Whitney, Francis A. - Interview and Memoir

              University of Illinois at Springfield 
Norris L Brookens Library 
Archives/Special Collections 

Francis A. Whitney Memoir 
W612. Whitney, Francis A. (1919-1996) 
Interview and memoir  
2 tapes, 180 mins., 46 pp.  

Whitney discusses his career with the State of Illinois at the Department of 
Finance, the Department of Conservation, the Schaefer Commission, Budgetary 
Commission, and Senate Democratic Appropriations Committee. He discusses 
budgetary issues, the role of the legislature in the budgeting process and 
accounting systems.  

Interview by Bill Day, 1984  
OPEN 
See collateral file 

Archives/Special Collections LIB 144 
University of Illinois at Springfield 
One University Plaza, MS BRK 140 
Springfield IL 62703-5407 

© 1984, University of Illinois Board of Trustees 
Preface 
'Ihis manuscript is the product of ta~rded intel:views corxiucted by Bill Day for the oral History Off~ce on May 21, 1984. Linda Jett transcribed the tapes ani edited the transcript. Francis A. Whitneyreviewed the transcript. 
Francis A. Whitney was bom on october 14, 1919 in Grayville,Illinois. He graduated fran southern Illinois university in 1941. In this unfinished lllE!IIDir Mr. Whitney discusses his career with the State of Illinois in the Departments of Finance ani COI'lseNation, with the SChaefer CC:mnission and the BUdgetary canmission and finally sm:ving on the Senate Democratic Appropriations Committee. 
Readers of the oral history mencir should bear in mi.rrl that it is a transcript of the spoken word, ani that the intel:viewer, narrator an:l editor sought to prese:tVe the informal, conversational style that is inherent in such historical sources. ~state university is not responsible for the factual accuracy of the :mem::>ir, nor for views expressed therein; these are for the reader to judge. 
'Ihe manuscript may be read, quoted an:i cited freely. It may not be 
reproduced in whole or in part by any means, electronic or mechanical, without pennission in writing fran the oral History Office, ~ state university, Sprirqfield, Illinois 62794-9243. 
Table of contents 
0
Early Backgroun1 1 Department of Finarx:e. 3 Chan;1es in central Acoounti.rg Systen • 3 Dlties 7 Budgetary CCitllnission • • 8 SChaefer camnission. .12 Conservation Department. .16 Ted Isth .20
0 
Legislative Involvenent with the Budget. .21 'Ihanas J 0 Antone • .25 l?erformance Program BUdqetirg. .27 Budqet Document. .30 Annual Budget. .33 Budgetary camni.ssion • .36 senate De:llo::ratic Appropriations camnittee • .41 
Francis A. Whitney, May 21, 1984, Spri.n:}field, Illinois. 
Bill r:ay, Intaviewer. 
Q: Francis, befo:re we get into the sto:cy of the connection with the various aspects of budget ard finance of the state of Illinois, I worder if we could run down the place ani date of birth, parents, that sort of t:h.i.ng, your early schooling. 
A: SUre, Bill, I'll make it quick as I can. 
Q: Take your time. 
A: [I was] born in a little downstate tc:Mn named Grayville Which straddles the WhitejFdwards county line on the Wabash River, on october 14, 1919. My parents ~James M. ani Maude N. Whitney. I was educated there in the local schools. Graduated from high school in 1937. 
Q: ··Was that in Grayville? 
A: Yes. Ani I attended SOUthern which was then Southern Illinois Normal university in the years of 1937 through 1941. I went fran Southern to the university of Iowa at Iawa City to TNOrk towards a master's degree. 
Q:  In what field?  
A:  In political science.  
Q:  When was that?  
A:  'lhat was  in the fall of 1941.  :B.lt upon finishing the first  

semester I had to quit ard go to work due to approaching fatheJ::hood. 
Q: You must have gotten married in the interim. 
A: We were married, in the sununer befo:re our senior year at SOUthern. 
Q: '!hat would have been what year? 
A: 1940. 
Q: Ani you married? 
A: Ellen Todd. 
Q: Where was Ellen frcm? 
2 
A: well, her father was a Methodist minister and lived in various towns in southern Illinois. At the time we were married they were 
living in Greenville. My parents are nt::M deceased. dead but her father just had his 9lst birthday.  Her nether is  
Q:  Where is he livi.rg nat?  
A: In I.awrenoevllle in the Methodist Nursing Hane. Methodist minister.  He was a  
Q:  '!his child was Blair?  
A:  Yes.  
Q:  Who's ncM with the  
A:  He works with the Board of Higher Education.  

Q: Okay. You were married in 1940. You dropped out of school in the fall of 1941 because you were going to becane a father. Did you go back to school after that? 
A: No. No. I went to Chicago an:l got a job with the u. s. Gypsum company the first place I happened to apply, ard for several months was engaqei in nostly writing letters, teyinJ to oollect bills fran lumber CXI'Ip!llies arouni the Midwest. '!hen I came down here--I'm teying to think what m:mth it was. 
Q: We can fill that in later, if it's that important. What was the year? 
A: It was 1942. 
Q: Did you care down to work for the state? 
A: Yes. '!he head of the Department of l?olitical science at Iowa had given 1ey name to Jack Isakoff in the Legislative council in the thoughts that Jack might have need for another researcher. '!here was no such need at the time but Jack turned my name over to Joe Huston, the head of the Research Division in the Department of Finance, general office. 
Q: And? 
A: And I was hired. (laughs) I came-inteJ:viewed first by their then consultant Simeon Leland who was at the university of allcago. don't remember \\bether at that time he was dean of the liberal arts colleg-e or whether he was head of the econanics department. It was one or the other. 
Q: An:i he was ••• 
A: He was the first hurdle to non-political staffers in the Department of Finance ani as a consultant to the then director, a 
Chicagoan named George McKibbin. 'Ibis was when Governor Green was in office ani McKibbin was the Director of Finance. 
Q: ArKi the governor then was rMight H. Green. 
A: Right. 
Q: Okay. Do you think we CU3ht to run through the list of agencies you were with or do you want to talk about your eJCperiences there in the Department of Finance? 
A: well, I can tell you what agencies. I may be a little hazy on the dates at the nanent. 
Q: well, I think we can always fill those in. 
A: we can verify it later. I 'WOrked in the Research Division urrler Joe Huston for several mnths until he went into service am then urrler his replacement, a man named s.incn stickgold. I don't recall heM lorq it was that I worked then under Si but I was transferred to the newly created Division of the Bl.Xigets which was fo:rmed am operating urrler a very able man named Allen Manvel. He had a small staff in the Annocy Builclin;J. As I recall there were only four or five of us am we were charged with atteupting to supply the data for the first canplete budget document with a new fonnat am r'IEM infonnational aCCOlU'lts which had been created by a major cban:Je in the act in relation to state finance. '1he central accounting system was set up ard new central ac::oc:JI.mts were created for all agencies, arrl. they were to be reflected in that bu:lget ard it required a great deal of clerical ard other work. 
Q: What do you mean by central accounts? 
A: well, prior to the passage of the Central Accounting Act, the state's a:ppropriations were made for-here again my InelOOJ:Y is kin:i of hazy-for fewer aCCOlU'lts than we know have; they broke cut personnel SEUVices in great detail but m::st everyt:hirq else was not set forth separately in line items in much of a breakdown. Operations were p3:etty lunped, quite a few accounts such as travel, contractual SEUVices, etc. , that we now have. 
Q: 'Ihese were acx:x::JI.ll'lt that were classifications, types of sperrli.nj, is that it? 
A: Yes. Yes. '!hey offered a kin:i of control just as they do now. If you set forth the amount for an agency's travel or an agency's personnel se:tVioes in a separate amount, you limit the agency to that amount with the exception of certain transfers that could be made in emergency situations. It gives the General Assembly some control that it would not ot:heJ::wise have. Advocates of lump sums amorg the agencies don't like such detail because it does restrict them in some respects. But the General Assembly has really vecy few controls exceptin;J through what detail they put in app1:opriation bills. 'lhese in tum we set up on the Department of Finance's books in their 
central acoount~ section with which the budget section 'l'riOrked in close accord. Which had been newly set up at that time. 
Q: 'Ihe central aCCOlUltirxJ section was new too? 
A: Yes, it was un:ler a man named Edward Elsner. Who was the head of it for many, many years. I don't think many people realized how many chan;Jes of that nature were made under Governor Green. You will recall that the later part of his teJ:m was characterized more bystories about newspape.nnen bein;J on the payroll than about sane of the truly major and I think good ~that were accomplished while he was govemor. 'Ihe state retirement system was passed for the first time. 'Ihe central a.coountin:J system. An approach to a much more m:xiern budget.irq system was made. 
Q: 'Ihis was all new to Illinois. was it new • • • 
A: Oh, yes. 
Q: ••• an¥::nJ state qoverrnnents generally? Is that your recollection? 
A: I don't recall that it was very new in nv:st of them. I think we were kin:i of laggirq. Illinois rested on its merits with the old I.a..den code for a lorg time after that had been put in place in what, 
191.9. 
Q: 1919, I think. Yes. 
A: 1917 or 1919. I don't remember. But at any rate another major thing that was done was to separate the Depart:rnent of Revenue fran the Deparbnent of Finance. All of the revenue-collecting functions now in, approxiJnately all of them at least, now in the Department of Revetme were in separate divisions of the Department of Finance which made the tail wag the dog a bit and it caused great demarrls on the time of the director. He was not able to focus very much on the other functions of finance due to all of the requirements of beirq also the head of the revenue producirq agency. Another bi9 ~made at that time was the separation of the prison system from the Public welfare Departmrant, as it was then called, into the Deparbnent of Public Safety. So this was a time of major administrative change which had a great inpact on the budget data, in attel'rptirq to provide c:x:auparative data of requests. It involved a great deal of j~lin:J of the appropriations and expetw:bn:es of the past agencJ.es and the titles to fit the new fonl'at. 
Q: Explain that a little bit more. What were you makirq oamparison? 
A: Well, in the budget document planned then, ani to a certain extent follc:Med now, you shOW" for each agency what their appropriations and expected expen:litures are for the current fiscal period. In those days, of course, it was a two year period. We had a biennial system. And carpare that in a c::olumn with the new recc.mmen:lations of the governor for the new fiscal period to come so that legislators and other interested people aould look ani quickly see on a spread sheet 
Francis A. Whitney 
for each agency and each division of that agency what was prqx:eed by the governor for the new year in relation to what that agency had been usi.r.q. 
Q: so you had a new a.ccaunt called travel, which you1d never have before; how did you compare that with sa1&thing in the past? Did you have to go through and pick it out? 
A: Travel may well have been one of the things that they had in both tines but contractual services was a new acoount for example. 
Q: Ani that would Ct:Ner what kin::ls of t.hings? 
A: Rents of all kin:ls, light bills. 
Q: Phone bills? 
A: Yes. I've got to confess I don't remember in that first document precisely how they broke out fran the past when such records were not kept in detail. 'lbe c:x:aupa.rative data for the then current fiscal period to carpare with the new request. I do remember that in the case of personnel services a great deal more info:aoation was provided. in the budget document for each aqery:;y than has been provided. for nw:my years. Great care was taken to tty to show how :much was proposed for each unit's J?'iY inc:reases, each unit's request of new employees, if any. '1his kir¥i of .infOJ::'lDiltion in a separate little box on one of the sheets. Plus a listinq of all the job titles. Oh, there a~in was another 't:hiD:J that was new at the time. 'Ih.e position classJ.fication system which gave mrl.fonn job titles to all the jabs in the state. 'Iha.t had been a hit or miss p:r:r.:position with the job titles in the past listed ir.dividually in appropriaticn bills for the m:st part and not foll01r1ir¥;J any mrl.form system--many of them were just called clerks when they were executives. Yru know' the system that they had. It was detailed in appropriatial bills a great dealtoore than it later was when the apptopriations were made merely subject to the position classificaticn act. 'Iha.t naant that they Calld be expen:ied only for titles and for the pay ranges set forth in that act. Prior to then there was an exact figure set forth for each job. An:.i that naant that a man for two years unless he got a different jab title had to stay at that pay because there was only one figure mentioned in the appropriaticn bill for his pay. '!his of course gave the General Assembly great control over the distr:U:uticn of personnel services, how it was spent by the agencies. But it was awfully confinil'¥1 for the agencies. 
Q: well, I wa.Ud have tha.1ght the older method would have been more confinm;,. 
A: Cb, yes. '!he older method was more oonfinm;, because they listed each job title by itself. 'Ih.e new method gave the aqencies much mre flexibility and freed.aa. of action because their :.personal se:rvices apptcpriation was a lump smn figure subject only to the provisions of the position classification act. so they had the whole act an:i the rarge, the job range set forth for each job in that act. 'Ih.e aqencies were very pleased to have it. 
Q: WCW.d you call this a major refonn in the accounting system of the state? 
A: Yes, I would. I certainly would. 
Q: well, you've seen a lot of budgetirg since then. Is there anything in na3ern times that oc:ttpareS with it? 
A: well, I suppose pe:r:haps the nearest thing would be the creation of the Bureau of the Budget, which was a veey strarge creation in that it was not initiall:y set forth in the law. It was just done by Govemor ogilvie by administrative fiat of acme kird. Arrl it took over a legislative framework that had given the duties nat~ carried out by the Bureau of the Budget to the I:lepartne1t of Finance. 
Q: well, backin;J up a bit. 'Ihis llDJSt have been in a 1941 piece of le;Jislation that started this off, did you say? 
A: Yes. 
Q: Who were the m:wers in this? I mean was it the governor or was it the Deparb.nent of Finance or the director, do you recall? 
A: '!he main one in charge in getting eveeything done was the Director of Finance, who had the governor's full confidence and who selected outstan:ting consultants fran arourd the CO\.U'lty on various phases of this thing. 'Ihe main experts they could fird for retirement systems,people in budge'tirq. A. E. Buck was here at that time as a consultant for a while. A very fam:JUS name in state budgets. 
Q: Identify him a little bit more. 
A: well, he wrote a book as I recall called, "Public Budgeting." It was a classic in its field and the main one on this area for so many years that he became al.nclst synonymous with state budgeting. 
Q: Ani this was nostly guided and p.1Shed along by George McKibbin who was the Director of Finance? 
A: Yes. I don't know how personally involved the governor was at that time but McKibbin was the main m:wer and doer ani nost of the consultants, the primary theorists, were hired by the Deparbnent of Finance ani were housed somewhere in the department. '!hey were going and caning all the time. 
Q: Do you remember Where McKibbin came fran? 
A: Chicaqo is all I know. Fran a praninent family up there. I guess a family of considerable wealth. He ran for mayor of O'licago after he left the Department of Finance an:::l made a fairly respectable race as those t:hirgs go. Up there he, of oourse, was a Republican. 
Q: Where you worked, did you see much of hiln or did you mostly get the wom fran the people like Houston. 
A: well, I was stationed J;tlysically over in the general office of Finance in the capitol Buildin;J which abutted the governor's office and i.rrleed joined it internally. Ard mstl.y what I saw of him, he was a tall in'q;>ressive man. And he always went at full speed. He cane down the aisle past lf¥ desk and I always had to be careful not to have elJxMs or feet exposed for fear he'd take them on with him on his way to the governor's office. 
Q: Didn't it make you nerrous to have the boss go by your desk and maybe it wasn't neat or .•. 
A: No. I don't recall that there was aey such problem although I was an awful little cog in a pretty good size wheel. I might add that the Director of Finance in those days was paid the magnificent sum of $6,000 a year. 'lhe Assistant Director I recall was paid $4,200 as was the Title Budget SUpervisor in the finance appropriation bill, 'Who did not carey on the duties of budget supm:visor. '!bat was done by Allen Manvel, the Assistant Budget SUpervisor, whose pay I'm not aware of. 'Ihe fine old qentleman named M::Iain, whose first name I regzet that I can't remember of:fhan:i, was the Budget SUpervisor. He was in failirg health, advancing years, spent most of his tilne in a corner office not far fran lf¥ desk callin:J up agency heads and raisirg hell with them for their travel expen:litures in excess of what he felt they should 
be.  
Q:  Befn:J too high.  
A:  Right.  
Q:  You were sayirg that this was biennial bud.getin:J.  
A:  Yes.  
Q:  Which meant what, that the budget wt:W.d be given to the  

