By MARGARET S. KNOEPFLE

Basically, what business wanted was a better advocate. The State Chamber of Commerce (ISCC) had proposed that BED be replaced by a Department of Commerce which would act as single agency for economic development and a one-stop service center for business. Introduced as H.B. 1400, sponsored by Rep. John W. Hallock (R., Rockford), the chamber's proposal had the backing of the Illinois Manufacturers' Association (IMA) and the tacit acceptance of labor. "We have no objection to an agency that is an advocate for business as long as there's one for labor," said Richard Walsh, legislative director of the state AFL-CIO.

Neither labor nor business was convinced, however, that Thompson's consolidation proposal would serve their interests. And House Speaker William A. Redmond, who helped found DLGA in 1970, rose up in unexpected opposition to the merger.

Confrontation
What was lining up in the General Assembly was a confrontation between those who believe government agencies should be organized along interest group lines on the one hand and those who believe government agencies should be organized along programmatic lines on the other. It was business, labor and local government versus Thompson and his reorganization staff. It was, in a larger sense, the legislative branch versus the executive — fighting for turf in the new territory opened by executive reorganization. It was, said Eric Canada, ISCC's associate director for economic development, "a pretty incredible situation . . . and a good lesson in the legislative process."

16/ December 1979/ Illinois Issues

According to Canada, the ISCC had agreed to go along with the governor and accept the amendments that would make H.B. 1400 the implementing legislation for DCCA by including GOMHD and DLGA. Under an agreement that took place in House Minority Leader George H. Ryan's office, the ISCC and the governor's staff were to let the implementing legislation move unhampered through the legislative process without pushing for the inclusion of any agency, Canada said.

The big issue was GOMHD. Both labor and the IMA opposed its presence in DCCA. GOMHD's main responsibility is to administer the federal Comprehensive Training and Employment Act (CETA) which provides bothjob training and temporary public service jobs for the unemployed. From labor's point of view, transferring the CETA program to DCCA meant putting an employee program in the hands of business. To the IMA it meant diluting an economic development agency with a program that was not business oriented.

And though the ISCC was going along with the governor, it was probably not losing any sleep over prospects of the governor's plan being torn apart in the General Assembly. The ISCC feared that local governments would dominate the new agency at the expense of private developers like banks, utilities, individual industries and local chambers of commerce.

Miscalculating the 60-day deadline for legislative action on Thompson's executive order, opponents in the House let the order go through without taking any action. The Senate couldn't muster enough votes to disapprove the order, and it passed the General Assembly. But there was enough opposition from labor and the IMA to pass an amendment deleting any mention of GOMHD from the bill. H.B. 1400, as it went to the Senate, no longer implemented the executive order.

At this point, according to Walsh, "We had an agreement with the governor to take GOMHD out of DCCA." When the bill got to the Senate, Walsh said, there was push to keep GOMHD in. The governor's liaison stopped getting back to the labor people, and John Castle lobbied on the Senate floor to get Sen. John A. Graham (R., Barrington), the bill's Senate sponsor, not to call H.B. 1400 for a vote. (Castle had been appointed head of BED effective May 21. Before that date he was not a state official or part of the governor's staff and was therefore technically not a party to the agreement with the chamber on H.B. 1400.)

Graham did not call the bill for a vote, and it went back to committee. Thompson did not have implementing legislation for his executive order, but the General Assembly had been blocked in its attempt to legislatively "amend" Thompson's reorganization plan. Both labor and the ISCC were angry at Castle's lobbying which, they felt, was a violation of the agreement. The IMA, however, was having second thoughts about its opposition to GOMHD's inclusion. And time and the executive order were on the governor's side.

Throughout the summer, an inter-agency task force composed of people from BED, DLGA, GOMHD and the governor's office worked long, hard and fast to make the executive order an accomplished fact. By August reorganization was three-fourths implemented, and on October 1 everything was in place except for a few appointments.

