Gerald W. Smith Memoir - Brookens Library

Gerald W. Smith 2 34I want to put into the record this matter of that tax. As againA%indi atedearlier, in this discourse, the original Phster Plan proposed that tcharge back be taken care by the County Superintendent of Schools byholding or diverting as mch of the state appofiiomnt to that pschool district as was necessary to meet the c1ah-s of the c m t ycolleges. You will also recall that there was objection to that pmprosaland that I was one of the principal objectors and perhaps became the onewho spoke most fkquently to that. We did not get that provision out ofthe proposal until the amendment stage. This was one of the thims thatoccwred in the re-writing of the Act, to which I referred. The Board ofHi&er Fducation, Dr. Browne, Dr. Glenny, never accepted the objectionsthat we eve and continued to support; their point of view, that this shouldbe done by havlng the County Superintendent as an adfninistrative agent todivert that money. In a hearing before the joint comittee or joint educationcomittees of the House and Senate, I spoke to this subject. Themembers of those comfittees concurred in the point of view which we werepresenting, namely, that that should not be diverted f*rom that. Whereuponthe assigmnt cam to me to write (chuckle) an amendment to the Act thatwould Wte that. And, so, accept- the principle it seemed had alreadybeen generally speed upon, that we would use the local district, as theadministrative unit to handle that. We did write an amendment which proddedthat the student would give a statement of intent to the localdistrict and that the charge back would go to the local district.There was one little incident that I would like to put in here because Itcould probably fit, as well as any. In writing the amendment we decided,and I guess maybe I could probably say, several of us did. I don't rememberwho all of us were on that, I'm sure we conferred with Wayne Stone- ofthe IEA and I conferred with Dr. Glem and others. Anyway, the amendmentthat we wrote proposed that the local district be authorized to levy a taxabove and beyond any other taxes they levied sufficient to pmvLde themney for the tuition. And that was the way our amendment went In. Itdeveloped that there were some objections to that larqpage, the IllinoisTaxpayers Federation, for example, objected to unlimited taxing power, asa basic policy they usually supported specifics. Representativeof the School Problems Canmission supported rry contention that tnot an unlimited tax, that the language specified that it was tcient to pay and that the money could be used for no other pwrpthere was no advantage in leveling extra tax. However, Senator Dcame to us one day and said, ''We want thPs Act to pass we wantwith possibly no objection, Would you -be ~2llLng to7- put in a 1rate in order to get the total support without conside~able flack wregard to that?"As far as I was concerned, the legislative principle is: when youf wonthe point, you are willing to concede on the specifics. We'd won o$ pointwith regard to the general principle .,. and ... so, yes, we agreed. SwatorDavis and I, stand- in the aisle of the Senate- one evexhg, on tMspoint were discussing if we were going to make it a specific figure, howmuch should it be. And so right out of the thin air, sorrmhere out of thechandelier (chuckle) In the Senate ch&r&r$, somewhere, we decided 'ahatfor the first two years we didn't know what It was go- to cost but weI