled youth in Oak Lawn and Woodlawn?

On the surface, it sounds nice. A new joint effort by Chicago municipal and Cook County governments to create a program that will help find summer jobs for troubled youths.

The Cook County Board gave its approval Tuesday to just such a venture, supporting a payment of $145,000 by the county toward the Chicago city government’s One Summer Chicago program.

YET THERE ARE those people who are wondering if county officials were too quick on the draw to offer their support for a joint venture. Because that particular program is meant to keep city kids busy during the summer months.

And the documentation provided to government officials seems to indicate that all that was happening is that the county was going to provide some extra money for this city-based program.

What about all those suburban kids? Which really doesn’t fit the old stereotype any more.

Anybody venturing into a place like Calumet City these days (I pick that town because I lived there as a kid, and it's the place I identify as being from -- even if I haven't lived there in years) might not see much of a distinction between that south suburb and an inner city neighborhood (particularly if their own impressions are too anchored in old “Good Times” reruns and not reality).

AS FOR THE difference between suburban Oak Lawn and the Woodlawn neighborhood?

There are some. But there are young people all the way around who could use some help in finding something constructive to do.

If it turns out that the county board has supported an expanded effort that will erase the lines between city and suburb, then perhaps this vote they took (all “ayes” and no “nays,” although some county commissioners found reasons to grouse) will mean something.

Otherwise, I can’t help but wonder if the county got hoodwinked. Suckered. Played. Or whatever other term you prefer to use for being conned out of some cash that could have gone toward something better.

THIS HAD THE potential to turn into a classic “city vs. suburb” brawl at the county board. Except that the political reality is that so many city districts spill over into suburban areas.

There are few political people who are purely one, or the other.

I’m sure many of these commissioners can claim to have benefitted the city portions of their districts, even if the benefits to their suburban portions aren’t quite as clear.

For the record, the program in question is meant to benefit about 178,000 young people who have been labeled “at risk.” I’m not sure exactly how that determination is made.

BUT IT SEEMS to imply youths who could wind up causing some trouble during the summer months – if nothing positive is put before them.

That is why in some cases the “something positive” is a summer job – usually something with some minor physical labor that will put them out in the summer heat. But that we hope they will someday recall as an activity that “built character.”

Although I remember my own summer jobs from back when I was that age, and I say all that character-building is “bunk.” I did it for the money. I’m sure these young people will say the same thing.

The part that really has me wondering is the fact that not everybody who gets included in this program gets a job. Some people will be put into a “recreational program” of sorts. An “opportunity,” as described by county government officials.

MAYBE IT WILL be some sort of fun activity they will remember fondly.

Although a part of me thinks it sounds way too vague. And it makes me appreciate the logic behind Commissioner William Beavers, who was the lone county board member to vote against this funding.

“What’s an opportunity?,” asked Beavers, while shrugging his shoulders.

Nobody could give him a straight answer.

  -30-

Wave of the transit future?

There might be one plus to the overhaul the Chicago Transit Authority plans to do to that train line that runs down the middle of the Dan Ryan Expressway – it could be the act that forces transit officials from city and suburb to figure out how their systems should work together.

Because the way the system is set up now is so oriented to, perhaps, the first third of the 20^th Century – rather than the way the world really works these days.

AT A TIME when some officials think we should be encouraging people to use mass transit more often, we have to accept the fact that the current layout makes such use way too impractical.

There have been times I have lived in city neighborhoods that were laid out in ways where it was utterly practical to rely on the el trains and buses to get around – along with the occasional taxicab.

I can see how some people are able to get through life without an automobile. A part of me wishes I could do that now.

Instead, I keep an aging automobile running because I don’t want the payment of a new car, and the idea of not having any car would keep me completely isolated. Because I’m living these days in a place where I’d be cut off from certain parts of the world.

EVEN THOUGH I live these days just a few blocks (an easy walk) from a Metra commuter station on the Rock Island line that runs from LaSalle Street station to Joliet’s Union Station – where in theory I can catch the Amtrak train that could take me to Springfield, St. Louis or point further on.

Some people don’t even have that much access.

City vs. suburb needs to end....

Which is why I was glad to see the Chicago Sun-Times report on Thursday that has the CTA and Metra trying to figure out how their lines can cooperate. Perhaps some people who now rely on that “red” line train from 95^th Street north to downtown can use a Metra Electric train just to the east to be able to make their commute to work when the CTA line is shut down for a major overhaul.

Because the idea that a system meant to get around Chicago proper and another meant to take people from suburbs to downtown just misses the point.