leqislature? 
A: About the smne time of year, in the odd rrumber years, the first budget that I saw was 1941-43. 
Q: Yes. And it would be passed by the em of June. 
A: Right. And be presented to the General Assembly generally probably sanewhere close to the first of April. It had to be out by June 30. And in those days they took, the General Assembly took that termination date very seriously. '!hey made fNerY effort to finish by June 30, stq;pad the clock when they had to go a few hours ItDre, and very cxx:asionally a couple of days IliJre. 
Q: Did your jab take you up to the third floor where the General Assembly was or was that off limits? 
A: I was not involved much with gettin:] to watch them in action until go.in;J to wrk for the budget division. 'lhe jab then required keepin:] track of appropriation bills for agencies assigned me. Ani I had a great cieal of opportunity to watch the passage ani action on ~iationbllls in both houses. 
Q: Ard at oamnittees too? 
A: Ard in camnittee as wrell. I don't remember oamnittee action as clearly as I do watchirg the floor action. At that time there were some very colorful :members in the General Assembly. Fellows like Tom Keane of Chicago, a v.rell known aldel::man and. then aldel::man later on for a long time, Dick Daley, later mayor. Roland. L:ibanati, same of the other names. In the house, ah, they had a lot of rnembershiJ( in there for many years ani maybe were al:lout at the en1 of the old time legislator type period. A few of them were great orators but they were a passinq breed :because they were strictly parttime legislators ani ad.Vancinq aqe plus the system meant tnat they cb::'opped out prettyrapidly over the years. 
Q: But the oamnittee action doesn•t really cane to mind very much. 
A: No, ani I regret tnat it doesn't because I :re.mamber beinJ at a few of the ~but I don•t remember who the main m::rvers ani shakers then were. Of course, the early budget:al:y camnission action-at the same time-all of the budqet examiners attenied when their agencies were up for hearirqs. '!his was before I lf.1eC1t to work for the commission, of c::x:lUJ:."Se, while I was still with the Department of Finance. 
Q: '!his oamnission was created I believe in 1937. It began to go into operation in 1938 would you say probably? Because you weren't aroun:i. 
A:  No,  I  don•t know' when it really began its work.  
Q:  so you would go to their meetin:}s too?  
A:  Cll, yes.  YE!S.  we had to go for those.  '!he budget director and.  

the budget examiner whose agencies were up for hearirqa that day att:en:led those meetirrJs. '!hey were :normally held in Sprirgfield and. Chicago with :nart of them in Springfield. 
Q: Well, I was goi.D.;J to say with the legislature in session really only six llOiths cut of two years, what did you do the rest of the time? Did you have b.ldg"etal:y oamnission meetings? 
A: 	Probably not as much as we shcW.d have if the truth were known. (laughter) No, there were other tasks. we were SUP,POSed to watch the expe:rditu:res of our agea::y, check.i.rq on them, usinq the records of this newly created central accountinq division which gave us a great deal of detailed. expeniiture infonnation not only by the new central account but by what we called sub-acc:x:ll..m under those ac:.camts. A :much further breakdcwn under say c:ontra.ctua1 services. we could tell hC1il much was spent. for car rental or for building rental. G:t:eater detail probably than we normally would use. But cmce in a while you could have sane infocnation that way that you oouldn't have got any other way that wou1d have proved important. 
9 
Q: well, so the budgetary commission would start lookin:J into these 
things before the session, wouldn't they? 

A: Yes, it ncn:mally started in the rather early fall. I don't kncM what the main starting narth was. It probably was october, an:i then it increased. Part of the trouble of the budgetary cx:mnissian's work was it was dictated by the schedule of the governor's agencies 'b.1rnin:1 in their request to the Deparbnent of Finance. Finance then would work on them to show c:x:nparisons an:i to break down particularly the personnel services request an:i then foxward them to the budgetarycanmission which oouldn't hold its hear~ until it cpt that information fran the Department of Finance. Finance m many respects 
was the-you might say-the clerk ann of the budgetaJ:y cx:mnission as 
far as gettin;J detail an the age.rcy budget request. 'lbe requests of 
the agency did not go directly to the budgetaJ:y commission. 'lbe 

recognition that Illinois was an executive budget state was quite
clear then as it, of course, is today. 
Q: Arx:l the requests went to the Deparbnent of Finance where they were processed? 
A: Right. Ani the governor, of course, was a member of the budgetary
commission. 
Q: Did he cane to lllE!e'tin;Js? 
A: No. He did not. But Ted I.eth of the Deparbnent of Finance was there :representirg presumably the interests of the governor and the 
Department of Finance in the matter of agency bldqets. I don't believe I ever saw a governor at one of those meetin;Js. '!hat is not to say that it could not and did not happen but it didn't happen any
time I was there. 
Q: well, he had somebody sittin;J in in his stead. 
A: '!hat's right. But as a non-votin;r member. At that time it was before the expansion of the budgetaJ:y commission•s staff that followed 
the Hodge thing. 'Ihere were only I think seven members. '!he appzopriation chairmen of the house an:i the senate were alwaysmembers. 'Ibis was in the statutes. 'lbe governor was a member. 'lhen there were two members I guess fran each house appointed by the 
Speaker in the one case an:i president of the senate in the other. 
Q: And usually one of those two was a minority party member, was that the case? 
A: Yes, I t.h.ink that's correct. I'm not sure that was required bythe law. It may wll have been but I'm sure it was followed as a matter of custa:n a1.m:>st always. I can't believe-it just would not have been saneth.i.ng that the General Assembly would do. Because it would have had to clear majority by having the govemor as an ex-officio member if it were absolutely required. But the nature of 
the ccmnissian•s work was such that the closeness of a vote didn't really mean nuch because the governor an:i the General Assembly each was free to dlan;Je any figure :recatnnal'Ded by the bUdgetary commission. 
Q: Yes, those were merely recanmen:'lations which went to the legislature. 
A: '!hey went to the governor for a long tllne ani then I think there was a change in the law that they also went to the legislature. In effect they went to the legisla'blre :because the legisla'blre fonne:i the main oa:t1pOl'lel'lt of the camnission and the appropriations chainnan :beiJ'q ex-officio members of the cxmnission automatically meant that a.nythi.n:J that the ccmmissiat did was well known by the appt:opriations camnittee chainnan. 
Q: WOUld you say that the legislature relied pretty heavily on the work of the budgetaey cxmnission and the governor or did they cl'large much? 
A: Yes. I think it's true to say-I've heard many, many times someone 'WOUld bring up a bill on the floor ard move its passage and any member would say, ''Well, this was approved by the budgetary canunission, was it not?" Ard they'd say, "Yes, they passed the bill without further cereiOOl1Y." Now this may not have meant they necessarily had tremen::1ous faith in the budgetary camnission but it merely meant there was a fine way for expeditirq the work on the floor of the house or senate in sane instances. But I agree it really is true since the membership of the cxmnission in all of its early years particularly was such that they were pretty important ani experienced members of the General Assembly in the membership, ard the strategic role of the chainnan of the appz~iation ccmmittees helped the business of getting what the cxmnJ..SSion wanted done aCXXJmplished. 'Ihe relationship with the governor by and large was a very friendly one between commission and governor. 'lhe cxmnission saved in many respects I suppose as a kirxi of a l:R.lffer. If ~governor did not want to tell sane director that he had to cut his request, the commission took that nasty task out of the han:is of the governor and did it for him. '!hey were a little bit secretive sanetimes about who got what and it was kirxi of hard sanetimes for a agency to kr1ai who SW1.llXJ the ax but they played a useful role sanetimes for the governor because if a governor had asked say a distinguished doctor to beoaae head of his Mental Health Department and premised that he'd get him what he needed to do a good jab and all that, he couldn•t very well go to him without sane embal:rassment and say, "You can•t have all this you need. 11 'lhe budgetary cxmnissian could fill the breach by doing sane cuttin;J. Many of the major apptop:tiations were always a kin:i of negotiated figure between the governor ani the commission :members representing the General Assembly. 'lhe university budgets, the Public Aid :budgets in later years when they were such massive size, the canmon school budgets. Nonnally the primary legislators plus the appropriate conunission members ani the governor all kind of had an agreement am::>rg themselves on 'What they would reconmend ani back subsequently in the General Assembl¥, so the governor could use the whole process to help himself get his appropriations made later on. Yet at the same time there was a very considerable amount of legislative input on those matters due to the in.1ividual power of the experienced members themselves who saved on the commission. Many of them by the way had been aroun:l so lorg and their roles were such that they were kin:l of expert on sane of the state agencies all by 
11 
themselves. And certainly sane of them like Senator Peters ani 
Representative Pc:Mell were in contact with the universities in their 
districts ani Jo1ew a great deal about their needs arrl their wants 
before any requests were ever made to the governor's office or to the 
Department of Finance. 
Q: Of course you had to 'WOrk entirely within the framework of the 
available revenues, didn't you? 