Communication
Having used its political muscle to save DCCA, the Thompson administration returned to the old staple of politics — communication. Thompson's reorganization staff had spent a year talking with agency people and the ISCC before putting its plan before the General Assembly. Now it was the DCCA's turn to touch bases with interest groups.

According to Tom Clark, assistant to DCCA Director Castle, the department is "cautiously optimistic that state and local chambers of commerce understand our intent to have the chamber play an important role. That's one reason we hired [Tom] Ferguson [former director of the Kankakee Chamber of Commerce and now head of DCCA's division of commercial and industrial development]." The task force also accepted other suggestions of the ISCC on how to

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structure the department, says reorganization staffer Carlson.

In addition, Clark says, the DCCA has been talking to business and labor on the problem of GOMHD. "From the business point of view, CETA doesn't have a good reputation nationwide. It is seen as an income transfer program, as social welfare, rather than economic development." But CETA can help firms locating in Illinois by providing money for job training, Clark adds, and its aim of providing public service jobs for workers during periods of high unemployment is not incompatible either.

The IMA no longer opposes the inclusion of GOMHD. "We favor the way it [DCCA] is structured," said Bill Dart, IMA's director of government affairs. "We originally didn't like GOMHD, but we like Castle's dedication. We can see his reasoning. We are going to give it a try." Anything, he added, would be better than the old BED.

And according to Clark, labor is also more enthusiastic about the merger. AFL-CIO's Walsh disagrees. "I don't know who he was talking to, but it wasn't to me. We're still against it." It would make better sense, Walsh says, to put GOMHD in the Department of Labor which runs the job service. (The Bonni-well Report on reorganization does, in fact, recommend moving GOMHD's job training programs either to the Department of Labor or to a consolidated social services department.)

Will there be another battle next spring when implementing legislation for the DCCA comes up again? The legislature can make changes, says reorganizer Carlson, "but I suspect it [DCCA] will be perceived as a fait accompli."

That is not the way Canada sees it. DCCA "will be watched with close concern," he says. "The business community or labor or anyone else could go in and change it. It is not an accepted entity. It must prove itself."

(As a small side note, the Office of Consumer Services (OCS) took flight from GOMHD shortly before the October 1 deadline and landed by executive order in the governor's office. Most people agreed it didn't belong with GOMHD, said OCS Director Al Grandys, and talks had been going on for four or five months as to where to put it. "OCS takes on the utilities. Every year the utilities try to wipe it out," said Julie Hamos, legislative director for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. She thinks OCS was trying to find a safer agency than GOMHD which, she says, often comes under attack.)

Cynic's view
Then there's the cynic's view — in this case, taken by House Speaker Redmond. "Government keeps proliferating and not necessarily making that much difference," Redmond said, reeling off a long list of agencies (including DLGA) that have come into existence in the last 10 or 15 years and outgrown their small offices. "I have a lot of respect for John Castle," Redmond said, but Redmond is not convinced the DCCA will do a better job than the old DLGA. "Now they think it [DCCA] means economic development and business," he said, "but you can't tell me a political department is going to tell businesses what to do. They make their decisions with their own technical experts."

And it is tempting to take this view. What difference does the reorganization make, for example, to businesses and local governments plagued by inflation or to the 9,700 Illinois CETA workers who lost their public service jobs in October because of a federal ruling that a CETA worker cannot be funded in a public service job for more than 18 months? What can a state agency do about that no matter how it is organized?

Still, the reorganization does make a difference in an agency's goals, its political power and its ability to reach the people it is supposed to serve. And although the DCCA is not the kind of umbrella agency that people associate with "big" reorganization, its emphasis on interdependent programs rather than advocacy agencies does represent a real change in the organization of Illinois government. If the DCCA stays intact, the executive order will have proved itself a powerful weapon in the hands of a governor.

18/ December 1979/ Illinois Issues