... for good of metropolitan area



MORE PEOPLE FROM suburban areas might be willing to use mass transit if they could more easily get to locations around Chicago – rather than having to take the trip all the way downtown, then try to figure out how to get to whatever neighborhood they want to go to via the CTA.

And let’s be honest. There are holes in the CTA system. I don’t see any el trains that go to the Hyde Park neighborhood. There, the Metra trains that happen to pass through get used for local transportation needs when they make their stops around 51^st, 55^th and 59^th streets.

Or you can take the fact that el trains only go as far south as 95^th Street – even though the Chicago city limit is largely 119^th Street, and dips as far south as 138^th Street in some points.

That’s a large swath of city ignored by the CTA (to the point where those residents have grown up expecting nothing in the way of mass transit, even though their tax dollars have to pay for it).

FOR THOSE CITY residents who have reasons to venture into suburban communities, life can be just as complicated – unless their business happens to be limited to specific communities like Evanston, Oak Park or Cicero.

Life doesn’t end at those communities right on the city border.

So as CTA officials try to figure out how they can use Metra trains to help their riders cope with the shutdown period next year, perhaps they can also engage in the kind of talks that could someday see us have a truly legitimate metropolitan transit system.

For the fact is that the Chicago area continues to grow (Peotone isn’t really as isolated a community as third airport opponents would like to think it is). Mass transit is going to have to grow along with it if we’re going to be able to go anywhere.

  -30-

Bigger and bigger offers us less and less; are we on eve of (news) destruction?

What happens when they all print the same copy?

I can recall a moment a couple of decades ago when I was chatting with my colleagues at the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago.

The topic was the fact that the Chicago Sun-Times ownership back then seemed eager to bolster the company by buying up more and more publications – particularly in the suburban areas.

“A BLOB EATING everything in its path,” was how one colleague phrased it, and it is a phrase that has managed to stick in my mind throughout the years.

It also was the phrase that popped into my brain Wednesday when I learned of the fact that the Sun-Times has another acquisition in mind. Crain’s Chicago Business used its website to report that the Sun-Times is on the verge of buying the Reader – that relic of the ‘60s (even though it wasn’t created until the early 1970s) that for many years was the publication of choice for people trying to find out how to entertain themselves during the weekend.

Because I can recall when that publication ran in four sections; three of which were detailed classified ad sections that could enable people to find all sorts of ways to amuse themselves – both legit and sordid.

Yes, I recall the days when Chicago police on vice details claimed one of the tools they used to bust escort services for prostitution was to check out who was advertising in the Reader.

THOSE DAYS ARE long-gone. The publication is rather skimpy these days. And any “edge” it ever had disappeared when the current owners (who call themselves Creative Loafing) took over a few years ago.

Now, it seems that the Reader will become a sister publication to the Sun-Times, along with other newspapers such as the Post-Tribune of Merrillville, Ind., and the Herald News of Joliet (just to name a couple).

I don’t pay as much attention to those publications as I used to, mainly because the current mentality that runs the Sun-Times is to treat the copy content of all those publications as one massive effort.

Which usually means that the best copy coming from the SouthtownStar newspaper or the Beacon-News of Aurora will wind up getting reprinted in the Chicago Sun-Times.

WHEN I DO pick up those suburban publications (occasionally, I just can’t resist), I am always amazed at the degree to which they are loaded with Sun-Times copy. How many different times can I read the stories of the long-time City Hall reporter Fran Spielman?

And the Chicago Cubs are an equally pathetic excuse for a baseball club no matter which paper’s pages I’m reading the same story in!

Which makes me think that the Reader is destined to wind up becoming yet another part of this copy-sharing initiative. That might benefit the Sun-Times if the weekend entertainment listings now being published in the Reader (which are still better than most anyone else is doing) wind up being used to bolster the Sun-Times’ weekend entertainment section.

To be honest, that section has become so scrawny as to offer little to read. But it will have the feel to me of offering one less publication to be worth checking out.

I’M SURE THERE is a business model one could throw in my face in which all of this makes sense, particularly since every time someone starts up talk about the Sun-Times being “sold,” it always winds up coming out that they’re looking to sell the complete package.

Anybody who had any interest in buying merely the News-Sun of Lake County (formerly of Waukegan) would have their bid pooh-pooh’ed – if not rudely ignored.

Perhaps it allows the Sun-Times people to configure their circulation figures in such a way that they could try claiming recently that they have surpassed the Chicago Tribune in readership (it takes a lot of fuzzy math to make that claim believable).

But to my mindset, it merely means one less publication – and I’m not sure the improvements to the bottom-line make it worth it.

CALL ME OLD-FASHIONED (or a crotchety old fart, or whatever). But the reason I got into the news business is because I am interested (even still) in creating content that is interesting.

