Victor De Grazia Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

Hyde said, "I'm with you on this." We had the votes, we counted them.
We had the votes to prevent an override. Unfortunately however, when it
came to the vote, for the override, Henry not only voted but made a
speech supporting the override of the veto and the veto was overridden.
Now Jerry Shea later told me that not only did he make Henry chbnge his
vote, but that he had gestured to Henry to make sure that Henry had to
stand up on the floor and make that speech. That to Jerry was sort of
the cream on the cake.
Q: That CTA.bil1 was where Walker wanted Chicago to put in more money,
is that what it was?
A: Yes, well, there were various versions. Whether it should be a loan,
whether it should be outright grant; and Daley had come down, and he and
Pikarsky and Dan and I had lunch at the mansion and Daley had talked
about how important the bill was etc, etc. Daley, I think, believed he
was going to get it. And was shocked when Walker vetoed it.
Q:
That wasn't when Daley came down and spoke.
A: No, that was the education . . .
Q: Right.
A: . . , that was some years later. Doug Kane was at that time head of
our legislative team. And he was the one who counted the votes and said.
they were there, that got the override beaten. And it should have been;
he just counted. If you looked at it, downstate would be against it and
you needed three-fifths to override a veto, so it appeared a doable
thing.
Q: How did you see Walker's relationship with cabinet members, with
agency directors?
A: (long pause) Dan believed that the chief executive should run
government. And he believed in what in business is called hands-on
management, in which the top executive has his hands on everybody and
knows what's going on. From observing other governors, they never liked
to get involved that much in government and they let the departments just
run by themselves. Thompson is a. classic example of that. But Walker
got heavily involved in every budget and would meet with the director and
go over the budget, with programs, with problems; and directors, I'd say,
were probably ambivalent about that. They'd much prefer to be let alone
to do their own thing rather than have somebody. . . .
You how, it's a funny thing. A friend of mine still calls me "director"
because when I was head of Economic Development under Kerner, he came
down to Springfield to see me and I walked into a hotel and they said,
"Oh, director, there's a phone call for you." And he was astonished,
right? And when you become a director and all the fawning that ,starts
taking place within the staff, all the restaurants, the hotels, everybody
treats you . . . you know, you have a car or somebody drives you around,
you how, that kind of thing is bad for a person's ego. That is, it
inflates it.