Seeking good in Quinn's new panel
Far be it from us to wish misfortune on a well-intentioned endeavor, but we just keep looking for something to hope for in the new Human Services Commission Gov. Patrick Quinn announced this week.
The order creating the commission declares that its purpose will be to "undertake a systematic review of human services programs with the goal of ensuring consistent delivery" and then goes on to say that the panel will, among other things, recommend ways to pay - on time - for services, to maintain efficient management and project future needs. Those are commendable goals, but they do leave one to wonder: What in the world is the legislature for?
Of course, given the usual behavior of the Illinois legislature, we can well understand the governor's desire to find a group of people who will determine what the people of the state need and then provide funding and consistency. But, come now. Does anyone really believe that a handful of public hearings and official reports will produce a practical, implementable human services structure that a) lawmakers shouldn't create themselves and b) if created, lawmakers will impose?
Moreover, in this era of economic hardship, the greater issue facing a group like this isn't how to pay for and manage "consistent delivery" of services, but how to prioritize which services the state must afford and which it can do without - a question the governor and other lawmakers no doubt prefer either to ignore or to sidestep.
Quinn's predilection for this kind of citizen participation in government is neither new nor objectionable. Indeed, there's a certain public-involvement quality to these panels of his that is noble and noteworthy. But their recent record in Illinois is spotty at best. While the governor did lend at least tacit, if also feeble, support to the findings of the commission he created to investigate clouted admissions at the University of Illinois, he has hardly thrown the weight of his office behind his Illinois Reform Commission, and without strong legislative support, much of that group's work was either rejected, ignored or swallowed up in actions already under consideration by lawmakers.
Quinn did have the foresight to include lawmakers from both parties on his Human Services Commission, but we're not convinced that that alone will ensure that the panel's months of hearings and report writing won't come to naught by the end of the summer.
Adding to our uneasiness are the governor's recent announcements of new executive positions in state government, including a health services advocate and a $110,000-a-year - and we are not making this title up - director of diversity enhancement.
Having not just fallen off the turnip truck, we know well that the real purpose of these appointments is election enhancement, but we're still staggered to think that with serious unfinished ethics business and a deepening fiscal crisis on his plate, the governor has time to create human services commissions and high-priced diversity enhancement directors.
We're all for giving the governor and the state as much citizen and expert input as can be gathered to address the economic and systemic crises facing government, and we truly hope the new Human Services Commission produces meaningful processes and systems. We just know it's going to need more political support and a more specific and more painful mission if it is going to succeed. This is not the time to be studying what's wrong in Illinois. It's time to be fixing it.