Soon to lose identity?

I’m also silly enough, I guess, to believe that “interesting content” means real news about public policy and events – along with the occasional bit of fluff for levity (although I will forevermore detest animal stories, largely because I have written way too many in my lifetime).

We’re getting less and less these days, and it’s not so much that I think we get too much fluff. I think we get too little of anything, which ultimately is what makes these publications seem like we can get by without reading them. There are times when newspapers feel like they’re taking on the Internet mentality of “aggregating” its content from elsewhere – and thinking that someone else will always be there to provide that content/news copy.

Some two decades later, “the blob” continues to devour. Until the day comes when it has devoured everything, and will find itself starving to death.

  -30-

What lesson did we learn from ’10?

It seems there will be a significance to the upcoming primary elections to be held in Illinois some eight days from now – we’re going to get a bit more evidence as to which election from 2010 tells the true story about Illinois.

SANTORUM: The downstate preference

For if it is the general election from that year, then Mitt Romney likely is safe and will get a significant number of delegates to add to his national count toward his presidential dreams.

BUT IF IT turns out to be that year’s primary, then perhaps we’re going to be just like fellow Midwestern states like Missouri, Minnesota and Kansas and back Rick Santorum.

Heck, he may well claim to be a “favorite son” candidate on March 20 on account of the fact that he did his last year of high school at Carmel High in suburban Mundelein.

Not that I really think the one-time senator from Pennsylvania has all that much in common with Illinoisans as a whole. Yet I couldn’t help but notice that Chicago Tribune-commissioned poll published during the weekend that shows Illinois’ Republicans split, once again, along regional lines.

Those people who live in the Chicago suburbs who align with the Republican Party as a mechanism to keep Chicago proper from running roughshod over them seem to be more in line with one-time Massachusetts Governor (and Michigan native) Romney.

BUT WHEN YOU venture out beyond Joliet or Kankakee into that land known as “downstate,” it seems that Santorum has significant appeal (and sex advice columnist Dan Savage had best never set foot there, because the natives likely would do unspeakable harm to him for what he has done to the Santorum name).

According to the Tribune, their poll shows Romney 39 percent to 27 percent for Santorum in the outer suburbs that comprise the collar counties. In Cook County, Romney has a 39 to 30 percent lead.

ROMNEY: Suburbs strong enough?



Although one should keep in mind that Cook County has become so overwhelmingly Democratic that a 39 percent support total here does not necessarily translate into many votes for Mitt – and is the reason why Illinois as a whole will swing for Barack Obama come the Nov. 6 general elections.

But when one ventures into the parts of the state that don’t associate themselves with Chicago (the ones that Mayor Rahm Emanuel was trying to appeal to last week when he visited Peoria), there isn’t as much use for Mitt.

SANTORUM HAS, ACCORDING to the Tribune, a 35 percent to 29 percent lead over Romney in those 96 counties. In fact, Santorum has already started campaigning in the far southern end of Illinois – which is odd to those of us of a certain age because we can remember when the statewide political scene consisted of Democrats taking Cook County and a bulk of Southern Illinois counties, and the Republicans taking the rest of the state.

That’s not the way it works any longer – although the fact that the greater Chicago area as a whole has grown significantly is what has kept relevant the Democratic organization in Cook County and Chicago.

The bottom line is that the primary Election Day maps we’re going to see on March 21 (the ones colored county-by-county with various shades to indicate who won where) are going to resemble the 2010 maps.

A large swath of one shade (whichever color gets used to designate Santorum) will make Illinois look ever-so-unified – except for a tiny blotch of a contrasting color up at the far northeastern corner of the state.

THERE MAY BE also be an identical blotch on the southwestern edge (representing the two Illinois counties that are the spill-over of the St. Louis metropolitan area) for Romney. Then again, maybe there won’t.

But let’s not forget the 2010 primary, where that swath across the state was enough for Bill Brady of Bloomington to win the Republican nomination for Illinois governor over Kirk Dillard of suburban Hinsdale.

I’m sure that’s what the Santorum campaign is dreaming of – believing that “the people” will assert their will and give their preferred candidate a victory over the better-organized and funded campaign of Mitt Romney.

Unless it turns out that the general election from that year is more significant – where those blotches at the northeastern corner represented the overwhelming number of votes for Pat Quinn that came out of Chicago and suburban Cook that the whole rest of the state just could not overcome.

LINCOLN: Would this GOP push him back to Whigs?



FOR WHAT IT’S worth, the Tribune poll says Romney wins, 35 percent to 31 percent for Santorum (which is close enough that it falls within the poll’s margin of error).

