National Reports
PFLAUM, IRVING
NATIONAL REPORTS Rural Illinois Fattens on Chicago By Irving Pflaum Chicago As the Illinois State Legislature ended its 70th session June 30, residents of the political monstrosity called Cook...
...Originally, the Illinois School Problems Commission recommended a state appropriation of $276.4 million for 1957-59, up $75.3 million over the 1955-57 appropriation...
...But Governor William G. Stratton and the Republican-run...
...What should bo demanded and obtained is arbitrarily denied, or only given in part on n quid pro quo basis...
...The heart of Cook County—the city of Chicago with its 3% million residents—bleeds in vain for state aid sufficient to meet its truly pressing school, transportation and public-assistance problems...
...mainly downstate-bossed Legislature decide how the money will be spent...
...Authorities estimate that there will be an actual deficiency of at least $15 million during the two years...
...For the political power rightly due Cook County is missing, and without it the people in the county are helpless...
...Cook County real-estate owners pay a similar proportion of realty taxes...
...Now he is spending part of the larger revenue for fatter contracts with auto dealers, for new construction benefiting contractors, and for more jobs and bigger and better salaries on the patronage list...
...This does not include the decline in the quality of education due to excessive overcrowding...
...The Illinois Senate made it $227 million, adding money for a downstate teachers' pension fund...
...For bad schools in Chicago are driving parents into the suburbs, thus enlarging blighted or near-blighted neighborhoods, deflating commercial property values and hence taxes and city revenues, and increasing the transportation deficit and lowering service minimums while raising rates...
...Legally, there is somewhat less injustice now in the two state legislative bodies than existed before a recent reapportionment was completed...
...The Illinois constitution provides for a "thorough and efficient system of free schools...
...This is an old story in Illinois, where fully 50 per cent of all state revenue comes from the millions living in and near Chicago, in Cook...
...The Commission said 58,000 more pupils would attend state schools in each of the two years of the new biennium, and that operating costs would continue to climb...
...And no one doubts that Cook County schools are going to suffer more than others, with those in Chicago's Negro areas getting hurt the most...
...NATIONAL REPORTS Rural Illinois Fattens on Chicago By Irving Pflaum Chicago As the Illinois State Legislature ended its 70th session June 30, residents of the political monstrosity called Cook County again found themselves paying the bills and crying in vain for justice...
...Thus, on the basis of their number and tax dollars, the citizens residing in and near Chicago should determine the state's distribution of tax monies...
...Control of the General Assembly in Springfield, however, remains in the hands of assorted coalitions of downstaters and suburbanites...
...Yet, two years ago Stratton sought and obtained an increase in the sales tax from 2 to 2]/j per cent so that more state money could be spent on schools and welfare...
...Stratton allocated $225 million for the 1957-59 school fund...
...But this is only the beginning of the sad story of taxation without proper representation, and of misplaced political power...
...Moreover, great new housing projects to rescue slums and redevelop lost neighborhoods sulTer, too, since the tenants they seek and should have aren't available because the kind of schools such parents seek aren't there...
...State aid, of course, is needed everywhere to support local schools...
...Yet, Chicago politicians of both parties constantly find themselves bargaining and begging with the Governor and the downstaters...
...There are around 2:i per cent vacancies in some new...
...splendid, convenient city housing projects, and high rents are not the main reason...
...Yet, Chicago's sales taxes total at least $150 million a year, half of the state's revenue from that source...
...The most recent example of this situation is the state's budget for assistance to public schools...
...But Stratton is simply reducing this, while increasing state expenses in more lucrative political fields...
Vol. 40 • July 1957 • No. 27