A: Well, yes ani no. I mean implicit in the finance act ani all the 
constitution ani all the laws at that time was that the state had no right to incur an indebtedness beyond its awroJ?riation. Although I do remember one lower cnnt case ooncernirg a downstate mental hospital where the director ran out of money an:l incurred debt to nm his institution ard it was U);ileld by the court later on in spite of what the constitution said. 
Q: He probably had to feed the people. 
A: He did. He did. And he did it and the court said that's all right. But by an:i large if you ran out of money you presumably did not incur any further Webtedness until you got an emergency or deficiency awropziation when the General Assembly came back. Veryfew times were there cases in which an appropJ:iation wouldn't last at least eighteen months ani the General Assembly was back then. otherwise the govemor wo.lld have to call a special session which could be done in five days ani which frequently was done for one reason or another not necessarily oarmected to aR;>1cpriations. But for many years there rcutinely were appzq:xriations for such agencies as the Public Aid camnission as it was then-that was before the Department of Public Aid-when the appropriation was made in June evecyone would Jmow that it wouldn't in all likelihood stretch a full two years but it would get them fairly safely into the following
spri.rg, a year an::l a half away, so if it would last say until the new session of the General Assembly in Jamw:y, if it 'WOUld last till March or sc:raethirg, there would be plenty of time to pass an emergencyappropriation bill to piece out on the old one. 
Q: Why didn•t they aJ;P:Up:L"iate enough in the first place? 
A: In the first place no one :knew in the changin;J times how 1mlCh would be required an::l it got to the point that although the commission itself would ask for what presumably would have been ample fi..Irds,ageooies generally were given only What they were expected to spend in that current fiscal period with the full un:ierst:arJiin;J on the part of everybody, not:hi1g in writin;J, but a full umerst:an:iin;J that when it ran out they'd get an emergency aR;>1'CPZiatiat. I don't recall trore than about one time in all the years that I worked for the state that there was a sufficiently large appropriation that lasted the full two years for that agency. 
Q: 
'Ihe Public Aid hJency? 
A: Yes. 
Q: Of course, wasn•t it true in that period durfn:J the war at least that the d.enlarXls on the state -were nat as great as they -were previously? 
A: Oh, certainly not. '!hey -were not. And the state was totally out of the capital budget business. It couldn't build aey b..rlldings. It couldn't sperrl. a lot of noney an:i accumulated a very considerable surplus ani they created an agency, the Post-War Planni.rq Commission, 
believe its name was, to gather all the dream requests of the agencies for capital experrlitures an:i present them at a later tilne to the General Assembly fran which sane selection was made. Some major appropriations for new state institutions were made from the money accumulated through inability to sperXl durin;J the war. 
Q: Of course, at that time the only way they could borrow money was by vote of the people? 
A: '!hat's right. That's right. 'Iheoretically of course, an agency when it ran out of its app:rc:priations could not even incur aey further in::iebtedness. BUt actually this was violated many, many times. 'Ihey'd c;p right ahead operatirg the way they always had or very nearly so knowJ.rg full well that the General Assembly would feel constrained. to bail them out when it got there ani passe:i the bill. 
Q: soun::ls like a nice friendly kind of govenunent. 
A: In many respects it was. You see, mst of the Assembly members never got very d.i.sbn:bed about budgets and experrlitures unless there was a tax increase required to finance them. '!hen everybody got all aroused and econany blocs~up and hearirgs -were taken a little more seriously. But in the nature of a General Assembly member's th:i.nk.irg, it's not a bad thin;J to have increases in a budget. That means more jabs and in those days maybe he'd get one or two of them for his district. 
Q: HeM long were you in the Finance Department? You 'WE!l1t on fran there to 
0 0 0 
A: I went from there to the Department of consavation. I was in charge of their licenses ani accountirg office which had been headed by a very dear frien:l of mine named Vail Maloney. I had had the agency assigned to me for budgetirg pn:poses for many years. Vail died shortly; the agency was mved, the Department of Conservation, was moved into the stratton BUildi.rq. His people, I had had considerable contact with, offered me the job. And without aey political strin;Js attached. 
Q: '!his was what year then? If you D:M!!d into the stratton BUildirq it ImJSt have been in the fifties then. 
A: It was in the fifties. stratton was, of c:xJill."Se, the governor at the time. 'Ihe director was a Replblican oounty chainnan by the name of Glen Pall1ler and a finer boss I never had. 
Q: Of CXI\ll'Se1 as I recall you had one hiatus if you want to call it that. You were borrowed by Jack Isakoff ••• 
A: '!hat was the SChaefer Chranission, so called Little Hoover Cammission year. I believe 1950. I was in the off year of the budget. I was on loan substantially full time fran Finance to the staff of Jack Isakoff who financed several of his staff members by borrowing from other agencies. Another man from Finance named Maurie criz was one of them, I think, who had a similar arrargement. criz arrl I were ostensibly senior staff members charged with sane supervision at least of the so called junior staff members that 
Eni of Side one, Tape one 
Q: You were talking about your associates on the staff of the Schaefer Canmission. You were sayirq that Maurie criz from the Department of Finance was one of them, arrl there was sam Gave. 
A: well, sam was one of the junior members and a very able one, as was Dan Walker, who later became governor. I can't remember the names of very many. But there ~ackonly had $50,000 appropriated for the work of the commission. 
Q: r.e.t's back up a bit. How' was this commission brought into being? Was it an act of the legislature? 
A:  Yes.  
Q:  Arxi Schaefer w as  •  •  •  
A:  SChaefer was  •  •  • before becani.rg closely associated with the  

governor's program, he was an the law faculty of Northwestem university. 'Ibis saD"e SChaefer, you will know, later for a long time was on the state supl:Eill! court. 'Ihe camnission appointed had sane distin;Juished-it was the blue ril:ixm kin:i of ccmnission. 'lbe jab it had was an immense one ani quite beyon:i the scope of what a $50, 000 appropriation could do. But Isakoff was in:Jenj.ous in borrowirq and begging people fran the agencies or he would get someone assigned who did not work for the state but get sane agency to pay the bill. '!his probably technically was not quite legal. But it was a cc:mut'OI1 practice. Excusable an the grounds of a gocx1 cause I suppose. 
Q: You worked there for about a year, would you say? 
A: Yes. Arxi then we got into the heat of the budqet process of puttirq out the dOC'Jll1el'lt and I had to go back. 
Q: As I recall, that commission had members fran both houses of the legislature as well as public members appointed by the governor. 
A: Yes, an:i I can't remember the membership. I'd have to look it up, Bill. 
Q: I think that's close enough. 
A: I mean the chainnan SChaefer took the jab very seriously am did a very creditable job. He read all those dull reports, worked very hard at the jab. 
Q: How did Jack divide up the work am:mg you? 
A: I don't really knc:M. 
Q: well, did you have a particular field you were workin:J there? 
A: one of the staffers I remember that was paid by the Deparbnent of Public Welfare-as its name then was-was charged with writir:g up that agency. Arrl in addition to this what you might call permanent staff, he also spent his meager :ftmds for consultants in sane fields. I remember Ira Gabrielson of the Wild Life Institute was here on the conservation Department. 
Q: Fran the Wild Life Institute. 
A: Arrl he had people from all over the countJ:y in some areas. I don't even remember who they were. You'd have to dig out one of the old reports from the Archives. Gave stayed on after the work of the commission was CC~.~Ipleted am helped follow the bills that were written to carry out the :recanunenjations of the commission through the General Assembly. An:i I think both the work of the commission plus this work of the General Assembly formed the primary basis for his very extensive knc:Mledge of the state gover.nment that he put to good use later on at the university of Illinois in the Institute of Public Affairs. 
Q: How was this r:eport received by the General Assembly am the public? Do you :t'ea)llect? 
A: I don't :t'ea)!lect, to tell you the truth. All those old members tended to look with sane skepticism on a report of that nature ~major chan:]es to the department structure arrl duties of agencies as they are. My guess is that they probably just took it in stride. Didn't pay much attention lmtil the bills began to appear. 'Ihen a rather large number of bills passed in the subsequent two or three General Assembly meetings. None of those things erer passed 100 percent. 
Q: I recall, though, it seems to me that in the subsequent years they would often ask, wasn't this a SChaefer camnission reo:::mnerrlation that often was a green light for a bill? 
A: Yes, I think by am large, after the initial session at least, the work of the ocmnission was accepted pretty 'Well by the General Assembly. Had the governor's mckitg always, remember. Most General Assembly members were not inclined to vote against what are. known as the governor's package, the gover:nor' s bills. 
Q: By the way who was govemor then? 
A: stevenson. (laughter) I'm tryi.rg to think the lieutenant governor, of course, was the • • • 
Q:  Dixon.  
A:  Dixon.  
Q:  Fran Dixon.  
A:  Fran Dixon,  Illinois.  Yes,  who of course became governor 'When  

stevenson ran for the presidency. 
Q: I think he just became carrlidate. 
A: was that it? 
Q: I don't think stevenson ever resigned. 
A: Oh., I guess you're right. But he became the carrlidate of the 
party ani ••• 
Q: '!he governor? 
A: Right. Ani was beaten by Stratta'l. 
Q: By stratton, right. Well, do you have any recollections of Stevenson or was he pretty much reooved fran • • • 
A: well, stevenson, of course, took the job of beirg governor veryseriously except he didn't k:now very much about, well, the aspects of state government. certainly he didn't knc:M much about budgetirg. He had an office in the mansion and used it rather m:>re than he did the one in the capitol Buildirg. We used to go over there with GeorgeMitchell, who was then the governor's appointee as Director of Finance, ani discuss the budgets of the various agencies ani have them in there for sane hearin;Js before the governor. Whether this was his primary contact with them on budget matters, I don't knc:M. But I can remember him sittin;J at his desk ani 1~to scme pretty dull 
descriptions of what the agencies' needs were. Mitchell, of course, was a very able m.:m ani had been an economist with the Federal ReseJ:ve Bank in arlcago :t:ut he had a great deal of state experience with the old tax comndssion. He knew quite a lot about state goverrnnent. 
Q: Had he been on the oc:anmission or was he a consultant? 
A: I think he was a staffer on the o:::mnission. PeJ::haps 'When Simeon Lelani was chairman of it. I'm not actually certain of that, Bill. He relied a great deal on Mitchell particularly for esti:mates of revenue. Ted I.eth used to like to tell the sto~ that at the errl of 
one of-nearly of the errl of a budgetirg CCIIpletion one year-theyfoum what they would like to :re.camt'lli.tl in the budget document was quite a bit in excess of what their expected revenues were goi.rg to be, or expected to be. An:i the govemor asked Mitchell, ''What do we do?" An:i Mitchell said, ''Why we just i.rorease the esti:mate." An:i of course he knew that estimates are j.ust that ani if you got within 4 or 
5 percent of the estimate you probably were doing pretty well anyhcM in a state as big in area as Illinois. so he just reached dcMn ani changed the figure on the sheet he had with his pen. ~!he govemor reportedly was quite inpressed. He didn't realize that t1'liigs were that sinple. 
Q: As I recall he had to raise the gas tax during that administration. 
A: I donIt remember. I just donIt remember. 
Q: Were you pretty aloof fran politics? 
A: Almost entirely. I did not have political back.irg when I got rtr:1 little job, ani I didn't have alTj when I went to ConserVation. I didn1t have aiTj when I went fran conservation to the budgetary commission. I didn't have when I went from the budgetaJ:y commission to the Detoocratic leadership of the state senate. I had luck, I think, nore than anything else. 
Q: Did you vote in the primaty elections? 
A: Yes, I did. 
Q: '!hen people 'WOUld have know what you were • • • 
A: And sanetimes it was against the party in power. 
Q: But you never heard fran anybody about that? 
A: No. Not that I recall. I use::l to get letters once in a while from the local CXIUl'l'ty chairman to report to their office. '!hey wanted., I suppose, to give me sane kin::i of precinct duty or sanething. I just ignored them ani not:hi.n;J rNe.r happened. When I went to work for the state senate, senator M:Gloon 'WOUld not allow local politicians in a:ey case to feel that a:ey of his staff members were beholden to them for anything. I remember one downstate chainnan came in one time on one of the secretaries ani wanted her to make a contribution ard she reported him to M::Gloon. McGloon proceeded to set the gentleman very straight, that the staff was his, had not got their jobs through his intervention, through the chainnan1s i.nt.aventi.a1S. I guess that was the errl of the matter. 
Q: And that differs a little bit fran the picture people sometinles have. 
A: 'Ihe General Assembly staffing, first staffing in 1967 I guess, or permanent staffing on the part of both senator McGloon ani Representative Touhy, his counterpart in the house, was I believe about as non-political as anything could be, ani it stayed that way. I don't know that that's true today bUt it certainly was true then. I worked for the state for I believe sanething like 35-1/2 years. I was never under civil service ani I never had a political sponsor. I could have been fired, of course, at arrt tilre. But I suppose if they 
17 
really want to get rid of you, you can be, even if you're extensively covered by the personnel code. 
Q: Hc7tl long were you with Consavation? 
A: I think give or take a little bit it was about seven years. 
Q: Hc7tl did that picture differ frau the one you saw in the Finance 
Deparbnent an::l budget? 

