Illinois Politics: A Citizen's Guide sheds light on these important questions and more: Why has corruption flourished in Illinois even as reformers struggle for ethical change? How do the three regions of the state compete for resources? How does the legislature work? When did the state become so blue? What powers do the governor and other elected officials really have? How are judges appointed to and removed from the bench? Why does Illinois have more units of government than any other state? How did higher education lose ground as a funding priority? What role did politics play in the current budget deficit? And how can Illinois move beyond its status as the "most average state in the nation"?

Illinois Politics: A Citizen's Guide

History

Nowlan, James D.

Winkel, Richard J.

Gove, Samuel K.

Americas

University of Illinois Press

Persistent problems have left Illinois the butt of jokes and threatened it with fiscal catastrophe. In Fixing Illinois, James D. Nowlan and J. Thomas Johnson use their four decades of experience as public servants, Springfield veterans, and government observers to present a comprehensive program of almost one hundred specific policy ideas aimed at rescuing the state from its long list of problems. Nowlan and Johnson start with the history of how one of the most prosperous states of the 1950s became a present-day mess riven by debt and discord and increasingly abandoned by both businesses and citizens. Among their more than ninety proposals to restore Illinois to greatness: • An overhaul of state pension systems that includes more reasonable benefits and lengthening of the retirement age, among other changes; • Reducing one of the nation's highest corporate tax rates to attract business; • Medicare reform through an insurance voucher program; • Demanding that schools raise expectations for success, particularly in rural and impoverished urban areas; • A new approach to higher education that includes a market-driven system that puts funds in the hands of students rather than institutions; • Broadening of the tax base to include services and reduction in rates; • The creation of a long-term plan to maintain the state's five-star transportation infrastructure; • Raising funds with capital construction bonds to update and integrate the antiquated information systems used by state agencies; • Uprooting the state's entrenched culture of corruption via public financing of elections, redistricting reform, and revolving door prohibitions for lawmakers. Pointed, honest, and pragmatic, Fixing Illinois is a plan for effective and honest government that seeks an even nobler end: restoring our faith in Illinois's institutions and reviving a sense of citizenship and state pride.

Fixing Illinois: Politics and Policy in the Prairie State

Business & Money

Johnson, J. Thomas

Economics

Illinois Politics: A Citizen's Guide to Power, Politics, and Government

Redfield, Kent D.

Mouritsen, Melissa

With roots in the Civil War, the Union League Club of Chicago grew up, prospered, and suffered alongside its city. Glory, Darkness, Light: A History of the Union Club of Chicago tells an honest story of how the Club and its members have built, boosted, and squabbled with their city for 125 years. The Union League Club of Chicago is unique among the country's 2,000 city clubs in its rich mix of civic, artistic, and charitable missions. In 1893, Club leaders saved and then presented the incomparable World's Columbian Exposition to 27 million awed visitors. Today the walls of its 23-story clubhouse are gilded with a noted art collection whose pieces overlook elegant dining rooms as well as offices for its four Boys &amp; Girls clubs and two other charitable foundations. However, the Club history also has its darker chapters. Half the members of the Club board of directors in 2003--Jews, blacks, women--would have been neither eligible not acceptable for membership a half-century earlier. Based on their own records, the Club's resistance to these groups as members is recounted in sharp detail. Drawing on interviews, oral histories, and the Club's extensive archives, Glory, Darkness, Light: A History of the Union League Club of Chicago is both a grand city history and a revealing look at what goes on behind the brass plaque of a prominent city club.

Glory, Darkness, Light: A History of the Union League Club of Chicago

Northwestern University Press

Jake Trickle was a journeyman printer who loved reading, kept to himself and moved restlessly from small town to small town. Then in August 1949 he stepped off the bus in Williamstown, Illinois, and life opened like a flower in spring. He learned to love, to care about a community and to spot a problem in the local political system. But he also learned that "road oil and romance don't mix", through a series of discoveries tumbling one after another that changed lives all over Williamstown--including his. This insightful look at mid-century life in central Illinois will provide a walk down memory lane that touches your heart while it broadens your feeling for people and politics. Jim Nowlan knows what he is writing about, and it shows.
Your view of small town America will never be quite the same, but you will be richer in understanding people everywhere.

The Itinerant: A Heartland Story

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

Conversation Pr Inc

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Books by Nowlan, James D.