William A. Redmond Memoir - Illinois Digital Archives

Q: Superintendent of public instruction?
A: Yes. Some downstate people particularly want to elect them all the time. They used
to be elected. I know Ray Page was elected and George Wilkins was elected. Along came
a different thinking that maybe they should be appointed but I don't think there's a session
that somebody doesn't come in and provide for an election of superintendent of public
instruction. Different theories. You know, how best to operate, to do things that are not
Republican-Democrat?
Regionalize the Chicago Board of Education. Instead of having the central board, try to
have people elected from various districts. That's promoted mostly by people that are terri-
fied of busing. They feel that if they have control of the district that they can prevent that,
or I suppose in some cases promote it. I mean it all depends how they look at the possible
results. Not everything has a political overtone.
I don't think that you can really evaluate what the political consequences are going to be
with any great accuracy anyway. Maybe in raising taxes, maybe that. Maybe they're
always mad at people who raise taxes but I'm not too sure of that because if ,that was true
no congressman would have been returned because their income taxes have certainly been
going crazy, I'm not too sure - they say that Governor Ogilvie was defeated over the
income tax, I'm not too sure that's right. I think that particularly downstate - I think
opposition to the Environmental Protection Agency was stronger than the income tax. You
know, prohibited open burning and - you know you used to be able to get rid of your
leaves . . . and trying to control the toilet habits of livestock out in the fields so that their
effluent didn't go in the streams. A lot of opposition to the environmental protection thing.
Well you see it now. I mean you see the way industry is rebelling. They want to loosen,
you know, the requirements about the air pollution, the water pollution. I don't think that's
Republican-Democrat. In that case it's certain industries that feel that the restrictions
under which they are operating are so restrictive that they can't succeed.
I heard on the radio broadcast the other day that - it was talking about the requirement
of having scrubbers to try to get rid of the high sulphur in the high sulphur coal. Well
this was somebody from the utility company saying that the cost of this would make it abso-
lutely prohibitive and it was cheaper to get low sulphur coal from Colorado. And here you
have people down in the coal country that are interested in the - you know their area is
kind of depressed and they want to sell the coal and they like to have relaxation of these
requirements. So there's always that tug and pull.
And then as I say it really isn't always that - I think in the minority of the cases would
it be Republican versus Democrat. There's some effort made to eliminate the fifty-five mile
an hour speed limit. That was put in by a Republican. My guess would be that Democrats
in that same area probably would be supportive because they don't have a lot of traffic, they
don't think that the speed limit is necessary. The state police that are theoretically under
the governor come in and testify against it showing that the lower speed limit has resulted
in fewer accidents and saving of life. So there you have one group of Republicans that are
for it and the administration that's against it. If it was a Democratic governor that same
guy would be testifying, the state police, so . . . it's too simple to say that it's one party
versus another one.
Q: Are there other natural groupings that occur on some of those issues more or less regu-
larly, or I should say were there during the times that we're talking about?
A: Well farmer versus industry, that would be particularly true on the environmental
matters. And for some reason farmer versus union. I don't see union versus farmer so
much but I saw farmer versus union.
William A. Redmond Memoir - Archives/ Special Collections - Norris L Brookens Library - University of Illinois at Springfield - UIS