William A. Redmond Memoir - Illinois Digital Archives

The 5 percent limitation on indebtedness was unduly restrictive because what it did - as
we had discussed a little bit earlier - it - I think it was one of the reasons why you had
a proliferation of local governments. In order to get away from that restriction, why, you
had to have a park district and they'd have a fire protection district and a library district
and a river conservancy district and a drainage district. You can have districts on end
and - better latitude, you know, along those lines and if you would have assumed the posi-
tional function, why then, have some latitude on. . .
(taping stopped to greet visitor, then resumed)
Q: Okay, you just mentioned that eliminating the 5 percent limit on indebtedness?
A: That was one of them and you know a little better licensure authority. They were really
pretty restrictive on what you could do.
Q: Did you envision home rule for cities the size of Peoria let's say?
A: Possibly.
Q: Or Springfield.
A: Yes, yes. See the way it is now it could be 25,000. That's a fairly small town and by
referendum something smaller than that. So even the tiny little hamlet, if they could pass
it, could have had home rule and I thought that was too small. I'm not too sure I would
have been so upset about 25,000. I guess probably the referendum provision for something
smaller would probably have got me bothered as much as anything. But I thought for the
large communities it was fine.
See, it, you know, it's - there are so many illustrations of what you're supposed to do in
the law and what they don't do. It would be nice if - for instance let's take a look at
pensions for and firemen. Theoretically they're supposed to adequately fund
them. Traditionally they don't do it. Well it's just like the state, I mean the state pension
systems are grossly inadequately funded. The city of Peoria, at one time their police and
fire and police pension systems, two separate ones, were only 7 percent funded. If they'd
have had the right combination of beneficiaries - let's say that they had five or six or seven
people killed in some kind of a catastrophy and their families all go on it, it would have
bankrupted that system. The law tells them what to do but there's really no punishment
if they don't do it.
The same thing is true of, you know, the certain limitations on our appropriations. Time
after time after time they'll go ahead and they'll over-appropriate and if people don't object
to it they'll collect it. And when you get in local government, and I suppose it's true of
state government, people think of the government as being the important thing instead of
the service it's rendering to its citizens and they take offense at anybody who questions them
because what they're doing is good for the government and what's good for the government
is good for everybody. My idea of government is merely as a tool to, you know, render the
service to the people and that the government entity in itself is not that, not the important
thing. Well you see that in Springfield. For instance so frequently if you're a county
person or a township person or a municipal person, why, that's the entity that you concern
yourself with, I
Q: Yes. (pause) Did you have much contact with the Constitutional Convention or with
the . . .
A: Not a great deal, not a great deal. See, we were in session part of the time when they
were in session. But we didn't have much to do. They didn't - they looked down their
long nose at us and I think for the most part they didn't think much of the legislature and
William A. Redmond Memoir - Archives/ Special Collections - Norris L Brookens Library - University of Illinois at Springfield - UIS