William A. Redmond Memoir - Illinois Digital Archives

See, there's always efforts to increase benefits and reduce contributions and so
forth. (chuckles) If you don't watch the pensions and things pretty carefully, why, the
representatives and participants will put something in there that really aren't very
sound. But I resolved that I wasn't going to get into any pension litigation. Why in the
world should I make enemies out of people that - what you're trying to do is to protect
the system and protect either annuitants or widows or children of them and all they do is
get mad at you. Why should I take that burden on? I mean if they're satisfied to have
the frail pension system, why, I don't think God put me on earth to protect them from their
own weaknesses.
So that taught me a lesson too that I learned early in the game, ypu
know. (chuckles) You're not ordained by God to protect people from their own folly.
Some of those pension systems in downstate - each - of course the teachers pension
downstate was all pretty well organized and manipulated but a lot of the downstate - 1%.
forgotten how many different systems there were but each police department in Illinois and
each fire department and some of those things would only have 7 percent funding. So if
you had, you know, let's say you'd have a small number of participants in the system and
you let them get seriously disabled, you know, going to a fire or responding to a police all
and have four or five of them get themselves hurt pretty badly or killed, you know, it might
deplete that fund. Although there were certain statutory requirements to do this and do
that, why, the fact of the matter is that very few of them were funded adequately. But
I learned my lesson on that teacher's pension plan, never to get involved in those
things. (chuckles)
Then in 1959 I thought I was going to - we had an old interurban railroad out here, the
Aurora-Elgin Railroad which was an electric line which used to run out pretty neqly
through the middle of the county, and it served Elmhurst, Lombard, Villa Park and so fo?th,
and it ended up out west someplace and one branch went up north to Elgin and the other
one went south to Aurora. And in the construction of the Eisenhower Expressway they
spent a lot of money on highways and what it did was that it really pretty nearly put that
whole thing out of business.
So 1 was going to resurrect it and I put in a bill to authorize the creation of the Local adass
Transit District by referendum. They, the individual governments participating, whether
it be cities or township or county, whatever they were, called a referendum and put it to
the people to authorize the imposition of quite a small real estate tax. And Congressman
Erlenborn, who was then in the house, he was the cosponsor of it, and that was the Orst
heal ma%s transit pasd in Illinois.
And in that aame semion I passed a bill that authorized any government that was partidpating
in that local mass transit district to convert motor fuel tax funds. That was in
1959. And Bill
f
Clark came to me a couple of days later and he said, "Do you know
you passed the other day, converting motor gas tax to support mass transit?" And I aid
yes. r/nd ,he said, *You know, we've been trying to do that for yearn and we never c Id
get it I don't bow whether people didn-oa what was in it or what the s ry
-w& .But tW's hen tw the bmh since 1969 au- the use of the gsrs tax for hat
puqme. That is, one of the governm~nt's, you how, let's say the city governments pa icipatmi,
they could convert some of their gas tax. It didn*t impose an additional gas tax. But
there's fourteen mass transit districts throughout the state that use that, . . . And a lot
of money has come in, federal subsidies for mass transportation, I can't tell you how duch
but quite a bit.
Every taro years we kept amending it. The most significant amendment - originally in
order t~ cmab it it took a referendum - but the most significant amendment was either
in 1965 ctt. 1967 when we authorized it to be creatd by ordinance not referendum. But
before you can impose a real estate tax, it required a referendum so that let them set up
William A. Redmond Memoir - Archives/ Special Collections - Norris L Brookens Library - University of Illinois at Springfield - UIS
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