A: When I went to conservation I didn't knc:M beans about their accamtin;J system or the px:ocessin;J of vouchers to pay bills an::l several items of that nature. An:i it gave me a chance to widen my own 
knc:Mledqe a gocd deal because I had to sign the director's name to virtually every voucher they ever billed over all those years. I never once was asked to sign one that I didn't consider properalthough there were a few that I woul.dn 't sign am took back to the director to sign. He never asked me to go ahead am sign them because I would have, of course, resigned. But I never had to do that. 
Q: Did you sign his name or yours? 
A: Oh, I signed his name • • • 
Q: SO you were actin;J for the state. 
A: • o o arrl put my name unier it. AID there were some that I justsinply didn't think it was proper for me to sign that it was to me kind of a touchy policy issue of sort that he should hamle. 
Q: I take it you worked on their budget. 
A: Yes, I did. Ani I must confess that if all the agencies of state 
government prepared a budget as rapidly as a couple of us prepared the consm:va.tion budget a time or two. It's a miracle that the state operates at all. 
Q: What do you mean? Explain yourself. 
A: well, sam. Parr--who was a senior executive assistant of sane kind to the director of Conservation and is :nc:w deceased, was an experierx:a:l ani len; time errployee of the department-and I would gettogether ani decide what share of the Game and Fish Fun:i for the coming fiscal period for the conservation of game am what share should be the conservation of fish ani then that was our first majorbreakdown. 'lhan 'We 1d start fran there practically on the backs of old envelopes deciding who was goi.n;J to get of the various divisions the then i.Ix:reasin;J annmt of m:mey available for their fl.mctions. It worked out sw:prisirx.Jly well in some respects I supp::se. None of the division heads ever got nearly as much m:mey as they wanted but theyalways got a little more with sufficient justification that we didn't have too much difficulty getting the appropriation bills through the General Assembly0 
Q: But these activities were financed by tax fun:ls or • . . 
Francis A. Whitney 
A: Partly out of taxes because they had the division, and still do, the division of parks and me100rials that had been transferred fran the old Department of Public WOrks and BUildings to the Department of Consel:Vation. And that was the general revenue fund flmction. Forestry was in the deparbnent and it was a general revenue fund f'unction plus another little fund of their own. '!hen the conservation people were primarily1 the hunting and fishing people were primarily1 out of the game and fish fund plus some federal monies for a couple of programs there. 
Q: Am that fund was made up of license fees? 
A: Yes. All the license fees by law had to qo there and couldn't be diverted without en:largering sane of the federal monies. 
Q: so really the people who were most likely to be interestErl in how it was spent were the hunters and the fishers? 
A: Yes. And a very vocal bunch they were, I'll tell you. We used to get a lot of mail on a lot of things and a lot of J;ilone calls. 
Q: I don•t think you were exactly impartial between huntirq and fishing, are you, Francis? 
A: certainly not. well, Palmer practically insisted that all of his division heads engage in hunting and fishing. I allnost got forced into taJd.rg up quail hunting and goose and duck hunting. 
Q:  NC711 you're quite enthusiastic abalt it.  
A:  I've had a hunting dog ever since.  
Q:  'Ihat's heM you got started?  
A:  Yes.  Oh1  I  had a little bit when I  was a kid.  Palmer was a great  

hunter himself. we were never subject to any kirrl of disciplining if you were out of the office to htmt. 
Q: Well, for sarel:lody who liked to hunt it must have been • • • 
A: It was a worderful time because the fifties, the years that I was there, coincided with great al::lun:mnce-th last one we've had-of uplan:l game in Illinois. Lots of quails, lots of pheasants1 lots of ducks ani geese. Am every game warden in the state in effect was my frierxl 1:hJ:'cugh oorrespcnience about licenses and accounts and so forth and their little expense accounts, etc. so I had kind. of hog heaven of hunting in those years. I still treasure the friemships. Jim Helfrich, for exanple, who is still there and is :nc:w the assistant director, was there at the time I was there. 
Q: He1s :nc:w the assistant director. 
A: But most of the old timers are l'lOW' gone. A fa~ of the game wardens are still aroum. NC711 called conservation officers, I guess. 
Q: 'Ihen yol1 would she};ilerd. this request through the budgetIS division. 
the special-furXIs status of so much of that budget. 
A:  Yes.  
Q:  You didn1t  have any trc:Juble there, did you?  
A:  No,  I don't recall that we ever did.  It partly helped there by  

It couldn•t be used for anything else ani so the legislature wasn't very hard on us at any time exceptirg in the division of parks where the request was for general revenue fun::l m:mey. 
Q: Do you recall did you add tleW' parks or speOO. m:mey inproving them? 
A: I think always, every fiscal period., they've added a few parks but some of them were not rapidly developed because they couldn't get enough m:mey. In recent years they've been treated much better by the General Assembly for capital experditures for parks, ani the parks show it. '!hey were in pretty sad shape in the years that I was there. '!hey sinply were not successful in gettirg sufficient fun::ls to make the inprovements that needed to be made. 
Q: Who was gettirg the m::mey in those days? 
A: About the same ones that are llOifl. Of course, Stevenson's eiOJ;tlasis when he came in I think was on ilnprovirg mental hospitals 100re than it was en anything else. Pertlaps sane attention to the OCil'D'I'Ol'l schools. He appointed a man named Fred Hoehler as his Public welfare Director. He had been the head of the Public Welfare Association, Whatever, the American Public Welfare Association I guess its name is. '!he carcmv:m schools, the colleges, the prisons-well, the prisons didn•t fare so well in those days, b.tt Mental Health was the primary one. rrwo or three new instibltions got off the drawirg boards. If not durirg the Stevenson administration, not too lcn:J thereafter, what's the one in the south eni of Chicago, out in the OOlUl'b:y? I can't think of the name of it llOifl. Tinley Park was built am:mg others. I don't knc:M how many others were built. 
Q: well, then you followed your bill on through the budgetarycommission. 
A: I remember even after I had ~aver to the budgetary ccmnission,there was an econany bloc ope.rati.rg in the General Assembly. I've forgotten-maybe it was a oamni ssion on efficiency ani eoanc:my or sane 
such thirg. Had senator Arrirgton, Representative Elward, Representative Parkhurst ani a few others on it I don't remember. Oh,curly Harris fran • • • 
Q: Granite City. 
A: • • • Granite City was on it. I don•t remember how many others. Peters sent me up to help them as lliUCh as I could with infonnation we had developed. earlier fran the budgetary c::amnission. I remember they were kirxi enough When they scheduled the Department of consava.tion 
20 
for hear~ before them to excuse me because of my personalrelationship still with the agency directors ani division heads an:1 so forth in that area. I told them I simply was not going to take partin administering an agency that I'd helped work on the budget for ani felt very kin:Uy tcMal:ds1 ani they un:lerstood that. They didnIt take it amiss at all. 
Q: But this was now when you were in budget or the division itself? 
A: Right. '!hat nust have been about 1961 maybe. Sanewhere around in there, 1960 or 1961. 
Q: As I recall I think you were recruited to the staff of the budgetary camnission at the time of the Hodge • • • 
A: Not right at the tilne, no. Because I don't remember how longafter the reccmnendation to add staff, in particular an executive director whose title ani pay are set up in the statute, how long after the passage of that act it was before Peters took action to hire me. Quite a few m:>nths. 
Q:  But he hired you from conservation?  
A:  Yes.  
Q:  Up until then budgetary had depenied upon the Department of  

Finance for its ••• 
A: Arxi continued after I got there. We got the budget comparisons of the Department of Finance. Ani when I wanted it I could get a copy of the original ~request of the agency. With no staff practically,
there would have been no way that I could have functioned su.cx::essfullywithout the infonnaticm that the Department of Finance budget division furnished. 'lhey continued to give me exactly what they had been givin;J to the canmission for sane years. Arxi Ted I.eth ani his apprqriate budgeting man down there atterded each of our hearin;Js. 
Q: How lon;J was Ted in this picture, -the budget picb.Jre, roughly,would you say? 
A: Well, Manvel who was really the first m:x1em day budget director,left his :position to go to Washirgton to the Bureau of the Census, ani Ted Ieth, who was then the cc:anptroller or sane such thing at oak Park, Illinois, was hired. 
Q: I would guess that was alon;J in 1944. 
A: It 'Wall.d have had to have been in-I don't really know'. 
Q: Ted I.eth stayed there? 
A: I.eth was there continuously then for many years. I guess he left when, during the early part of the Ogilvie administration. 
Q: When the governor did set up his awn • • • 
21 
A: His own Bureau of the Budget. 
Q: So Ieth was really a figure of saoe i.nq:Jortance then • 
A: Oh, yes. 
Q: ••• in this period of tilne. What sort of person was he? 
A: Well, he was an able man in same respects but not a scholar in the field of state budgetirq by any means but he had had a great deal of practical experience in his life. Ani he was pretty good at han:llirqpeople. As time went on, since he continued year after year in his role, each new director of Finance ani goven10r depenied on him rather heavily because JOOSt of them arrived knowixg very little about state budgets an:l about the agencies that they -were to administer. GoVernor stxe:ttat probably knew more when he came into office than lTOSt of them. Of oourse he had been • • • 
Q: Why do ycu say that? 
A: Well, he had been treasurer for one thin;J, which gives you a great deal of insight into state experditures if you are much in contact with it at all. And his father had been I believe secretary of state before him, so he was kind of raised in a family that taught and knew something of state govennnent. stevenson certainly didn•t know anything. Kerner didn1t know much about state goveJ:T1ltlet'lt. Ogilvie I don't think knew~at all about it either except what he learned in the period pr~or to inauguration when he had some advisors and lTOStly young but hard working staffers at work. 
Q: Did you have any contact with Govemor Stratton? 
A: Virtually none. I'm not sure that Leth had a great deal of contact with him either. stratton was his own budget director on the major decisions. 
Q: You mean he 'WCUl.d overrule the camnission? 
A: Well, again part of the big decisions-yes, he would overrule them if he so chose. And use the reoc::mmen::Ultions if they didn1t happen to be against what he wanted himself. He prided himself on his knowledgeof state finances. He was a shrewd enough politician to use the commission as a J:::uffer when he needed it. Besides, he was a Republican dealixg with a Re};:A.lblican-daninated camnission at that time. Senator Peters was the chainnan. It was to their mutual advantage to see eye to eye wherever they could. 
Q: In other words they could have a relationship there that wouldn1t involve staff at all? 
A: l!hat1s right. 
Q: sane kind of personal level. 
A: Yes, I think that's true. I don't think that all of his decisions 
were that krlowledgeable. we used to joke a little bit about hill\ givin; agency A a half a lake or a half a buildin; or samething. But 
his :t:u:Jget.s were JOOdest in size in caxparison to what followed. So one wculd have to say that his major decisions had the virtue of econany if ~else. 
Q: Peters was a figure in this whole field for many years, wasn't he? senator Peters of Cllampaign. 
A: Yes, he was. I don't want to dwell on it too long but I could go on for hours on the inlpact that he had on budgets am just about all the legislation that went out of the senate for a lot of years. He had a great inlpact on the appoin'bnents that were made to some of the major camnissions. Very, very shrewd man. You look at the :powerwielded by some people that you would not expect it fran. Paul Powell, for example. Peters was another of the old tiiners, a greatdeal of power in the senate when I went to work aver there am in:1eed while I was watc.hi.n;J the canmission in earlier years. Ani he didn't like to see huge increases in experxiiture for new functions of one type or another. He'd get quite indignant sanetimes--a capacitywhich I think a lot of the new yourg members have lost. If samethingis poJ;Ular, if it gets an editorial or two in a Chicago paper, sane of the new memhen; are for it. well, Peters wcu1d grunt am growl am hum arxi haw a little bit, cut out a lot of the stuff that today seems to have very little difficulty gettin:J into the appropriations. 
Q: His district of course included the university of Illinois. Did he favor them? 
A: He certainly did. He an::1. Powell took care of their respectiveuniversities. 
Q: Pc7tlell's bein:J southem Illinois university. 
A: Pc7tlell ard Choate took care of southem. Peters took care of university of Illinois very nicely. Although I recall sane instances in which he wasn1t for everyt:hirg they wanted by any means, including sane items that were rather dear to their hearts. He felt very kirill.ytoward the three agencies that were not teclmically a part of the university but are tflYsically housed over there an::l have a close workirg relationship with the university. state water Smvey, state Geological surveyI am the Natural History Smvey0 rrhese are agencieswith high rep.rtations doing highly technical work ani they sometimes asked for very large increases. senator Peters would qo along with same increase but many, many times I can recall that considerable percentages of their requests were cut out for new noney. 
Q: 'lhese particular science smveys? 
A: Yes. Yes. Althc:u;Jh if anyone had tried to cut them very deeply I daresay he ltoO.lld have had an old tiger right after them. He had been in the senate lorq enc:ugh that they knew heM to operate well an::l where the power lay. He pretty 'Well dictated who was appointed to the ccmnission. 
Q: '!he budgetary camnission? 
A: Yes, the budgetary camnission. At the same time he maybe liked his role there as chainnan a little too well for popularity anDngSthis am party in the senate. I remember the year they put another penny on the sales tax when Kerner was govemor. He voted for the increase when the Dem:Jctats needed a ooople of Republican votes. I remember he voted for it. I think Senator T. Mac Downi.n;J, the fine gentleman from Maoanb I believe, voted for it in order to get it passed. An:i they took tremerdous abuse fran their Republicancolleagues as bein;J turncoats ani whatever else you could think of. His price was to remain as chainnan of the ocmnission when Kerner was govemor. '!his was honored ani he stayed as chai.nnan. 
Q: At that time as I recall the Democrats had control of the house, 
didn't they? 

