Daily Herald opinion: Another departure at the top gives new life to Illinois tollway's reform efforts

This editorial represents the consensus opinion of The Daily Herald Editorial Board.

It is tempting to chortle “where have we seen this before?” in the wake of the resignation this week of the Illinois Tollway's short-lived executive director.

But there's a much more productive way to look at the changes taking place at the top of the transportation agency.

Just three years into a highly touted shake-up aimed at giving Illinoisans new faith in the tollway, Executive Director Jose Alvarez resigned Tuesday, just weeks after the departure and replacement of board Chairman Will Evans. The two leave in their wake plenty of unsettling business.

Evans stubbed his toe in his first days on the job by voting on a project that involved a company with ties to a former colleague. Then, he upended the organization last year with a request, granted by the tollway board, to give him more control over hiring and day-to-day management.

Alvarez, a former executive at the Chicago Housing Authority, drew criticism early in his administration when he hired at least nine former CHA colleagues, sometimes creating new positions for them at high six-figure salaries. And, in 2020, a state monitor criticized the tollway for its handling of bids for two construction projects.

So, new board Chairwoman Dorothy Abreu has plenty of work cut out for her to achieve the goals of the makeover Gov. J.B. Pritzker started almost as soon as he was elected in 2018. But it's far from an impossible task.

The issues that emerged in Evans' and Alvarez' tenures are not insignificant, but some mistakes seem inevitable in reform of this magnitude and to an extent, they have given Abreu something especially useful — issues to watch for as she oversees the hiring of a new executive director and an opportunity to make clear from the start the distinctions between her role and that of the tollway's day-to-day administrative team.

No one is ever excited about having to take a do-over on an important project. At the same time, a fresh start can help an organization move in the right directions when early efforts don't turn out as successfully as everyone hopes.

The arrival of a new board chairwoman and the opportunity to bring in a new executive director give tollway leaders a chance to learn from the mistakes of the past three years, while remembering there have been successes, too. As Evans noted on his way out, the tollway still is managing major projects “on time and within budget.”

This is a reasonable foundation and still far more positive than the reports we were following in the last half of the previous decade. We wish Abreu well in taking advantage of it as she continues an important reorganization process.