Next consolidation battle won't be so easy

While I applaud State Rep. David McSweeney's "baby step" accomplishment and the sandbox-sized victory lap your editorial afforded him last week, I think both should enjoy this temporary triumph for as long as they can. McSweeney Consolidation Battle 1.0 may have been a bipartisan watershed; McSweeney Consolidation Battle 2.0, unfortunately, will become a bipartisan Waterloo.

Why? It's going to ram headfirst into an immovable force, courtesy of the Thompson and Edgar administrations forward: The Illinois Constitution.

Your editorial is correct - at least on paper - that consolidating school districts generally will produce "significant efficiencies in school-management costs and providing relief in the largest segment of a property tax bill." But only to an extent.

All you have to do is learn from VC guys-turned-politicos like Bruce Rauner (Thoma Bravo) and Mitt Romney (Bain Capital) about how consolidations work. Processes involve people; people have jobs; Illinois is all about jobs; and in the case of the Illinois Constitution, the jobs held by teachers and administrators enjoy some clear financial protections.

Basically, consolidating school districts will (should) eliminate the jobs of pension-protected administrators and teachers. The last thing an Illinois politician wants to do is eliminate jobs. Of course, the nice thing about school administrators - I'm referring to district superintendents and assistant superintendents - is that they can collect their pensions here and then jump across the state line to work in Wisconsin (I recall the Daily Herald profiling a few years back one assistant superintendent from a local district who "retired" and moved to Wisconsin to do the same job for six figures while collecting his six-figure pension from here) and collect another pension. Maybe McSweeney should work on that instead.

R. Dana Barlow

Schaumburg