A: I think that's correct. 
Q: 'We'd have to check that out. You were arourd, of course, when 
finally passed an amer:dnent that chan]ed. the basis of representation
in the house. Did you follow this very Im.lCb.? 

A: I didn't follow it very closely to be perfectly honest about it but the whole blsiness of annual sessions that have c:x::me alcxg with the smaller house rrumbers ani so forth have had a pretty drastic inpact obviously on the kirrl of legislator that there was in the senate. I'm much more familiar with the senate than with house membership, but the senate lost excellent members who cc:uldn't afford to be other than part time legislators. 'Ihey couldn't be full tilners. I'm not sure that the quality of the membership has .impJ:ovedmeasurably by the c.han;Jes that have been made. Of course that's just Irrj' own opinion. 
Q: Of course, annual sessions didn't reall:y get into the swi.rq of things 1.U'ltil the late sixties, ian't that rJ.gh.t? 
A: I dat't remember the acbJal date bit I suspect that's tnle. But I think as the size of the state ani its programs ani the work of the General Assembly ten:led. to increase aver the years, even before going to annual sessions, sane of the members began to realize that theycouldn't run large ani successful law practices, for exanple, ani still sperd the time necessary to be good legislators. I don't know how many special sessions there were in sane of those years but there were a few years when there must have been a.l.roc>st as many specialsessions that made-well, if you counted them all up-they al.loost made full time legislators in a year or two before there was a full time requirement in the law. 
Q: ~1, do you think they could have gotten by or could they todaywith biannual sessions? 
A: Oh, I think they could have. I think the need for an annual session was vastly ovm:rated. 'Ihey oc:W.d call a special session in five days at relatively small expense to the state. You could count 24 
up what additional cost there are, I don't remember what the figures are, but they're nothing in canparison to the total state budgetnowadays. 'lb pay for additional mileage and expenses and so forth in a special session was even pretty small stuff. I don't see that the annual budge.ti.rr;J requirement has improved things measurably. '!hey say you can't budget for a two-year pericx:l. well, that's tnle. You can't budget accurately perhaps for two years but you can't for a yeareither in nost state agencies in chargi.rq times. You still have a need for an occasional special session even with our annual sessions. What you've got llOW is a oonti.nuc::lus process. You just get out of one budget and into another. on the part of the agencies they've had to exparxi their staffs quite a lot. I just think as far as the state's concemed the biannual session was not that bad. I think quite a fat 
legislators, I've heard several who voted ani fought for annual sessions say they made a mistake. 
Q: In tenns of what I've heard called the budget cycle hew do youunderstarxi that expression? What's it talki.rg about? 
A: well, nonnally I think they probably D!a11 fran the til'lle budgets are prepared until they em up with an appropriation. 
it deperx1ed on its size and canplexity. 
Q:  In an agerr:::y?  
A:  In an agency, yes.  
Q:  And on a biannual basis they would start that cycle?  
A:  start the cycle in the odd number years and in the agency itself  

'!hey might start their budgetin late surmner internally ani have one ready to present the Deparbnentof Finance perhaps in October, November. 
Q: 'Ibis would be an even numbered year, wouldn't it? 
A: Yes. Because they're building up toward an odd numbered year.You're absolutely right. 
Q: so in advance of a sessim in an odd numbered year they would start midsuntner workirq on budgets? 
A: Yes, they woul.d have to do that. I don't know' how nuch of a task 
it is in mst of the agencies to p.zt together a budget. '!hey're alllDSt 1::Judqetin;J the year aroun:i I should suppose. But they had to get sanet:hin; in final or semifinal form to present llOW to the Bureau of the BI.D;Jet, then of oc:urse t6he division of Budgets, Deparbnent of Finance. In fall generally before the 'Ihanksgivin:J pericd and holiday season certainly. Al~here again sane of the agencies were able 
to postpone the presentatJ.on of their requests to finance, subsequently of course to the budgetal:y c::amnission, until nuch later than the budget instructions called for. '!hey would claim unusual problems in arrivi.rq at the final figures for the, oh, let's say the state scholarship cormnission. I remember one til'lle I had to call them when I was workin;J for the General Assembly because we couldn't get any figures art of them., an:i it was gettixq late in the session. And 
Francis A. Whitney 
I threatened to write a bill am pit it in at their old figures myselfif they didn't send us their figures. 'Ihey got on the stick am the figures arrived the followirg caJp].e of days. But what's hatpaning now to the schedule I don't really know but I suspect that it hasn't varied a great deal from what it had been earlier. 
Q: Except that with armual sessions it goes on. 
A: Practically continuously yes. You just get through with one, the 
General Assembly aanes home let's say July 1. '1he new b.Jdqet I suppose for the year after is due then fairly early in the fall am they start the whole ~over again. '1he poor people in the 
agencies am of course the Bureau of the &.1dget people don•t get much rest between sessions. '1he one virtue of the two-year budget was that the agencies could feel that they had a long enough period that once they got an appropriation, a new one for two years, they could breath a little am 'WOrk out their programs am not have to worry too much about fightirg the battle all aver again in a couple of months later. '!here's same argument for saying instead of one year we ought to budget for four or five years. Give a chance to have a fairlylorq-tenn pro;;Jrall\. I don't think IOOSt states even do that for their capital needs although there's same lip service to say they're lookingclaNn the road quite a ways for what they want in the future. Incidentally the l:u3getaJ:y canmission in the time I was there at least did not normally take up capital outlaf b1.d;;Jets. 'Ihat was a strargecanmission and I suppoee it was based m part on the Deparbnant of Finance. 'Ihey didn•t have anybody to tum to to tell them whether or not an estimate for a particular new buildi.n;J was half way right. It didn•t have the teclmical staff and they didn't have the money to hire that k:in:i of help through contractual services or personnel services. '1he capital outlay budget for many years seemed ll'Ore or less to came down to whatever was left after the operating b1.d;;Jets had been taken care of. If they decided they had thirty or forty or fifty million dollars left that could go for a couple of buildin]s or a couple of half buildings in an administration or two. 
Q: With that Jdn:i of information be in the governor's budget document then? 
A: I think that varied. I think same years, at least a total in the sununary paqes in the final of the estimated capital that would be putthere, I'm sure there wouldn't be llBJCh. of a breakdown in the printeddocument that early. 
Errl of side 'lWD, Tape one 
Q: Francis, since we last talked 'We Jdn:i of refreshed our memories of same of this period by looJd.n;r at the book by 'Ihcanas J. Antone, '!he Politics of state ~turein Illinois which covers roughly thefirSt halfor so or frSt ~ofthe 1960s and during that time you were executive director of the BudqetaJ:y Commission as I recall. 
26
Francis A. Whitney 
A: 'lhat1s right, Bill. Antone spent a good deal of time in our office of the Budgetary O::mnission. He was a very bright hard working ~man. He had had virtually no state bud.c]etin;J experience, part1cularly with regani to Illinois, but he was a fast learner and he went arouni to the right places, I think, to ask for reliable infonnation. I differ with him a little bit as to his final cxmclusions but that's to be expected, I suppose. Arrl in art:! case we became very good frierxis. I remember that he came back to the state at senator Arrington• s invitation one tiJne after his book had been out. I don't remember precisely the date but Arrington was always seeki.rg for sane magic way to budget that would autanatically solve his problems and solve the state• s at the same time. I think he was kird of disappointed that Tcm urxiers'tamably was not able to cane up with that magic fonnul.a. Ard the last tiJne I saw Antone in the capitol Buildirg he wasn•t very happy. Arrington had set up an appoinbnent with him an:i he had flc:Mn in from Ann Arbor only to fini that Arrington had evidently forgotten the appoinbnent and was not here. So this left Antone not:hin:J to do but tum aroun:i and go back again. Ard whether he ever returned to the state of Illinois I don't knc:w. I didn't see him at art:/ rate. 
Q: WOUld you enlarge a little bit on what you think Arrington's hopes were for budgetin:J and this differed from what was • • • 
A: No, I was thinking of that this mrning. one time about this same period he got the state SOCiety of Acocuntants, whatever its official name is, to furnish t:h:t'algh their auspices fran sane of the major oatpanies particularly in QU.cago sane excellent lC7ttler to middle level a.coc:Jimtants to make a smvey of sane parts of the state budget to see if they could find places presumably to ecxmanize. Evidently they were not able to. It's a little hazy in my memory. But I do recall that neither the accountants nor Arri.rgton were too happy with the end product. '!he aocountants worked diligently over their figures for the various agencies but were bothered by the fact that they couldn• t find precise ard specific instances of waste or areas in which they could ciena1strate where ecananies could be made. Here again Arrington had expected scme kird of minor miracle which simply wasn't in the cams. 
Q: course as I recall at that time, there was an eoonany bloc in the House of Representatives. 
A: 'lhat was mostly in the House, yes. Representative Parkhurst from Peoria, Horsley fran Spri.rgfield, a fe~t~ others, I think a couple of dozen pe;tbaps, members were making an attempt, a continuation of an at:tenpt fran previous sessions, to fin::l waste and eliminate it fran state qovemment. 'nley didn•t meet with DUlCh success. Antone incident:al.ly goes into that effort rather thoroughly in his book and irxticates ha.rl futile the efforts that they made proved to be. Kirrl of a shatne that those who were willin:J to p.zt in a lot of time ard effort to fin::l places where they coul.d eoonanize were not encouraged by :mre their peers in the House ard the senate. No one really ever seems to thank the budget cutters of state government. '!here•s too much pressure on the up side. '!heir colleagues don't like it if additional m:mies are withheld or cut fran their favorite agencies and they're treated a little bit like pariah dogs if they start to get a little 
Francis A. Whitney 
bit of success at their cutti.rg efforts. I don't :k::ncM haw you get recognition for the fellows that tty hard to cut them. I think maybe sane people have misinte:J:preted. the end ~at least of sane of 
the people in the Budgetary Cc.tmdssion like l?eters mo certainly effectively cut fran agency requests many millions of dollars that I 
for one am thoroughly oonvinced 'WOUld have stayed in many of those 
budgets had he not led. the way in deleting and. reducirg many of the requests. 'lhat I don't :k::ncM. Many of the legislators of that day were graduates of county boards ani other local government:al bodies where experditures were treated quite seriously and. they terded sane of them, Peters among them, to get in:tignant if an agency got a little too ambitious in its request for additional mnies. '!hen as ncM, though, most of the interest in budgets seams to oc:me pr.illlarily when there 1N!I.'f be in the offin) the need for sane kirrl of a tax inc::rease. 
If all the legislators are sure that there's ~lenty of money in the treasury to meet the govm:nor•s budget, that ~t's fully~, they don•t get very exercised about the imraased. budgets if they're not of really lliCI.'l'lentoU size for a particular agency. An:1 especially they don't get exercised if the programs to be :increased are the favorite programs of the then governor mo per;haps ran the party and. his canpaign on the grounds that he would do certain th.ings that required the experditure of money. I can reme.m1::er when Stevenson's main pledge was to improve the state's mental institutions and. others 'Who pledged they would improve the highways. others that they'll work hal:d for greater mnies for the canrt'01'l schools ani sane for the colleges. Each of the major experrlitures in the state government seemed. to have had their year a tilae or two in the years that I worked for the state. An:1 in that year there seems to be general agreement that a major increase is called for and. will be made a.lloost with tacit approval of virtually all the :mentJers of the General Assembly. I don't :k::ncM that 
you can always distinguish such a year blt certainly there have been 
tinw!ls when the universities received huqe increases, other times when 
public aiel received very considerable increases other than that 
occasioned strictly by a risi.rg caseload. 
Q: well, it seemed to me loold.:rJg at AntoneIS book that he thought 
that the Budgetaey caumission dl:iefly concerned itself with boldi.rg 
down spend.i:n:; without too llllCh of evaluation or c::on:parison 81'l¥ll'1q 
aqenoies arrl programs. 

