What’s all this talk about Illinois’ road-building program not producing good value for the citizens of our state?
Seems like everywhere you look, somebody is popping off about the low quality and high cost of our state’s highway system.
Just last week a self-appointed outfit called the Chicago Transportation and Air Quality Commission claimed our state’s urban highways are the second worst in the nation. They based this, in part, on new research from a Washington outfit called the Surface Transportation Policy Project. They found that half our state’s busiest roads are in poor shape and in urgent need of repair. Back in January the noise was coming from the Illinois Citizens for Better Highways (aka: the road lobby), which complained that we’ve got more than a thousand bridges here in the Land of Lincoln across which Old Abe, were he alive today, would be chary to drive his buggy.
But what do they know?
Our state’s highway system has been, and will continue to be, a veritable river of economic benefit to the people of Illinois. Not all the people, you understand, but an important segment of them. And under the currently popular theory of trickle-down economics, it is up to these fortunate few to go out and spend their money so the rest of us will have some to buy what we need. You know, things like new steel-belted radials, shock absorbers and an occasional front-end realignment.
This unique interrelationship between Illinois’ highway system and the welfare of its people is not widely understood. Local good-government groups and Washington-based infrastructure think tanks (whatever those are) are especially confused about how the pieces fit together.
So here, as a public service, are a few of the more important cogs in the Great Illinois Road Machine:
William Cellini, executive vice president of the Illinois Asphalt Paving Association, is at the very top of the state’s transportation network. Back in the early ’70s, when Richard Ogilvie was governor, the one-time Springfield city councilman helped set up the Illinois Department of Transportation and he was named its first director. Since then many directors have come and gone, but “See Bill” is still your best advice if you hope to build a road in Illinois. He’s also one of Gov. Jim Edgar’s principal fundraisers, a landlord to several state offices and the brother of Janis Cellini, who runs Edgar’s patronage operation.
Some outsiders complain that asphalt roads and patches don’t last as long as properly poured cement, or that Illinois asphalt, for some strange reason, costs 43.5 percent more per ton than Wisconsin asphalt. I say: Get with the system.
William Alter, another major Republican fundraiser, is a real estate developer with an uncanny knack for knowing where major tollways are going to be located. His mid-’80s real estate plays along the DuPage Tollway (I-355) right-of-way, near what would become the Army Trail Road and Ogden Avenue interchanges, were bold and visionary investments. Weren’t they?
Some naysayers complain this constant outward expansion of tollways fosters suburban sprawl and beggars older communities. I say: Get with the system.
Gayle Franzen, the pro-development president of the DuPage County Board, is also a veteran GOP road man. He was executive director of the Illinois Toll Highway Authority from 1981 to 1984, back when Bill Alter was making his clairvoyant land buys. After he left the authority, Franzen’s former investment banking firm collected millions in bond issuance fees from tollway projects. Lately he’s been representing a vendor who won a $37-million contract to rewire the tollbooths for a coin-less electronic payment system. The so-called “I-Pass” project is well behind schedule and over budget.
Some fussbudgets might call Franzen’s role a conflict of interest. I say: Get with the system.
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John Christopher, a waste-hauler-turned-government-informer, and William “Bill” Henry, the late Chicago alderman, also knew how the Illinois highway system works. Christopher offered road contractors bargain rates to dispose of the used concrete they were hauling away from big state jobs like the resurfacing of the Kennedy Expressway and of Cicero Avenue. Then he bribed Chicago pols like Henry to look the other way while his trucker-clients dumped mountains of the stuff on vacant lots in the city’s poorest neighborhoods. Federal prosecutors would later round up the usual City Hall suspects for their bit parts in this, the “Silver Shovel” scandal.
Cynics might ask why IDOT contract compliance officers weren’t asking where all that concrete was going. I say: Get with the system.
I could go on about our state’s highway building apparatus but space limitations forbid. Ask somebody else about Robert Hickman, another former tollway executive director, who was convicted earlier this year of defrauding the toll authority out of $240,000 on a land acquisition deal. Or about Bolingbrook Mayor Roger Claar, another Republican tollway director, who is under investigation for allegedly helping land speculators make a killing on the tollway’s next big push–into rural Will County.
Personally, I hope Claar beats the rap and that Hickman wins his appeal. After all, they can’t water our trickle-down economy while they’re in jail. That’s not how our system works.