Departing DuPage chairman leaves with few regrets

A DuPage County Board member last week quipped it's just a matter of time before the county names something after Robert Schillerstrom.

“We just gotta find a building,” Jim Zay said during Schillerstrom's final meeting as county board chairman.

That might not be necessary.

Schillerstrom, whose third and final term ends Dec. 6, expressed gratitude after getting a plaque of appreciation from the board. “I will obviously treasure this,” he said after receiving the gift.

The Naperville Republican thanked board members and other county officials for working as a team during his 12 years as chairman.

“Sometimes democracy is a little bit ugly,” he told the board. “There's been a little bit of pushing and shoving from time to time. But it was always done on everyone's behalf for the benefit of the people of this county.”

DuPage County Board Chairman-elect Dan Cronin praised Schillerstrom for leading the county during a time of tremendous change that presented “both new opportunities and difficult challenges.”

“He has been a strong proponent of economic growth, public safety and infrastructure in order to maintain the unique quality of life we all enjoy in DuPage County,” Cronin said.

Schillerstrom sat down with the Daily Herald to talk about his tenure as chairman. He also discussed his future plans, what projects he wishes he could have completed and why he believes the DuPage Water Commission shouldn't collect sales-tax revenue.

Here is an edited transcript of that conversation:

Q. What's next for you?

A. I'm going to practice law. I have been a partner here (with Ice Miller in Lisle) for six years, and I have been practicing law pretty much continuously since I started at the state's attorney's office 30 years ago. So I'll continue to do that. I may do more in the public affairs area than I historically have done. I started out being a courtroom lawyer. I don't know that I am going to do that anymore. I am kind of looking to do things in the public policy, public affairs area. I am excited about that. The firm is a good firm. They have been good to me. I was the first employee hired in DuPage County. Now we've got about 18 lawyers. So I want to continue to work to build the practice.

Q. What is next for you politically?

A. I don't know. I guess I will just wait and see what comes along. I like public service. I certainly have been involved in it in one form or fashion for almost 30 years. But I've also taken breaks in the past. I sat out for about six years in the 1990s and just practiced law and raised the family. So I will sit out for a while, see what happens and see if there is a fit for me. If there is, I'll certainly take a strong look at it. If there isn't, I'm sure that I can find some way to contribute a little bit. The governor just put me on a task for western access (to O'Hare International Airport), and I'm excited about being able to do that. I presume there will be some other opportunities to help out in small or large ways.

Q. Are there any goals you wish you could have accomplished as chairman?

A. I think that I had great success, and I am very happy with my tenure. I accomplished a lot. I feel DuPage County is well situated to continue to be a great place to live, to work and to raise a family. And I accomplished many of my objectives. Are there other things I would have liked to have completed? Sure. I didn't get everything done. I always carried around a master list of things that I wanted to get done. I actually took it out to look at. I really accomplished a lot of the things that I wanted to do. But there's a few others that I would have liked to have gotten done, too.

Q. Can you state specific examples of the things you would have liked to have gotten done?

A. I would like to have been more successful with the technology park up by the airport (DuPage Airport in West Chicago). That was a project that I worked on for many, many years. And for a variety of reasons the economy, primarily I was not able to get that done. I still think the future of DuPage County is as a job center, and I think having a high technology park would fit in well with that.

I always felt that it would be beneficial for DuPage County to be a home rule government. I always thought it was kind of crazy for municipalities once they've gotten to 25,000 (population) to automatically become home rule. And here we are, we're a county that is larger than six states. And we have to beg the state legislature for everything. It just seems to me that we should be home rule.

There's projects that I worked on that aren't completed that, hopefully, will be completed. Obviously, western access is a project that I have championed for well over a decade. I have had success at moving it along, but it's going to take a few more years to get that project done.

I wanted to build a new animal control building, and I wasn't able to get that done.

Q. You angered local mayors when you convinced state lawmakers in 2003 to give the county the power to take a total of $75 million in surplus funds from the DuPage Water Commission (a separate government body responsible for delivering Lake Michigan water to more than two dozen municipalities). Looking back at everything that has happened since, including the commission's current financial problems, was the raid on the commission's reserves the right thing to do?

A. Absolutely. And the reason I say that is because that wasn't the mayors' money or the county's money. It was the people's money. And you've got a unit of government (the water commission) that lacked transparency. Everybody thought it was a part of the county, and it had all this money.

The part that always goes untold is that for years the members of the water commission, which was the municipalities, had been getting rebates every single year. When we passed that law, the municipalities got about equal that amount of money, too, in additional rebates.

You don't want to waste the people's money, but you don't want it to not be used in a beneficial way for them. I saw $200 million-plus sitting in a bank account that wasn't being used appropriately on behalf of the people. That's why I did it. And I would do it again.

And if I had to do it again, I probably would have said: “This unit of government should not have this (sales) tax, because it doesn't need it.” Utilities shouldn't have taxing power. The users should pay for it. I probably should have gotten legislation (to eliminate the sales tax). Certainly when you look at what happened later on, it's a unit of government that has not worked very well. And it works sort of under the radar. It's not really watched by people. And that's one of the problems that we have in Illinois. We have a lot of government, and it's not all accountable to the people that it needs to serve. So we need to find ways to make sure that governments are accountable. Because when they're not watched, you have failures of government like we just saw with the water commission with them spending more money than they have.

Q. Two of the biggest criticisms of your administration have been the raid the water commission reserves and going along with the mass transit sales-tax increase. Do you think balancing the county's budget could have been achieved by other means?

A. Absolutely. But it didn't make any sense to spend taxpayer's money by increasing taxes when you had this pot of taxpayer money that wasn't being used. That money should have been spent on the taxpayers and shouldn't have sat in a bank account.

The issue with the RTA was a much bigger issue. The RTA needed a new funding source because if we ever are going to have more public transit in this county and we're going to maintain the public transit that we have it had to have a better funding source.

And we got tremendous reforms out of that. People forget that. We reformed the CTA through that legislation, which was a very irresponsible governmental unit which is now functioning very well. I think both the RTA bill and the water commission bill were very necessary legislation.

Q. What do you think you will be remembered for?

A. I'd like to think that people will remember me as a guy who got things done. My goal was never to just get elected and be called chairman. I wanted to be successful. My record shows that I was committed to getting things done, I knew how to get things done, and I did get things done.

Reflects: Schillerstrom regrets leaving some projects incomplete