Wall Street Journal: In Post-Obama Illinois, Hope and Change

The Wall Street Journal again cites the Institute's work on SB 2494.

By William McGurn

Contrary to all the obituaries, hope and change and a new spirit of bipartisanship are alive and well in Barack Obama’s America. Just not in Washington.

In the state legislature of post-Obama Illinois, a largely white Republican Party is joining forces with reform-minded African-American and Latino Democrats. Together they are challenging two establishments: machine Democrats backed by teachers unions, and suburban and downstate Republicans mostly indifferent to inner-city issues.

The vehicle is an educational voucher bill that needs only the approval of the full Illinois house to land on the governor’s desk. Introduced by the Rev. James Meeks—a powerful Democratic state senator who has also been one of Mr. Obama’s spiritual advisers—the bill provides a voucher of up to $4,000 for as many as 22,000 elementary students now languishing in the worst Chicago public schools. The voucher will give them the opportunity to attend the private school of their choice. The state Senate passed the measure last month, and last week the leadership-dominated House Executive Committee approved it by a vote of 10 to 1.

“This legislation presents a revealing choice for everyone,” says Collin Hitt, director of education policy for the Illinois Policy Institute, a free-market think tank that has championed this bill. “Republican representatives have to decide whether they really want to reach out to African Americans and Latinos interested in working with them. Democratic legislators have an opportunity to show they are serious about education reform.”

One striking sign of this reform bipartisanship was the joint byline on a pro-voucher Chicago Tribune article last Wednesday. One of the authors was Mr. Meeks, who is also shepherd of the state’s largest African-American church. Sharing the byline with him was Andy McKenna, a former chairman of the state GOP who earlier this year ran unsuccessfully in the Republican gubernatorial primary.

Reached by phone, Mr. McKenna points out that the state’s fiscal crisis means that politicians are now considering things that in the past were off the table. “For years the debate on education has been ‘how much more money do we spend?'” he says. “What’s happened now is that we don’t have any more money. That’s allowed us to start asking, ‘what’s the most effective way of spending the money that we do have?'”

“The Rev. Meeks and I believe the answer is pretty simple—money should flow to schools that are giving kids an education instead of to those that aren’t.”

Mr. McKenna’s byline on that Tribune article suggests an effort to woo Republican legislators, who largely hail from downstate or suburban districts. These state representatives know that at least some of their constituents see vouchers as opening a back door for black kids to come to their schools. The good news is that some are showing courage: Rep. Darlene Senger, for example, who represents suburban Naperville, has come out foursquare for the bill.

Mr. Meeks’s byline points to the other side of the aisle, where opposition is led by powerful teachers unions. Like their confreres in New Jersey, the Illinois teachers unions’ answer to the budget crunch is to jack up taxes—this at a time when the state economy is sluggish, state unemployment is nearly two points higher than the national average, and people are fleeing Illinois for greener (pun intended) pastures. At least on the tax hike, the teachers unions have the support of Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn, who is pitching a 33% increase in state income taxes.

In an election year where he’s already behind in the polls, passage of a voucher bill would force Mr. Quinn to choose between two important forces in his party. One is the teachers unions. The other are African Americans and Latinos, represented by Mr. Meeks and the sponsor of his bill in the Illinois House, Democratic Rep. Edward Acevedo.

Mr. Meeks says that the kind of reform bipartisanship he and Mr. McKenna and Mr. Acevedo represent has the potential to change many things for the better. “If this can work on education, it can work on other things. We have myriad issues from health care to the budget, and the tendency is for those on each side to go to their corners and stake out a position and never come together.”

He continues: “That’s partly why I don’t describe education reform as a ‘civil rights issue.’ When you do that, it tends to mean blacks have to be on one side and whites on the other. To me education is a moral issue, and we’re offering a humane answer from people of both parties and all colors who think it’s a moral tragedy to see three generations of Chicago children go without a real education.”

So call this new bipartisanship what you will. But note this: The only folks who have reason to fear it are those with a vested interest in preserving a dysfunctional status quo.