•September 9, 2015•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

The state of Illinois typically lurches from year to year, focusing on its annual budget, never looking to the horizon. At present, operating without a formal budget as Gov. Rauner and Speaker Madigan wage their war of political attrition, the state is operating month to month, even day to day, as the courts step in to tell Comptroller Leslie Munger which bills to pay and when.

Given our grim budgetary situation and sullied state reputation, we almost desperately need to do some long-term thinking about Illinois, or we may crash. We don’t know where we are going.

I still recall from a 1970s book the lament of then North Carolina governor Terry Sanford that there is no one in the governor’s office whose only job is to gaze out the window and brood about the problems of the future.

More recently, former governor Jim Edgar told a group of up-and-coming Illinois leaders that, “Once you come into the governor’s office, there is no time for ‘the vision thing.’”

To put a point on Edgar’s remark, I remember when I was helping with the transition of new governor Jim Thompson into office in 1976, his chief of staff came into my office late one afternoon. He slumped in a chair and sighed that he had 400 telephone message slips(!) on his desk from mostly influential people who wanted something or to tell Thompson how he should run things.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.