Suburban officials, Bean talk funding for transportation, jobs, business

Jobs. Federal funds. Help for small business.

They're broad national issues, but they took on a distinctly local face Wednesday morning as nearly a dozen Cook County mayors, village administrators, police and fire chiefs from the 8th Congressional District met with U.S. Rep. Melissa Bean.

During a 90-minute Leadership Forum at Harper College in Palatine, suburban officials discussed the need to channel more federal funding toward improving mass transportation in the suburbs, creating more local jobs, and helping small businesses secure loans through federal bailout money.

Arlington Heights Village President Arlene Mulder said a lot of local businesses in her community are closing, and the retail sector has been hit hard. There has been much talk in Washington about helping small businesses, she said, but little action.

Mulder acknowledged, though, that perhaps the biggest help for Illinois' and the suburbs' future is improving the rail system with federal money earmarked for high-speed rail projects.

"The best thing to do is put people in transit," she said.

Several community leaders asked for Bean's help in getting the STAR line, a long planned suburb-to-suburb rail system, off the ground.

The system would connect the Northwest and South suburbs along I-90 and the former Elgin, Joliet & Eastern railroad, linking destinations including O'Hare, Hoffman Estates, Naperville and Joliet.

The idea has met with resistance from Canadian National Railway, which recently purchased EJ&E and proposes to begin moving some freight trains onto the line that runs in a semicircle between Waukegan and Gary, Ind.

Leaders also called for a renewed push to get funding for the much-debated Route 53 extension through Lake County.

"I think it's absolutely crucial that we have another means by which people can get from one place to another," Barrington Township Supervisor Eugene Dawson said. "There's no easy way to get to Waukegan. I'm all for the STAR line and whatever you can work out with CN."

However, Dawson said a spike in the number of trains traveling on suburban lines as planned by CN and Metra will severely affect municipalities with at-grade crossings.

"If they put trains in Barrington, the hospital we can get to in 10 minutes ... we can't get there at all," he said.

Schaumburg Mayor Al Larson said the suburbs have been "woefully underfunded" when it comes to mass transit compared to Chicago.

On the economic front, Hanover Park Trustee Edward Zimel echoed the comments of several officials at the table on the need for bank reform and loosening their grip on federal bailout funds to help small businesses secure loans.

"The banks got all the money from the stimulus package," Zimel said. "People are just applying, but the banks are not giving the money out. Something has to be done."

Bean said she has been hearing that same concern from municipal leaders in other counties and promised to work to improve access to capital. She added that federal officials are revamping the Small Business Administration and its loan programs.

Among the ideas to help small businesses is a proposal to take $30 billion in bailout funds and put that money into community banks, she said.

Bean also touted tax credits included in the Health Care Reform Act for small businesses with less than 25 employees to lower the costs of health insurance premiums.

Local officials said municipalities also are struggling to maintain programs that are funded through federal grants.

"So often the grants that are established at the federal level are distributed to the state to distribute to local municipalities," Mulder said. "When you have a state that works well, maybe that's a good policy. But when you have a dysfunctional state that's so broke ... we never see a dime."

Palatine Mayor Jim Schwantz said while every community is facing similar issues with foreclosures and job losses, a lot of their troubles are due to the state's financial crisis.

Palatine could lose $1.5 million in income tax revenues from the state as part of the 30 percent reduction proposed by Gov. Pat Quinn.

"We're running out of ways to cut," Schwantz said. "We don't want to pass it down to our taxpayers."