A: well, it•s true that there was only a general idea of program (.X)Sts. Many of these nen, of course, well virtually all of them, were experienced. JIISJl'lbers of the General Assen'bly. Arrl with one or IrOre agencies each of the irdividuals were pretty well acquainted. with that agency's ~· senator Peters, of course, knew a great deal about 
the university. other members knew saoetb.i.rJg' al:x:IUt a particular aqercy or a prison in their district, that sort of thi..nq. '!hey didn•t have to be totally spcx:1nfed as to what an agency's functions ani programs were. At the same time there was no acccunt.irJ:1 system in the stat$ which would produce the kin::i of program function information that Antone inplies in his book as desirable. Pn:lqram bJdgetinq arrl perfcmnance budgetirq were terms a.lloost int.erchan;eably used at that time. It was enjoyirq a bit of a vogue 81'l¥ll'1q the states, a vogue which I might add seems largely to have petered out sinc:le. 
Q: What did they mean by that tenn, perfonnance program budqetinp. 
A: Basically in prog:tam l::oigeti1g as I unierstarrl it atterrpt:s are made ani records kept for the major functions of each agency with the idea to isolat.in;J how 11llCh each of those functions cost so that those costs could be measured ani they could try to detennine whether they were spendi:rg too 11llCh on one prog:r:am or too little. Arxl with the perfonnance of the agency with regard to those functions be measured by what it could show ani what records it could keep that would show what it had aocomplished, what it had done. HOirl many units of a certain kirrl of work had been done, at what cost. Here again, I can't honestly say that I have ever seen what I considered a true programbudget. I •ve seen some that thought they had such a budget but to me the attenpts that Illinois made in the couple of years that it had had a budget which pw:ported to divide agency world.n;rs arrong its prima:cyfunctions were not at all based on fact. '!here was no elaborate aOOO\D"l'tirg system to shaw how 11llCh a particular function cost. '!here was no inclination, as Antone points cut, for the agencies to sperd the kin:i of :rta'18Y am effort that wall.d have been required to produceanyt:hin;J like the kin::i of information int:en:ied by the theory of prog:tams ard prog:tam budgetirg. It's veey hard to precisely define a set of prog:r:ans for arr:1 major agency which will meet the view of any two irrlividuals as to what those pro:Jxaus really should be, what should be shc7tm. Shall.d you show for each agency a categoxy of general administration? If so, how far shall.d you car:ry that designation? Should you have a general administration categoxy for every prison, for every mental institution, for every division in a large state agency? If an agency already is reflective of what ll'OSt people might agree were major programs in its divisional o:r:ganizationby which apprcpriations nonnally are made, then that1s probably as 
11llCh breakdown as shou1d be maintained. But others would argue that's not nearly in sufficient detail. You can very easily get lost in mre of· an issue than we•ve qot with the stardard accounts if you go to anykind of :reco:r:d keepirg to try to pJzport to show every function truly.Ani you're totally at the mercy for the validity of those figures on the agency that's keepin;J the records because the code ~erks who decide When an expeniiture oc:.mes through where to bill that expeniiture, what function to shaw it bein;J charged to, are the keypeople in the whole equation, am if they don't do their job properly,their records aren't worth the paper they':re kept on. 
Q: Now what you're sayin;J is that the stardard accounts, which are contractual services, CXJ!liito:lities, ard personal se:r:vices, those are detenninations which are rather easily made? 
A: 'Ihey're easily made ani they're easily urxierstood for the lOOSt part. 
Q: But when they get to progrmn it's a little bit different? 
A: Right. You may have one person workirr;J on mre than one prcy:r:amby the ordinaxy definition of program. Are you goinq to split his payroll when it canes through am charge half his pay to one an:i half to the other on an elaborate set of books? You can get into all kinds of ramifications deperxi:in; on how detailed you want your prcxp:am 
infomation to be. Antone seems to think that, properly kept, program infonnation would prevent an agency fran missperrling its nv::mey other than the way it has been ~qxriated. From where I sit, it would be vastly easier for an agency which is the major detenninant and perhaps the only deteminant aside fran a post-audit as to what program to chaJ:ge with a certain expen;titure, it would be much easier for the agency to misuse monies voted by progzmn, I think, than it would be voted by starxiard account, by organizational structure, the way w do 
l'lOW'0 
Q: When did 'We beqin to have this program budgetin;J in Illinois? 
A: It was under Governor Kerner I think in about 1960 or 1961. 'Ihey passed two bills. One required same budgetin:J by prc:xjLdiD function. An::1 the other required that appropriations be made by program. 'Ihe secon:i bill in the absence of the kin:1 of detailed accounting infonnation to make it accurate was quickly seem to be not very desirable in a:ey respect and was repealed very quickly at the start of the followin;J session. I think the one requiring l:xldgetin:J is still on the books. It was the last time I checked. 
Q: Which one did they repeal? 
A: 'lhey repealed the one that required you to appropriate by function or by progxam. 
Q: Okay. But you say you still bJdqet by • • • 
A: I think the requirement of the law is that you budget that way but to rcr:t knc::Mledge it has never been really followed. 
Q: What I'm having a problem with-I was asst.nn:in;J appropriations and budgets were so closely linked that I didn•t see heM you could separate them. Or did you mean acoamts? 
A: well, these were accounts true enough. The law that required budgeting by progzam required that it be broken by st:arrlani accounts by PLo::lraiDo 
Q: Okay. 
A: So you 'WOUld say for function so and so, so much for personal services, so nuch for travel and so forth. In effect what you were doing was brea1d.n:J doWn the m:ganizational structure appropriations where division so and so would receive so much for personal services, so much for travel, so much for contractual services, into whatever functions you had agreed were reasonable to set up on your books for that division. Arxi then ycu'd break down under each of those functions by st:arrlani acoamts. 'Ihus a vastly mre detailed appropriations beyoni a set of appzopziation accounts would have had to have been maintained. 
Q: But you say you'd get al<DJ without that on the appropriations, that kir¥1 of detail, 1::ut you'd still want it in the budget? 
30 
A: No, as I say, the law still requires that you have that k:ini of information in the budget but no one • • • 
Q:  Which is the document that goes to the legislature?  
A:  Right.  Right.  
Q:  But the bills in the past don't have to have •  
A:  'lhe:y do not.  'lhe:y still got basically the same information,  

perhaps a little less information than they've had for :many years bystandard aocount, by organization mdt. 'nley do not appropriate byfunction or prog:tam. An:i I see no sign that they're about to. 
Q: But the budget document supposedly is still required to shCM 
0 0 0 
A: Yes, except it doesn't. An:l never did really. 'Ihere was same attenpt maybe for one budget, as I recall, although I'd have to check those ~to see. But they didn't ann.mt to much. 'Ihe Universityof Illinol.S for example had for its vast o:t:ganizational structure and large appropriation, I think, it had three accounts. Ibysical plant was one of them. I've even forgotten what the other two were. But they were so large as to be meanirgless. It was just qivinq the university in effect three large lump sums cut of which it could payfor all of its operations. '!he General Assembly would be wise to always look awfully closely at aey effort to provide less detail in app:tqn:iation bills because what little control they've got over the agency stems at least in part by the fonn of the appropriation act. If they1re go.in:;J to get just one big lump sum the agency can do almost anyt:hi.rg within its legal pc7ort'erS withrut aey delineation of Ul"derst:arx3ale thin;Js that it1s sperrling for such as people and travel and equipnant to accanplish its legal duties. You can argue of course from a ~intof good administration that ¥01.1 can be too restrictive lll appropriation bills. Illinois m past years back, oh in the 1900s, early in the twenties and thirties, appz:opriated for 
each job separately and each agency. 1ben, with the passage of the position classification act in what was it? 1943 I guess, they merelymade refererx::e to that act and said that personal services of X nmnber of dollars to be expemed em in accordance with provisions of the position classification act. so they then had reference to the entire set of jab titles in that large lOI'XJ act. 
Q: Now that act set forth the job titles and the pay? 
A: And pay ranges. 
Q: An:i pay ran:JGS• D:> they still do it that way? 
A: As far as I k:ncM. 
Q: You were talking earlier about the att:enpts of the economy bloc at least of those CPA•s that Senator Arrin:fl:on brought in to uncover wastes. 
31 
A: I assume that waste would be one of the areas. 'lhey were lookingfor places where they could legitimately say this could be cut X number of dollars without .impairin:J the agency's program. Well, this is a deucedly hard thinq to do. It's a subjective judgment when you see where you think sane m:mey should come out ani the accountants weren't used to that. 'lhey were used to making re.camnendations only when they could prove that sanet.hi.rg should be done or should be :recamvarxled. An:l they just s.inply couldn't fini that in these state 
accounts. '!he willin:lness to be arbitrary in your judgments is what must be there urxier the system we've got or you'd never cut anyt:hir:g. 
Many of the legislators I worked with in recent years were reluctant to reccrmnerrl that an agency receive any reductions \D'lless you could prove to the satisfaction of alJDost eveeyhody that the reduction oughtto be made. well, you can't do that. You've got to just take a few facts ard run with them ani assume that if you've cut too deeply the 
outcry from the agency ani its constituency will be such that you'11 
be forced to put back sane portion of the cut. But the reason why the govm:nor can make a budget ani ofttimes can cut one or can hold up on the expen:litures after appropriations can be nade is that he's got, bythe nature of his office, the right to be arbitrary. Ard if a legislator is qoin;J to seoorxi guess the governor ani his budget ani redo sanet.hi.rg or add sanet.hi.rg for that matter it's got to be a mre or less arbitrary act. Very difficult to prove that chapter ani verse that X number of dollars is needed. lbr are you goirg to tell the Department of Insurance ani prove to eveeyhody's satisfaction that they want to add let's say one investigator or an actuaJ:y whether or not they can exist withalt fairly adequately or whether they reallyought to be given it. It's a hard thin:J. Or if they've asked for 
three of sanet.hi.rg, should you give them two or one. HeM you goirg to prove that sort of thirg? You don't prove it is what it boils dam to. You just decide after weighirg all the factors ilwolved about how well you like the director of the agency ani his prog:t:a:ms ani what letters you've had from constituents, whether part of the requestshould be granted or all of it or none of it. 
Q: so that in the erxi when you consider these pressures that work on legislators the budget is a political ••• 
A: Most certainly. Ani aside fran that type of politics in recent years there's cane into beirg a nuch heightened awareness em the partof the sittirg govemors that the document itself it truly an important political document. Ani they go to great lengths to keep the inf01:111atia1 very secret 1.D'ltil. the day of the governor's budget message, which is :noJ:mally printed in the doonnent alorv;r with a lot of detail, an:i in otder to get as favorable press mention as they can possibly can because they don't leave the critics of the document or the likely critics enough time to work over the figures a bit before it's time for the papers to go to press ani the radio stories ani the 
t.v. stories an:i so forth to be written, delivered. Unforbmately,there has also been in recent years a lack of willin;;less to consider the~figures sanet.hi.rg not lightly to be c:han:Jed in approprJ.ation bills. In one of the recent budget periods it seemed to me the governor changed the figures drastically three or fa.tr different times in the course of the legislative session as the 
32 
politics of the matter ani the authenticity of shri.nki.D3' cash in the 
treasury shc:Med themselves. 
Q: Ani the b1.dqet document was already printed ani • • • 
A: Printed ani ignored for all practical pn:poses by everybody about as soon as it came off the press. 
Q: I noticed Antone in his book talked about the Budgetary ccmnission lookin;;r askance at agencies which wanted nm-e noney in which it lapsed
substantial am:::R.mts of noney. I think we ought to explain what we mean about lapse. 
A: well, a lapse it merely that you don't spend your previous
appropriation in fUll. Ani the arrount that's in that authorization to spen:i that is not expended just never leaves the treasury and it's called a la:psed appropriation. One of the ways--presumably a veryelementary :furxlamental way-that you can tell whether an agency needs a lot nora lOOllSY is did it spen:i, did it have a hard time gettinJ by on what it had in the previous fiscal period. I think it's a :perfectly legitiJnate thirg to look at how 1tllCh they've spent.Sometimes a new program, In particular, 'liiOl"...'t get rollin:J right on the first day of the year; the appropriation, however, may have contenplated that the thin;J would arrive fUll bloan ani start on the first day of the fiscal period at its full flush level of expen:titures. So if it doesn't get started on time then quite
naturally it should lapse the portion of JIDlleY :r:epresented by its failure to get started as early as the apprc:priation contenplated. In that Jdn.i of a case the a.gercy should not be penalized. It ought to be C01'Y;Jratulated for not spen:iin;J all the m:mey. But nonnally if there's a major lapse in at:P:tq>riation then the agenJy-the burden of proof should be on the agency for Wn.y it not only needs more than it spent in the previous fiscal period but it needs to fumish some infonnation as to Wn.y it didn't spend what it had before. It's hard to get General Assembly members to think in teJ::ms of canparin:Jappropriation requests with past expen:titures. '!hey want to OCil'lpal:e with past appropriations all the time. An:i it's hard to get them to think in terms of CCJIXparing only with what was spent in a previousfiscal period or what was likely to be spent. Now the agencies alwayswhen they filed their 1::u1c:Jet request fonns they have to anticipate and guess how mr.h they're <Fln1 to spern in the rest of that fiscal year.An:i they always overestmate that because they want to make it look like they're going to ~as much as they possibly can of their appropriation for the fiscal period they are then in. And you have to 
put the blrden on them to prove that their estimate is not inflated, as it almost always is. But they don't like to talk about canparin:J new ~iation requests with the lesser appropriation expen;:lituresof the previous fisca1 period. An:i I don't blame them. I wouldn't 
want to either. 
Q: You were with the Budgetal:y camnission fran when? 1957 or was it 1958 or 1959 that you really got started there? I think Antone does have the figures sanewhere in this l:xx>k, the year. 
33 
A: I don't even remember for sure. But it had to have been about 
1957. Ani I worked there until I went to work for the senate Democratic leadership in I think 1967. 
switched frau a biennial to an annual budget. 
Q:  1967.  
A:  I'm not-I'm pretty hazy on that.  It seems so incredibly •••  
Q:  It was alorg about that time when Govemor Ogilvie came in that we  