So who’s to say just what’s going to happen come next week – other than to say that it is highly unlikely that Newt Gingrich will get any significant amount of support (only 12 percent, according to that poll) in the Land of Lincoln.

Which is kind of a shame. Because I can’t help but think that Lincoln himself had enough of a sense of humor that he’d get a chuckle at the idea of a “President Newt” and the comic relief he’d provide (albeit unknowingly) on the campaign trail.

  -30-

Whether water or transit, ‘city v. suburb’ always (sarcasm intended) a treat

Looking over the news emanating from Chicago, I can’t help but see two new fronts in the perpetual battle of ‘city vs. suburb.’

Metra commuter railroad officials are boosting the rates they charge for the trains that take people from points ranging from Kenosha, Wis., and Joliet into downtown Chicago. But those people who live in the city proper will not have to pay as much of an increase.

MEANWHILE, MAYOR RAHM Emanuel talked of how he wants to raise the rates people pay to the city for fresh water from Lake Michigan. And one of his justifications is that it won’t just be city residents who get stuck with larger water bills.

The various suburbs that rely on Chicago’s infrastructure to get water from the Great Lakes will also have to pay more, with Emanuel going so far as to say that the city increase will justify the big increase he’s going to demand of suburbs that don’t want to resort to the days of old – when their residents had to drink well water that had a funky taste to it, compared to what comes from Lake Michigan.

You can just tell that we’re going to hear a lot of griping between the residents of Chicago and the roughly two-thirds majority of metropolitan area residents who prefer to live in one of the city’s nearly 260 suburbs.

How many local suburban government officials in coming months are going to have to jerk up their own water rates, and will tell their taxpayers, “It’s Rahm’s fault.”

THEY WOULDN’T HAVE even dreamed of boosting the water bill, had it not been for the city feeling greed and trying to resolve their own financial problems by squeezing a few more dimes from the suburbs.

That last paragraph leaves me feeling dizzy, what with all the political spin it contains. Then again, it probably won’t be any more ridiculous than the rhetoric we’re going to get from city officials.

We’ve already got some earlier this month in the form of Emanuel implying that it’s the fault of the suburbs for not paying their water bills in a timely fashion that the city is lacking in revenue. Seriously, part of the Chicago efforts will be turning up the collection efforts against those suburbs that are behind on paying the city for access to water.

This is going to get ugly before it gets resolved. Perhaps we should get into some serious sort of debate over just who “owns” the water supply from Lake Michigan.

WHICH IS WHY Chicago is the focal point of the metropolitan area, and why it is the pre-eminent city of the Midwestern United States. Having a reliable fresh water supply is such an advantage, and those inland municipalities that have to rely on the city to get their water are paying for their locations.

Which is also why whenever the Asian Carp debate comes up, it is scary that some people seriously want to undo the late 19^th Century effort that reversed the flow of the Chicago River toward the south (and away from Lake Michigan).

I always wonder if they really want to taint the fresh water supply of a major city with the garbage from the rest of Illinois. Or have they just not thought this issue out far enough to realize the potential for a real mess?

As one who was born in Chicago and has lived both city and suburban (as well as downstate Illinois and even a little stint in the District of Columbia), it always amuses me the degree to which these ‘city vs. suburb’ fights can escalate. Because in the end, they always come across as trivial.

JUST LIKE THE debate we’re hearing over Metra rates. The commuter railroad’s officials on Friday reviewed a $0.75 increase in the price of tickets for people who catch the trains in the suburbs, but only a $0.50 increase for those who catch Metra trains at city-based stations. Final approval could come next month, with new rates taking effect in February 2012.

The Chicago Tribune reported that the lower rate was justified on the grounds that charging the same amount for both city and suburbs would have meant a larger percentage increase for city-based riders – since Metra charges people for their tickets based on how long a ride they take on one of their trains. Meaning that the person who catches a Metra Electric train at 57^th Street in the Hyde Park neighborhood pays far less ($2.50, one-way) than the person who rides a Southwest Line train from Manhattan, Ill. ($6.50).

Of course, that has suburban residents now claiming they’re getting hit with the bulk of Metra’s attempts to balance its budget, while some city residents claim that getting an increase for what they see as limited transit opportunities amounts to communities with significant racial minority populations getting slighted.

And both sides are more than willing to say the other side is spewing trash talk – regardless of whether the issue is commuter train fares or water rates.

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Who gets mass transit perks?

It’s not much of a secret that mass transit on the city’s South Side is set up a little more awkwardly than it is up north.

