Daily Herald Interview with Tom Cross

Cross: Politics as usual in 2008

Published: 1/1/2008 11:59 PM

SPRINGFIELD -- Illinois House Republican leader Tom Cross of Oswego recently sat down with Daily Herald Senior State Government Editor John Patterson to discuss the political turmoil at the Capitol and other issues. Here are portions of the transcript edited for clarity.

Q. 2007, what is it the year of?

A. What's the name of that song? "Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends." Is that it? This is the show that never ends.

Q. If you go back to January (2007) ... lawmakers set out this bold agenda for fixing the state's ills and now where are we? What all became of that?

A. It's deteriorated into a personality clash unlike one I've ever seen before.

Q. What was your biggest surprise of 2007?

A. That I would still be in session in December and part of the longest legislative session in the history of the state of Illinois.

Q. This seems to strike a different tone. What's happened?

A. It's got to the point where we can't get everybody in the room. Nobody's willing to sit down together or there are certain folks who won't sit together. And when they do, the animosity quickly appears. The sad thing is we've covered a lot of ground on capital and mass transit and the ingredients are there to get it done. But it's pretty hard to close it when you're not in a room together … close the deal.

Q. Do you see an end to this?

A. No. I really don't. I see this going on for the next couple years. I don't see the will on those who are fighting to stop. And it's gotten to a point where it doesn't even seem to be about policy, it's more about personality. I think that's unfortunate because I think everyone loses."

Q. A construction deal, do you not see one in the near future?

A. I'm going to continue to remain the optimist in all of this. But I think the observation is it's just difficult to have any finality to this. Everybody says they want to do one. We have narrowed the issues to just a few, but it's a matter of whether people are in a mood to and willing to work out differences that still exist.

Q. From a Republican minority standpoint, what are your goals for 2008?

A. We're still going to stay committed. We don't like the idea of raising taxes. We introduced a budget in 2007 that was a no-growth budget and we ended up passing a budget that didn't raise taxes. We made a payment that we hadn't done in a while, the correct payment, on pensions and we continue to fight for a lean and effective, efficient government. From a budget standpoint and given what's gone on around this state and the city of Chicago and Cook County last year, think about it, everything we heard tax-wise, we heard about gross receipts, we heard income, we heard sales we heard generation, we heard payroll, we heard parking lot. So I think we're going to continue to focus on not raising taxes because we still need to get our fiscal house in order around here and I think we can hopefully have some success.

Q. How did you come to be the point man on gambling expansion?

A. Well I don't know ...

Q. Or did the speaker just call you that and it stuck?

A. I'm not sure how that happened.

Q. Is it a position you sought?

A. No. But there's clearly an interest in, 1: capital, in our caucus whether they're from upstate or downstate they want capital. 2: we need to take care of the mass transit problem.

In our caucus, some more than others are concerned about that. So, you've got a caucus that wants some success and finality on both. So I'm trying to first and foremost do what represents my caucus and also represents the people of the state of Illinois and it's just trying to sift through all that animosity I talked about and trying to go back and forth with each caucus. It just happened that way. There was no big grand plan other than to try to get some success on those two issues, and still trying.

Q. Does your Methodist minister father relish you being the gambling negotiator for the state?

A. Well I don't see it as about gambling. I think it's more about capital and mass transit. Gaming just happened to be the revenue stream. I have reservations about gaming. I would be the first to say there are some problems with it. But this became more out of trying to bridge some compromise on mass transit and capital.

Q. Do you think, for mass transit, should fares increase as part of any deal?

A. I personally think we should see some increases across the board and that would hold true not just for CTA, but also Metra riders. We're not looking at exorbitant increases. Say a 10 percent increase across the board would raise you over $100 million. It would make the solution significantly easier to come by. I think for folks out in the suburban area, they see some equity in that because of the high price of gas, parking going up, etc. So I think they see that from an equity standpoint.