A: Yes, that was in his first tam. As I think I mentioned earlier in ta1kirg to you, I'm not at all convinced that that move has been for the best. Because the poor agencies are seemingly in one contirrual. budget cycle. '!hey no sooner get finished with one set of appropriations ani they1re budqetin] for the followin] year. I might
add on this point that I recently heal:d on a radio pror;p:am, a fonner nanber of the COR]reSSional budget office argued, I thought quitepersuasively, for the desirability of a larger fiscal period in the 
federal government. He thought it should be at least two years
instead of the now si.n]le year. I knc:M it's normally expected of 
someone that's been working for a lorq time with a particular set of rules, in rcrx case I worked with biennials for a lorg tilne, that youteni to favor that against char:ge. But I just sinply can•t see any way in which an anrrua1 budget is, in any major respects, worth the extra efforts and costs to produce its figures as canpared to the previous bietmial budget which could be m:dified at any time by a special session in five or six days at relatively small cost in terms of the total state budget. 
Q: Well, the argument runs that it's tough to look two years ahead. 
A: It's tough to look one year ahead. You can't really see one yearahead. I would challen:Je anyone who tells me he can see better one year than he can actually could have seen eighteen mnths ahead in the two-year pericxi. 'they're both inpossible in a changi.n] canplex world. Ani the estimates that go into a budget ani the appropriations based on that budget are just that. 'they're estimates. 'lhey're not written in stone ani shc:W.dn1t he viewed as such. 
Q: I think an:>ther criticism that runs through Antone's book is that as he saw it the members of the Budgetary canmission were lookirg at agency request piecemeal ani never really added up the total pictureto see hew it wa.tld fit in. What would you say to that? 
A: I wa.tld say that's absolutely correct. And I would also ask the question what difference would it have made? Had they got the total picture at the very start, it woul.dn•t have charv;Jed the totals if they were sufficiently diligent on their piecemeal a~s. UltiJnatelythose pieces are goin;J to add to the total X. Had they someway or other seen it all at the start it still had the total x. Arxi everyone
knc7.,s that if they were goi.rg to eni up with too large a budget they'dhave to do sane cuttirg sanewhere alorg the line anyhow in the majoragencies. or as they've had to do ax:e in a while with atbi~ percentage reductions. I think that1s a vastly overrated criticJ.sm 
although it's certainll valid that the time constraints are such that I know of no way that t oculd have been done at the time allowed for the hearin;Js am bein:J deperdent for the i.nfonnation for t;llose hearirqs on the budget fonns to be furnished by the ~tof Finance. 'Ihe time table really was dictated by the agencies.. sane of the agencies--I fear the smarter ones or slyer ones at least deliberately withheld turnirq in their budgets as early as the date requested knowing full well that the enthusiasm with which legislatorsapproach budgets am a chance to cut something out of same of them would wane as the pace of the session increased am the work load of the individUal members increased deep into the session. 
Q: You mean that the first agencies were subject to a more severe scrutiny? 
A: Almost always. When there was plenty of time for the legislators and aveeybody involved to look at the budgets. Similarly it's also quite true, I fear, that there was an UI"JeVel"'''l of treatment in that the smaller, more easily ln'rlerstood agencies were probably nore severely scrutinized than the major ones. 'Ihe very size of a public
aid budget an1 its pro;Jzmus or of the university of Illinois or any of the major agencies made the task of t:ryin:.J to brirg any sense out of their budget requests very, very difficult in comparison to same of the smaller agencies. Similarly their constituencies nonnally grcM in i.nq:ortance am mnnbers with the size of the agency. 'Ihe people that 
want a large public aid budget or a large university of Illinois budget certainly are larger in mnnber than those who want a bighistorical library or an increase in one of the lesser agencies. 
Q: What might be haJ:d to un3e.rstan:1 though is when the governor saysthat these budget requests should be in by such am such a date. Whydidn't the agencies c:c:mply with that? 
A: Well, no governor ever really cracked the whip CNer them. Am many of them of course claimed to have extra problems that militate against~ the budget out to the institutions, for example, in public safety or in the mental health institutions. 'lhen it has to cx:me back to the front office an:i maybe go back again to the field and back and forth two or three times. It's true, it takes same time. And it's a bigger task to put something like that together than it is for a small ~. But I suspect that part of the delay in the case of sane aqenc1es always stemmed fran the feelirg that it wasn't too good of an idea to get the budget in real early. Of course theywouldn•t have time to see t.hin;Js that caoe up either as time goes bythat they oculdn't anticipate if they'd gone in early. '!hey want to wait as late as they can particularly in say public aid to knc:M if their tren1 projections are provirg aut about the way they had thought. '!hey want to wait as len; as possible before gettin;J in their request. 
Q: Budgetaty canmission itself didn't prepare at that time when you were familiar with it estilna.tes of revenue, that sort of thing, or did you? 
35 
A: Not nonnally. I remember one time when the canmission hired a couple of eoonanists fran the university of Illinois to double check the gove.mor's estimates. 'Drls was before the General .Assembly
created its own aqe:ncy for maJd.n;J such estimates. 
estimates ended up by t:hinJd.rg that the governor's estimates were 
Q:  Econanic?  
A:  Economic oc:mni.ssion.  
Q:  Fiscal commission.  
A:  And the two well qualified people who took a quick look at those  

reasonable at that particular year. For a long time the fiscal estimates were relatively honest and were used for budget preparation on the part of the gove.mor's :people in the Department of Finance and later on I think even in the Bureau of the Budget. 'lhat sanetimes maybe subject to legitimate question in the years since because particularly when election years are involved the infonnation released early in the bldget cycle about revenues has been so far off track--as subsequently shown-that it could only have been the deliberate misstatement of what the revenues were likely to be. 
Q: Now are you talld.nq about what happened last fall? 
A: Well, that's one of the times certainly when it looked like • 
Q: 'lhe gove.mor seemed to feel that there was plenty of m:>ney to keeptllirgs going • • • 
A: '!hat's right. 
Q: • • • but after the election it tumed out • • • 
A: 'Ihen dire tllirgs were present all of a sudden. Well, even in a rapidly ~ingtine estimates shouldn't chan;Je quite that quickly in that macanitude, I don•t believe, witln.rt there having been scme extra conservative look at them earlier that probably stem fran the political consequences of the estimate. Although, it's never as easyto make accurate estimates as legislators seem to think. Nevertheless I think Illinois' record over many years was amazingly good at judging how much m:>ney we've had. '!he pressure has gone off that estimate a little bit since the new constitution allowed under certain circumscrilied circumstances the right to borrow on a short tenn basis when the state was incurring a deficit. 
Q: Actually saDetine between 1960 ani 1970 the magnitude of state spenii.n:J increased markedly, didn't it, of state activities and that whole l:WJdget:.in:J process it seems to me shifted fran beirq sanething in the fifties aoOcmii.n:J to Antone which is a rather cozy relationshipbetween the gove.mor and the Bl1dgetaey Chnmission until the way it is now where there is m:>re of an adversarial relationship? 
A: '!hat nay well be true. I think probably • • • Q: What wt:W.d you say about all that period? 
A: well, remember now, too, the war years through 1945 allowed the aCCUltlllatim of a major surplus in the state treasw:y am. the generalfuni because of the state's inability to spen:l for capital projects, am::>rq other tl1irqs. 'Blat cushion lasted quite a lon:J t:ime. I don1t kn<::M' when it could be shatm to have disaR;leared entirely bUt there was no real pressure on appropriations or budget requests of agencies for a number of years. '!hen as the problems grew, the appropriations had to grcM to partly meet them. Particularly in public aid and in the massive grcMth in the colleges and the constant inflationary pressures on the oamoon schools, which brought about major requests in that area, it was inevitable that there be a major expansion, al.m:JSt an explosion in state expen:litures. I sanetiJnes wonier though if maybe a part of it is not a 'Whole charge in the attitude of the General Assembly and various governors and the administrators of the agencies. I think the constant ban:iyin:J arcmrl of large figures for budgets in Washin;Jton all the time seem to have militated against the small-tcMn legislator bein;J down right offen:ied if an agency wanted so percentincrease or sanet:hi:rJ;J in its budget. Sane of them once terrled to getin:tignant. The view tcMaJ:d a budget now is no longer quite so personal; legislators don't get exercised very nn.tch now by majorincreases in blrlget. 'Ihey want to know that the budget is balanced. 'Ihey want to know there won•t be any taxes. But within that constraint they don't really care hal fast budgets go up. Isgislators never did really like to cut budgets, DrJSt of them, just a few. unfortunately it was an influential few aver the years that slowed the rise of budgets. But they never really got any thanks for it. An:i it was foreign to many of them to ask an agency head for a favor or a joband then tum right arcmd and cut his budget. The General Assemblyis not ideally oonstructed as a budget-cutting agency by any means. It•s a miracle they do as well as they do. 
End of side one, Tape Two 
Q: When the tape ran out you were sayin:J that legislators don't care too nn.tch about cu1:tilYJ budgets. 
A: well, they don't get thanked for it. In fact, quite the contrary.
AqerrJy heads aren't goin:J to go out of their way to do favors that legislators need or to provide their constituents a few jobs if they're constantly under fire and attack at budget time by a particular legislator. I simply don't believe, though, really that 
there's quite the same view towaJ:d budgets and the desirability of not wastirg p.lblic llD'lies in any ~that there onoe was. Now I maybe all wrorq on this ard I certainly can't prove it. 
Q: Antone speaks in his book of sane of the people in the Blldgetru:y
CCJmnission. we•ve already mentioned one a gocx:l deal, senator Peters. Where would he cane azt on the subject of cuttin:J ard that sort of thi.rg? He awarent!Y did a good deal of it. 
37 
A: I ~the was a pretty good dili'1ent cutter ani the oamnission follc:Med his lead nonnally. I don't think he was totally unresponsible in most of his cuts. And certainly he wasn't going to take the lead in doing the cutting of the university. Actually a lot of the major budgets, while they may have had a fonnal hearin;J before the BudqetaJ:y camd.ssion, -were decided by a negotiating process with the governor. senator Peters in the case of the university budget, Representative Powell in the case of southern's l:udget, they would meet with the governor alon:J with the appropriate university officials ani work aut a figure that they all felt they could live with. At least this was th:rough the years that I was aroun:i there. Similarly the allDlD'lt for public aid nonnally was not truly a budget decision in the sense that eveeyone. :knew that the figure that went into the budget document and into the first set of bills was lower than the ultilna.te figure would need to be to carrplete the fiscal period. Nonnally what the agency expected to sperrl in that biermitnn would be put in for the followirg two-year :reoc::rnmetXIation. But they knew it was too small. '!hey knew there would be a deficiency apprqriation if they kept the appropriation at that level ard maybe, with one year or one biermial exception, there always was a major deficiency appropriation to piece aut the public aid budget for its full two years. As a rough rule of thumb they figured they -were probably appropriating for 18 to 20 :uart:hs, whereas they needed to zq;p:opriate for 24 months. And the record of major deficiency a:wropriations is clear for all to see in the session laws. But the legislators didn't really fight it. '!here would be a few make same noise rut they all had known, the ones that knew anything at all abc::ut appropriations, that the originalappropriation for that agency was inadequate for the two-year period. 
Q: Was that because plblic aid costs were always goin;1 up? 
A: Always going up at a rate that was extremely difficult to estilna.te. 
Q: What made them go up? 
A: I suppose the general tilDes. '!here were sane increases in the level of the systems. And there were always major increases in programs for health care, medicare, ard medicaid ki.n:m of costs that would start aut small ard grew very rapidly. I remember when the aid to cielpenjent. children was just three or four hurX1red t:housarxi dollars the flrst tiJne around. But it grew gecmetrically after that. And at a rate that the agency couldn•t really do a very good job of estimating, an:i none of the budget officials were equipped to provide a reliable estimate for that particular budget. '1he comrron school appropriation al.m:>st always was negotiated directly with the governor. It was not considered the province of the BudgetaJ:y camnission as much as it was the province of the comrron school study ccm:nission. 
Q: '!he SChool Problems. 
A: '!he SChool Problems ccamnission, whatever its official name was at that time. 
38 
Q: NC7t1 when you talk al::xut the cc::mm:m school appt:opriation, what did that go to? 
A: well, the appropriation at various til'lles, I think it was made directly to the auditor of public aCOOlm.ts. 
Q: Is it part of state aid to the schools in Illinois? 
A: Yes. UrXler a statutory formula to detennine how it should be distributed. An:i I guess also the apprqn:iation was made fran that :furd for the Chicago and the da.rmstate teachers' pension systems. 
Q: Would you say this was perhaps the most politically significant of all the a~·iations? 
A:  '!he school appropriations?  
Q:  Yes.  
A:  I  don't knew' that that's true.  I'd be inclined to think that in  

