Opinion
John Rung President and Publisher
Dan McCaleb Group Editor
Jason Schaumburg Editor
Thursday, October 17, 2013 • Page A9 • Northwest Herald • NWHerald.com 8OUR VIEW
8SKETCH VIEW
When you’re elected, know your limits Elected officials are held to a higher standard. Once in office, elected officials represent the body for which they have been elected to and the people who voted them into office. This is true at all times, whether in line at the grocery store or sitting in city hall chambers during a board meeting. It’s apparently a lesson that Island Lake Trustee Shannon Fox still needs to For the record learn. The Island Once in office, elected ofLake Village ficials represent the body for Board last week which they have been elected rightly voted to to and the people who voted reprimand Fox for them into office. sending emails to Lake County officials – including County Board members and the sheriff – that informed them of a property dispute involving Mike’s Towing owner Mike Johnson and suggested that they not do business with his company. “I have written our mayor and chief asking that they suspend use of this tow company and I encourage you to do the same,” Fox said in the email. Fox signed it as a village trustee and chairman of the grants committee from her village email address. Whether intentional or not, sending such an email gives the perception that Fox was trying to use her influence as a village trustee to harm a village resident and business over a private matter. As the Island Lake Village Board resolution states, Fox improperly represented herself in the emails and may have given the impression she was representing the village. Unfortunately, Fox doesn’t recognize her responsibility as an elected official. She said she does not plan to retract the emails, which means copies of the village’s resolution will be sent to the email recipients. This behavior is unacceptable and an abuse of the public’s trust. We hope Fox someday recognizes her mistake and that other public officials can learn from it.
8ANOTHER VIEW
Continuity at the Fed The last thing President Obama wants to do right now is worsen world financial markets’ current case of the jitters, so his nomination of Janet Yellen to succeed Ben Bernanke as head of the Federal Reserve sent a calming signal of continuity. But Yellen is not a Bernanke clone. She’ll keep the Fed on its current course, at least for now, but she portends new directions in the future. Yellen, if confirmed as expected by the Senate, will be the Fed’s first chairwoman – indeed, the first woman to head any major nation’s central bank. She has more experience in central banking than any immediate predecessor, having served as the Fed’s vice chairwoman, as a member of the Fed’s Board of Governors and as head of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank. And she’ll be the first person in her position whose spouse is a Nobel Prize-winning economist – she’s married to George Akerlof, who shared the prize in 2001. Yellen will also be the first Democrat to lead the Fed in a quarter-century. President Clinton reappointed Alan Greenspan, first appointed by President Reagan, in 1996 and 2000 because he didn’t want to rock the boat during an economic expansion. Obama reappointed Bernanke, first appointed by President George W. Bush, in 2010 because he wanted a steady hand at the Fed as the nation emerged from the financial crisis of two years earlier. A change in party identification won’t make much difference, at least initially. The Federal Reserve is more technocratic than partisan, and its leader’s allegiance is to a stable economy rather than to a party. Yellen is expected to continue Bernanke’s monetary policies – particularly his efforts to stimulate the economy through massive purchases of government bonds. A sharper focus on employment would be welcome in a nation that has endured high jobless rates since the financial crisis. Progress toward full employment would relieve social stress, and also would move the government toward fiscal balance by increasing tax revenue and reducing demand for public services. A pivot toward such a policy would invite criticism from economists and politicians whose first concern is inflation. Continuity and change – not a bad combination in a Fed chairwoman. The markets demand the former, and the nation’s economy needs a dose of the latter. The (Eugene, Ore.) Register-Guard
Editorial Board: John Rung, Don Bricker, Dan McCaleb, Jason Schaumburg, Kevin Lyons, Jon Styf, Kate Schott, Stacia Hahn
8IT’S YOUR WRITE Helping Algonquin congestion To the Editor: In response to your article “Firms make pitch for Randall Road Project” (Oct. 8), may I suggest that there are some measures that could be made easily at little or no cost to help some of the congestion in intersections along Randall and Algonquin roads. Of course, I haven’t made a formal study, but I notice that many times the green lights and, especially, green left-turn arrows are not long enough to clear the traffic. For example, traveling east on Algonquin Road, I have sat through several lights to cross Randall Road because the light was only green for a few seconds. This causes a lot of congestion, affecting people entering and exiting businesses in that area. I have noticed similar settings at other intersections farther east along Algonquin Road. Lastly, although Algonquin Road will be back to four lanes next year, the eastbound-westbound
traffic across Route 31 still will be impeded by poor light timing at Harrison and Algonquin roads, which gridlocks the intersection and creates an accident-prone situation. While studies are fine to determine need for longer-term solutions, if the village of Algonquin wants to improve the situation, please work with IDOT and other entities to apply some timing changes to the lights to help clear intersections of traffic during each cycle. Jerry Knight Lake in the Hills
