Road warriors rally for state funding
Leaders from across McHenry County rallied in downtown Algonquin Friday demanding Gov. Rod Blagojevich fund a proposed $70 million bypass around the village center and other local road projects.
Whether anyone in the governor's officer is listening, however, remains to be seen.
If Blagojevich did hear the din from Algonquin's Cornish Park, he probably didn't like much of what he heard.
Representatives from Congress all the way down to village hall made a human piñata of the governor, repeatedly bashing and blaming him for the state's lack of action on local roads.
"As long as he continues in office without listening to the people of McHenry County, he's worthless," Congressman Don Manzullo said, later leading a "Blago must go" chant by about 100 onlookers.
"It's our money he's holding hostage," the Republican from Egan said. "It's not his. It's ours."
Joining Manzullo was a bipartisan group of state and federal legislators that included: Congressman Melissa Bean, a Barrington Democrat; State Sen. Pamela Althoff, a Republican from McHenry; and State Rep. Michael Tryon, a Crystal Lake Republican.
Dozens more community and business leaders -- many waving signs reading "McHenry County Road Warriors" and "We Demand Traffic Relief" -- stood by, and a letter of support from U.S. Sen. Barack Obama also was read.
The event, billed as a "Road Rally," was organized by the newly formed McHenry County Coalition for Better Roads. The group is an organization of government and business leaders seeking funding for road improvements in the county.
Tops on their list is the long-sought bypass around the downtown Algonquin intersection of routes 31 and 62, which was just a block west of today's rally.
Funding for the project had been included in the Illinois Department of Transportation's long-range plan for years, but suddenly disappeared in the plan's latest edition.
Local legislators say the money instead was shifted by the Blagojevich administration to projects in Chicago.
On Friday they demanded the governor put that money back in the plan and in a proposed $10 billion capital projects bill expected before the legislature this year.
The first draft of that bill did not include any funding for the bypass, local legislators said Friday.
"We need to deliver a message to the governor that this bypass needs to be in there," Tryon said. "This project isn't a pork project, it's a necessity for the quality of life in our community."
Tryon said he and fellow McHenry County legislators should hold off support for any measures to address the Chicago Transit Authority's financial crisis until the governor returns funding for the bypass.
IDOT spokesman Mike Claffey said the agency does have $11 million in its multi-year plan to buy land for the bypass, but cannot add construction money until the legislature and governor fund a capital projects bill.
"It's a good project, a worthy project," he said. "We are moving on it, just not as quickly as we would like."