Friday, October 10, 2008 8:36 PM CDT
Ill. parks on closure list are pawns, backers say
By the Associated Press
LERNA, Ill. (AP) — Marilyn Reisner looked on with a smile as her fifth-grade students learned about the way life used to be, making candles and splitting wood at the Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site in eastern Illinois.
The 86-acre farm is one of 24 state parks and historic sites set to close at the end of November, part of a plan by Gov. Rod Blagojevich to balance a more than $2 billion budget deficit that he blames on the General Assembly.
Reisner stopped smiling as she searched for the right word to describe the prospect of the Log Cabin site — Lincoln's father's farm — shutting down, as the state prepares for the bicentennial of the 16th president's birth next year.
``It just would be a crime,'' the teacher from Ste. Marie Elementary School in Ste. Marie, about 90 miles south of Champaign, said Wednesday after a pause. ``This is a wonderful place — not just for kids, but for families to come.''
One-hundred and sixty miles southwest, Ed Crow has seen all this before. And he's sick of it.
``I'll tell you what,'' said Crow, the economic development director in Randolph County. ``The people in southern Illinois and Randolph County, we're mad as hell. We're tired of being caught between the leveraging that goes on between Chicago and Springfield.''
Two sites on the closure list — Fort de Chartres and Fort Kaskaskia — are in Randolph County, which sits along the Mississippi River about 60 miles south of St. Louis.
Many people who work in the parks, for pay or as volunteers, echo Crow.
They suspect at some point in the next few weeks politics will turn and the governor will change his mind. And they feel like pawns.
Blagojevich in August announced plans to close the 11 parks and 13 historic sites, and cut jobs in the Departments of Children and Family Services and Department of Human Services — a total of 323 workers, more than 70 of them at the parks and historic sites.
Since then, members of the General Assembly have tried to restore the funding, but the governor said he had to make the cuts to clean up the mess lawmakers handed him with the out-of-balance budget.
``The governor was the one who acted responsibly in balancing the budget,'' said Blagojevich spokesman Brian Williamsen.
Crow's complaints are similar to those of people in Pontiac, northeast of Bloomington, where Blagojevich wants to close a prison and cut its 570 jobs, another move he says will save money. In Springfield, the governor wants to close a Transportation Department office and move it out of town.
Where jobs stand to be lost, people see nothing but politics at work.
``We get used as cannon fodder over and over and over again,'' Crow said.
Since the governor announced his plan, the people who work at and visit the parks and historic sites have looked for any sign he might reverse course.
Their hopes have been raised the past couple of weeks, first by General Assembly votes to restore the money, and then Wednesday by Blagojevich's decision to free up $231 million lawmakers hope could prevent the layoffs and closures.
The governor, though, hasn't acted on a second measure that authorizes using the money to restore the cuts. And it isn't clear that he will by the end of November.
The parks and historic sites on the closure list drew more than 5 million visitors last year.
About 50,000 people a year visit the two French colonial forts in Randolph County, according to the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency. Conservatively, Crow guesses each visitor spends at least $10 while there.
That's half a million dollars in a county of just 34,000 people, where the Illinois Department of Employment Security says unemployment has jumped to 7.4 percent from 6 percent over the past year.
And Douglas County Economic Development Director Angela Griffin says she uses the Lincoln Log Cabin when she gives tours to business people and tries to sell them on the area, located about 45 miles south of Champaign.
``The Lincoln heritage is something I play up big time,'' she said. ``Usually it's on a significant level that folks are interested in Lincoln history.''
The cabin drew 78,000 visitors last year. The guest book in the visitors' center includes signatures from across the state and beyond — New York, California, Florida, The Netherlands.
Next year, with the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth, the cabin and other sites around the state are expected to take on greater-than-usual significance.
Even before the closure plan, the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency cut hours of operation at Lincoln's New Salem State Historic Site, the Old State Capitol, Lincoln's Tomb and the Springfield office where Lincoln practiced law.
The log cabin site includes a reconstruction of the cabin that Thomas Lincoln called home. There are also barns and a museum. Employees and staff in period costumes portray Thomas Lincoln and his neighbors, explaining how the farm worked and letting kids try it for themselves.
Lance Beever, a volunteer who portrays Thomas Lincoln, walked Wednesday among the students as they made candles, dipping long, thick wicks dangling from sticks into hot, white wax.
``I want the kids to experience what it was like in 1845,'' he said. ``They need to know where they come from.''
Beever expects the governor will eventually change his mind, saying ``It'd make him look like a hero in the eyes of the people.''
The 55-year-old Beever, who lives in nearby Mattoon, has a hard time imagining the Lincoln centennial with the Lincoln Log Cabin closed. And he doesn't understand how it ended up on the closure list.
``He just started cutting,'' Beever said of Blagojevich. ``I don't think he realized what he did when he cut it.''
———
Associated Press Writer Jim Suhr contributed to this report from St. Louis.
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Mike P wrote on Oct 14, 2008 12:15 AM:
Perhaps the best way to do the most sooner rather than later, is to authorize the constitutional convention. If the outcome is not desired, it can be voted down. Leaving it to them, to refom them selves, from them selves, isn't seeming to work.
Individual amendments, at the very least, need put on a ballot soon, creating government accountability for their actions, in all levels of government. We can't keep trusting these crooks, to mind the stores, and expect them not to fill their friends and their own cupboards, as they feel like it.
From this town and TIF, 10M in bonds for new projects, raising sales taxes, and pawning off significant assets, heads need to roll.
Its this way all over, and this kind of mismanagement in localities, contributes to the state, constantly being short on funds. Leaving it to taxpayers to carry increased portions of more and more burdens. Every dime they waste here or anywhere in the state, raises our responsibilities to make up bigger and bigger budget shortfalls. New games and carrots, get created, to creatively and deceptively fund initiatiatives. Creative accounting practices should have no place in government offices of any size.
TIF, needs repealed completely. 1/3 of downtown chicago is reportedly in a TIF district. The sears tower, is now a TIF business, along with many other prominent locations. 1 billion a year in property tax money in this state, is kept out of state funds, and sheltered in these TIF districts. Its blatant taxation without representation, and we need to hedge our bets on this misused tool, that should have been sparingly implemented in the first place.
The Charleston TIF on the square, is near its end of the 20+ year cycle. it is a prime example of little to no growth, comming from this tool. I used to ride my bike to get some candy at Bennedicts, go have breakfast at Snyders doughnut shop, etc.
Now look at it. It was TIF and little to nothing can be sustained, as far as business goes on that constantly busy square. The expirament failed. Studies have shown for several years, that this is the usual result of TIF.
Charleston using TIF funds on city hall, or any government buildings, should be illegal, from my research. TIF was amended, prohibiting its use on golf courses, and city halls, specificly, several years ago. It was becomming a prevalent misuse of the tool, and it was banned. Turning corn fields into convention centers, is in the TIF gray area as well.
Previous lawsuits were protecting taxpayers, and non TIF business, from this misuse of the tool. Now people are on their own, to fight this. It will be harder for individuals to take on, but if we had a commited group of them, it might be possible. "