There are those North Side neighborhood residents who can get by just fine without an automobile who think it is a sign of their urban “sophistication” that they can figure out how to get around “the city” on the elevated train systemThese are the Indiana commuter trains that could, but can't, pick up South Side residents. Photograph provided by State of Illinois.

I’D ARGUE THAT if they were true urban sophisticates, they’d live a stint on the South Side, and try to figure out how to navigate around the city in the section where commuter train service isn’t as expansive.

There are those to whom mass transit is “the bus’ and all those transfers that make truly lengthy trips across the city seriously inconvenient. It also creates people who reside in certain neighborhoods into those who rarely leave the neighborhood because going anywhere is such a pain in the butt.

It probably isn’t an accident that many of those most isolated neighborhoods are African-American in population. Not that I need to come out and say there is some sort of racial motive at work. I don’t have to because there are plenty of other people who will do so.

Just this week alone, the Chicago Tribune reported about a lawsuit being filed in U.S. District Court that contends the Regional Transportation Authority’s methods for splitting up state funding for mass transit programs is biased in favor of the suburban-dominant Metra commuter trains and against the Chicago Transit Authority that handles the buses and “el” trains in the city.

THE NEWSPAPER ALSO reported about a new activist group that wants increased transit service on the South Side, and is hoping to use the South Shore Railroad commuter trains to their benefit.

Those trains are the ones that connect South Bend, Ind., to Hammond, then have their trains pass through the South Side en route to their final destination – the Randolph Street station at Michigan Avenue.

Those trains, by agreement of the transit authorities in both states, don’t make stops at stations in the city neighborhoods, even though they share tracks and pass by stations used by the Metra Electric commuter train system that connnects southern Cook County to downtown Chicago.

In short, there are those who want more commuter train service through the South Side, because there are limitations as to how effective bus service can be – particularly since they’re making stops every couple of blocks or so and have too much of a knack of getting backed up during peak traffic times.

SO I CAN understand the reason that these activists are upset and why some people feel compelled to file lawsuits claiming that Metra is getting too much money.

The problem, however, is going to be to convince political people that there is any truth to that concept.

I can recall being a reporter-type person covering political debates that devolved into arguments about mass transit – usually because there were those who believed that it was the Chicago Transit Authority that got “too much” money and that it was the suburban services that ought to be receiving more.

Admittedly, the political partisan atmosphere has changed since those days to favor the city’s interests. But there are still going to be a significant number of government officials who will blatantly resist any attempt to make changes in favor of the South Side activists.

THE BIG FACTOR is just the cultural difference in the way mass transit is viewed between urban and suburban residents.

The latter account for about two-thirds of the people of the Chicago metropolitan area. But it is the CTA that gets nearly 90 percent of all the funding provided by the state for mass transit programs, with the bulk of the remainder going to the Metra commuter trains that connect various suburbs to downtown Chicago.

The actual amount that goes to Pace, the suburban bus entity, is so miniscule that that is the sole reason while suburban bus lines run so infrequently and are non-existent in certain parts of the Chicago area.

Those percentages are justified by officials on the grounds that it is city residents who make up the bulk of mass transit users. Yet it also is those same city residents who are using a system that in portions is more than a century old.

STATE SEN. KWAME Raoul, D-Chicago, (whose home neighborhood of Hyde Park has no CTA “el” trains running through it, but has some Metra Electric line trains that pass by) is sponsoring a bill in Springfield that, while it has little chance of passing, may persuade transportation officials to discuss the issue seriously to avoid having some sort of government intervention on the issue.

I have no doubt that the activists are absolutely correct when they argue that the mass transit service in their respective neighborhoods is in need of a serious upgrade. Yet this might very well turn into one of those issues where everybody agrees there is a problem, but no one is willing to do much about it because of the cost. For as much as the CTA needs a cash influx to improve (cost-cutting only means a reduction in service, which exacerbates the problems rather than resolving them), I have no doubt that Metra trains also need more finances in order to be maintained.

Reading about the federal court lawsuit, I got my chuckle when I read that Metra trains were “mass transit luxury.” I don’t remember anything particularly luxurious about a Metra train the last time I rode one (I occasionally use the Rock Island line Metra trains that run from Joliet to the Southwest Side, then to downtown).

In fact, I can think of CTA “el” trains that were cleaner. Then again, I probably was using a Red Line train to get to some North Side destination at the time.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: The federal courts in Chicago and the Statehouse in Springfield are being asked (http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/01/minorities-cheated-on-public-transit-funding-suit-says.html) to ponder (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-metra-southshorejan04,0,2377858.story) whether the problem of lesser quality mass transit service on the South Side is a coincidence, or some sort of legal catastrophe.