Rising population a danger To the Editor: Were it not for America’s singlepayer socialized medicine for seniors, I would have died last year. Physicians found tumors growing out of control in my chest that were potentially lethal. Thanks to the politicians who passed Medicare and to the millions of us who funded it, cancer treatments my wife and I couldn’t afford on
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our own saved my life. The wisdom of acting aggressively and collectively to fight cancer has saved countless lives. Now we are facing an even more insidious growth, which, if we don’t fight it just as aggressively, has the potential to cause unimaginable human suffering and death – the growth of the human population. We are way beyond the point where further growth is desirable. Growth, both demographic and economic, is, like cancer, devouring Earth’s life support systems. This unprecedented situation calls for a uniquely aggressive collective effort toward stopping
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growth and, inevitably, reversing it. This means reducing the number of people worldwide, in the U.S., in Illinois, and, yes, in McHenry County. There is no problem on Earth – or in McHenry County – that isn’t made more difficult by too many people, let alone adding even more. We must begin planning seriously how to humanely reduce our numbers, both globally and locally, before nature does it for us, brutally and arbitrarily. It’s time we stopped worshiping at the altar of growth and started valuing quality of human life over quantity. Donovan C. Wilkin Woodstock
Voters win when redistricting becomes impartial SPRINGFIELD – When it comes to state legislative races, most of us don’t have much of a choice in the voting booth. In fact, during the last general election, 42 percent of Illinois lawmakers didn’t have an opponent at all. And an additional 53 percent faced only nominal opposition, winning their races by a margin greater than 5 percent. That leaves few competitive legislative races. In 2012, only 10 of 194 legislative races – a mere 5 percent – were actually close. So in most Statehouse elections, the winner was a foregone conclusion long before Election Day. “I think a lot of people don’t run because they don’t think they can win,” said Neil Anderson, of Rock Island, who is seeking the Republican nomination for state Senate. “The system we have now favors one party. The public deserves to have a choice in candidates.” Anderson, who expects to run against incumbent state Sen. Mike Jacobs, D-East Moline, in the 2014 general election said he has been told his race may well be the most competitive state Senate race in Illinois. In fact, it may be the only competitive Senate race.
VIEWS Scott Reeder That’s not good. When politicians fear the voters, we have democracy. When voters fear the government, we have something far more sinister. Today, we have an unprecedented level of arrogance in the Illinois General Assembly. Instead of having a Legislature beholden to the voters, we have a membership that kowtows to legislative leaders, union bosses and other special interests. How did we get in this predicament? The professional political class has found a way to keep most lawmakers from being held accountable. Instead of voters picking legislators, legislators are picking their voters. It all begins with how the boundaries of Illinois legislative districts are drawn. Using sophisticated computer programs loaded full of voter history, census data, demographic trends and a whole host of other information, lawmakers
8THE FIRST AMENDMENT
draw up legislative districts. “In Illinois, the public really isn’t a consideration in the redistricting process,” said Mike Lawrence, former director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University. “The two considerations that do go into legislative redistricting, right now, are consolidation of political power and, to a lesser extent, protection of incumbents. Neither serves the public particularly well. That’s why I support a change.” Instead of drawing districts with a good mix of Republicans, Democrats and independents, state politicians are deliberately drawn to favor one party – the one in control. Democrats control the House, Senate and governor’s office. The maps they have drawn disproportionately favor their political party here in the Prairie State. Republicans aren’t angels, either. In the states where the GOP has control, they often do the same thing. It seems whichever party is in control, the professional politicians want to curtail the ability of voters to be heard. A coalition called Yes for Independent Maps is pushing to have voters consider a constitu-
tional amendment next year that would take the power to draw legislative maps away from legislators. Instead, an independent commission would draw the boundaries of legislative districts. The commission members would be drawn from a pool of experts and selected in a manner similar to how jury members are picked. Instead of having the Land of Lincoln drawn into a patchwork of odd-looking districts designed to boost the electoral prospects of one particular political party, the commissioners would draw compact districts and divorce themselves from partisan considerations. It would seem a step in the right direction. Whether it is on an athletic field, the business world or at the ballot box, competition makes for a better society. It’s time that more lawmakers learn to compete in the marketplace of ideas. The only sure winners in such a scenario are the voters. • Scott Reeder is a veteran statehouse reporter and the journalist in residence at the Illinois Policy Institute. He can be reached at sreeder@illinoispolicy.org.
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