spite of the mnnber of school districts involved, a lot of them were not in dire straits. 5aDe of them had a pmtty oonsiderable availability to raise money on their own. I think maybe I'd have to class the plblic aid app:opriation as the most politically sensitive. Q!rtainly for the Chicago legislators. But also for sana of the downstaters. 
Q: What about highways? 
A: Highways is always a significant factor but it never got the 
budgetary heat that sane of the general revenue funds sut=PJrted agencies got. Highways was substantially supported by its own road :furd monies fran highway user taxes and fran major federal grants as well. Even their operat.irq experrlitures for staff primarily came from the road funi. '!he major problems with regard to the road :furd 
appropriations oftentimes stem fran the fact that the highwayengineers generally wanted a different kim of pay plan and a more liberal one than the rest of the state agencies were able to providefrcm the general revenue fund. 
Q: Why was this a problem? 
A: well, they had their own source of money in a sense dedicated only
for their usage with sare diversion to other agencies but not much. 'Ihey felt they had the right to set up a1m:JSt artt kin:1 of staffin:] and pay plan that they wished. '!hey were exenpt as I recall fran the positia1 classification act and had sane kini of act of their own. 
Q: What this meant was that they wculd be better paid than the other employees. 
A: certainly, if they had their way, and I think maybe they probablyhad their way at least in part rather more often than not. 
Q: well, when you went fran the BudgetaJ:y camnission and joined the staff of the senate appzopriatians camnittee on the Democratic side how much of a change was this for you and how did you accustom 
yourself to it? 
A: well ••• 
Q: or was it a • 
A: It was a change in a sense in that they were just beginnin:J
leqislative staffin;J. I worked the part of a session that was a few m:mths eniin;J when I first went to work for senator McGloon. And they
made apprqn:iatians in that session to start full time staffs for the 
leadership of the House and Senate of both parties. senator McGloon 
hired me and one other fellow initially. And then subsequently added. 
two or three na:-e. But he had only a very small staff. Arrirqton
hired quite a few mre than that. I think maybe three or four times 
as many at least. M:Gloon and Touhy worked closely t.ogether-Touhy 
was the Speaker of the House. Jolm Touhy fran Chicago who has since
died. 'Ih.ey were close friems and close associates, worked very
closely together and their staffs worked closely together. we were 
kept pretty well apprised of practically all the legislative
strategies for the various bills in the senate. 
so it was very
i.nterast.iD;:J fran my st:arK:lpoint. I worked on the periphel:y of the General Assembly of course for sane years. But I never really felt so much a part of what was goin;J on as I did when I went to work for senator M:Gloa1. He was a ~ck study, had a retentive ll'IE!lOO:ty, and was able to, I think, benef1.t fran what fiscal infonnation I was able to feed him for use in a cxmnittee and floor debates. He was greatftm to work for because he so thoroughly enjoyed in taldn;J a few jabsat the Republican appzopriation bills as they came through fran the House. 
Q: I notice that Antone says in his book earlier that you "WOUld tryto, when you were 'WOrkfn;J for the Budgetary Cc:mnission, give the members summaries of requests that ware c:x:ani.ng in. And you'd try to write not mre than one page. Any na:-e than that woul.d just not be 
read. 
A: well, I don't knc7tl where Tcm had got that. If that was a quote I 
don•t rememhe1: IDakin] it. And certainly it wasn't quite correct. It is true that there was a premium on brevity, and it is true that there 
were time ccmstraints. 'Ih.ey didn•t have time to read lorg lengthystudies even had I been able to have the time to do them. But veryoften instead of one page, a SUIIIlla:ty might take six or eight pages and 
was always unhappy when I did tl1o1Jijl I DBJSt confess because I knew 
full well that there "WOU.ld be only 'b4:> or three of the members that would read them. But fraquently the b«< or three members that mightread a particular lorg 1'l1ll!mX'al'Xi were the ones listened to by their 
colleagues and they'd follow their lead in doing sanet.hin; suggestedby the lon;Jer mem:>rarxlum. It was amazing to me how' sane of the members-! remember Representative Pollack-late RepresentativePollack-is a good exanple. I think he read every word of those thin;Js, sane of which oculd only be classed as borinJ by nmt people.And he constantly amazed me with his memo:cy for this or that part of 
40 
sanet:hin3' I'd furnished them. senator Peters was awfully qood. at doin;J his hanework as well. And all of these men, as I mentioned earlier, already had sane knowledge of the agencies for the most partthat were cc:min:J before them. Not true enough in small detail for every state institution. But they kneW a great dealiOOre about sane of the agencies than the ordinary leqislator knew just fran years an:i experience. Maybe krlowin;r the agencies as they worked in their districts. And krlowin;r people that worked for those agencies. Ani perhaps havin;J sane of their own appointees in those agencies. 
Q: What kind of t.hin;Js would you oover in these 8Jdqetary carmnission 
A: '!here was always great emphasis placed an requests fran personalservices. NCM part of the personal services requests was alwaysdictated by sane general rule such as don•t put any pay raises in. '!hat will be done for everybody by the governor's fiat before the appropriation bills are written. But that did not mean that theycouldn't ask for certain reclassifications an:i for additional jabs,that sort of thing. Additional jobs received a lot of scrutiny alwaysfor alJoost wery agency that I can think of. 
Q: Are you saying that you looked for this sort of thing an:i pointedit out? 
with-there was a close relationship with the staff of the Deparbnent 
A:  Oh yes.  
Q:  Because this is what they wanted to know?  
A:  NCM only "WOUld I  point it out but we were also fUrnished  

of Finance Budget Division. Small though it was they furnished the BudgetaJ:y o:mnission with sane excellent summations which s'tlcJir.1ed. how much was for pay raises, hc::M much were for new enployees, an:i this 
kind of thing. And what the agency's rationale was for sane of those new requests. 'Ihey saved me an enoJ:'l'IX)IJS annmt of work that I 'WOUld have had to tJ:y to do sane way an:i probably could not have done as fully as they did. 'Ihey were kind enough also to furnish me a copy of the original budget ~fonns which sanetimes would prove useful. Which had in very oonsJ.derable detail the various jabs categories listed and hc::M much m::mey was involved. in the expenditure ani the request for the various job titles used by the agency. 
Q: Now you're t.al.kin:J about Budgetary ccmnission material furnished them? 
A: Yes. By the Deparbnent of Finance. 
Q: Yes. My reason for asJdn;J is you talk about the original lnigetrequest, didn't you normally see the original budget request? Did you see the request after it had been modified by Finance? 
A: No. I got the original request fran Finance lll'liOOdified. Just as they got it. 
41 
Q: I see. 
A: I got it by virtue of them just bein:J kird enough to give it to 
me. 

Q: Oh., they weren't ••. 
A: Now, had they not given it to me I could have got the commission to ask each of the state agencies to forward one an:i I'm sure theywould have done so. axt there was no-Finance got a couple of copiesan:i there was absolutely no reason for them to keep them both. 'Iheylet me have one until I was through with it an:i then I'd give it back to them. 
Q: was this before the age of Xeroxi.n;t? 
A: well, at least we weren't maJtin;J a lot of copies that were totally unnecessary. A lot of the time the summations that they gave us were in sufficient detail. 'lhe budget fcmns themselves shc7t.'ed not only
stan:lard ac::xnmt requests like so much for contractual services an:i so much for travel, but all the little suba.coc:mtts, detail objectaCCOlD'lts, urx1er that major aOOCRJI'l't. In contractual they'd tell youhow much was for rent an:i how much was for automobile repair an:i how much was for this an:i that and 14 other things. 
Q: 'Ihat's not the kin:1 of thing you would see unless you're looking
at the original. 
A: 'nlat's correct. Arxi that kind of infonnation was not printed in a 
~document. It was in the first few when the first one was designed by Alan Manvel that kin:i of infonnation was printed in the document. But the governors over the years gradually dropped portions
of it. Partiallarly un::ler Ogilvie they dropped quite a bit of that detail. I think they decided that the General Assembly was given too much detail ard were not focusi.rg on the erxi product. 
Q: I imagine if you kept that detail with the size of state government we have nc:Madays we'd have a much greater budget document, wouldn't we? 
A: Might have been a little bigger, yes. B.lt also might have been a little more useful for the few people that ever use the budgetdocument. 
Q: When you went with Senator Mceloal an:i the senate Delooetatic 
~qn:iations o:mnission did you continue to report in the same mamer to him or did you • • • 
A: In l8l:ge measure, yes. If anythirg I was able to beoc:ane more can:iid in my SU111'1'1ations of agency ~requests. Arxi I'd in:licate questions to ask ani that kirxi of thi.rg. 
Q: You knew that this was a confidential relationship I take it that you knew ••• 
A: Yes. Am I fumished the same information to the Dem::ICrats on the AJ;:propriation camnittee in the Senate. Although I technically was an e~~ployee of the Dem:JCratic leader, I also was workirg closely am unier the chairman of the Senate Democrats on the AppropriationCcmnittee. well not the chairman, not the chairman until the Deloocrats qat control of the senate bit the leader of the Democrats on the AR>roPriations camni.ttee. 
Q: was that senator McGloon? 
A: No, although he was on the oc::mnittee. He was an ex-officio 
member, I guess of same kin:i, but a voting member. Arrl he took a veryactive role in the camnittee•s work. But later on when I was workingprimarily UIXler chairman such as Tan Hynes am a few of the other 
chairmen, I WOlld have meeti.rgs with them to brief them on the bills 
that were goin;J to be heard at the next hearin:J of the Appropriation

CCm:nittee am irxticate to him generally just vert>ally rather than a 
lot of ~where I thought either cuts could be made or 
questions considerin:J the possible cuts should be asked. we wre 
fortunate in those early years with having sane bright ~members 
who chose app:topriations as their ocmnittee with fellC111S like senator 
Rock, Terry Bruce, Tan Hynes, all were in their first term am proved
to be hard ~'very bright, am quick studies of a~iations 

bills an:i appzoprJ.aticn matters. 'Ihey spent a lot of time over subccmnittees an:1 meetin:J with the agencies am it helped them, I think, in a grasp of state government that they qat a whole lot quicker than they could have qat arr:t other way. 
Q: WOUld you say that's the main advantage to being on that committee, the insight it gives to a :member of state government? 
A: I think so. '!here again on that oamnittee while it's one of the more prestigious ocmnittees of the Senate the members are urxier pressure fran different cxmsti'b.lencies for appropriations that flCM t.hrough there an:1 they don't get ll1lCh. thanks for cutting them. 'lhey 
can help keep a governor honest if he's gone just a little bit overboard in a particular program. ~can also if en rare occasions they can use that role for punitive action for same director who has been totally uncooperative with any of the Senate DenKJcra.ts. 
Q: HeM would that work? 
A: well, if an agency head canes before the commission and he's 
already argered several-before the oammittee-and. he's angered a feM key members of the aanmittee with his actions in any respect they can use the a.pprq>%iation process to discipline him a little bit. But either by cuttirJ;J his budget or kickin;J the bill around for a while,senii.rq lt to a subocmllittee, threatenirg to let it die. 
Q: Is this what's known in academic circles as legislative oversight? 
A: (laughs) I guess it is, Bill. It can be pretty effective sane times. Ard I for cme thoroughly enjoyed a fEM times seein:] its use. 
don•t remember the particulars of those times I nust confess. But everybody likes to see saneone who's had a ten:iency to be a little 
43 
cocky ani arrogant cut down a bit to size. .Ani I've seen a few of them cut down. 
Q: As a matter of clarification let's get this straight. Were you workirY;J for senator M:GlOCI'l or were you workin;J for the chainnan of the senate AR;n:opriations camnittee? 
A: I was assigned to the senate Appxopriations camnittee but technically was an appointee ani reported only to the senate Deloocratic leaders. 
Q: Ani at that time was • • • 
A: At that tine was senator McGloon. Now I don't know' 'Tiley there wasn't occasionally sane little bit of friction in that dual role, except fran the very start Mc:Gloon made it clear that the staff was the senate leader's staff assigned to help the camnittees ani doingeveryt:hin;J you could to facilitate the work of the cx:mnittee chainnan or the Del'OOClatic leader on that ccmmi.ttee. But you were still technically his guy. 
Q: Okay. '!hat was gettirq a little bit, you know, sanebody listening to this might get a little bit confused about that. 
A: I don't knc:M' Wether that same kin:i of relationship existed to quite the same extent over the years. I think there maybe is a terxiency for the camnittee chairman DWJre ani m::>re to look upon the staff as his ani not the leader's. But when I was there, there was never any doubt about who your • 
Q: Who the boss was. 
A: • • • main boss was. 
Q: When did you retire fran this role at the Senate? 
A: I guess it was 1977. 'Ihen after I technically had retired, at Senator Hynes1 request, he was then the President of the Senate, I stayed on half-til'tle for six nart:hs--or the better part of six nonths. It was only about four months actually until the erxl of the fiscal year, the em of June. I think he had pemaps thought that my successor might use sane assistance ooce in a while. &It as a matter of fact I wasn't really very badly needed because the yc::lUI'q man who took my place had worked for several years for me doing that kirrl of work on the staff. Was very OCI'tpet.ent ard able to can:y on without someone looki.rg over his shoulder. I'm not at all sure the state gotits money's worth those last four months. 
Q: Well, shall w break it off and ccane back? 
A: All right, Bill. 
Errl of Side Two, Tape Two