There’s only one thing I know for sure about this health department debate:
it makes my stomach churn and my head hurt.
If promises, predictions or statistics could provide an answer, I’d be cured. Both sides offer plenty of all that. But it’s hard to know what’s real and what’s placebo when everything comes packaged in politics.
I take some comfort in the realization I’m not the only one feeling the ill effects of merger flu. Last Tuesday night, City Council postponed a vote on the topic by sending the latest version of this perennial proposal back to committee to await further hearings. After the council chamber cleared, two aldermen who have been friends for three decades and often share a post-meeting meal ended up instead shouting and fuming at each other, and departed headed in opposite directions.
The logic in having one unified agency is obvious and seductive. There would be less duplication of services, no fretting over the city’s rickrack boundaries, and more of everything to go around.
But the degree of grace and cooperation required for such a merger is apparently somewhere just above getting stepkids to share toys and just below peace in the Middle East.
On one side, there’s the 170-year-old agency that was serving the city of Springfield back when Abe Lincoln was a fledgling attorney. On the other, there’s the neophyte department established by Sangamon County several years after our handsome young mayor, Tim Davlin, had left college to enter the insurance business.
Ward 1 Alderman Frank Edwards has proposed abolishing the city department, essentially handing it over to the county department. County board chairman Andy Van Meter, in his eagerness to take over the agency, has promised everything short of free foot massages every night for all Springfieldians.
I’m not kidding. According to Van Meter, the county will do everything the city health department does at no cost to the city. No city employee will lose their job, no fees will increase, and no clinics will close. In fact, Van Meter is willing to promise — in writing — to expand clinic hours and mobile services. At Monday night’s public affairs committee meeting, he even offered the City Council the privilege of appointing two people to the county’s eight-member board of health.
But when Ward 9 Alderman Tom Selinger asked Van Meter if he would oppose giving the city control of the board of health, Van Meter stammered, “Give the city control with the county financially responsible?!?”
And Selinger — always one of the least flamboyant council members — unleashed a quiet little verbal gem worthy of a bumper sticker: “If we’re all working together, it
shouldn’t be a problem.”
That’s a big “if.”
Did I mention that the city’s health department is controlled by Democrats while the county’s health department is controlled by Republicans?
But with Democrats holding a slim (6-5) advantage on the officially non-partisan council, it took the prospect of someone rising above party politics for the merger idea to resurface. And Ward 3 Alderman Frank Kunz — a Democrat — admits it’s all his fault.
“This discussion come up again because I talked to Frankie Edwards and Johnny Fulgenzi, a county board member, and they all knew I was willing to vote for a merger if it was a true merger. Now that I know for a fact,” Kunz says.
Even so, he wasn’t ready to swallow Van Meter’s promises Tuesday night, and he told Edwards so. At the last possible minute, Edwards moved to put his proposal back into committee, and Kunz joined the Republicans in voting to honor Edwards’ request.
“I’m not voting to abolish anything without a plan in force, until they can prove to me in paper, in black and white that it’s real,” Kunz says.
Still, his vote was the only support he was willing to give Edwards Tuesday night. Impatient with his old pal’s pretense of pure motives, Kunz resorted to yelling at Edwards before leaving council chambers in a huff.
“He’s never going to admit I’m the reason he put it up,” Kunz says. “Anybody that believes in politics in this town, which everybody does, it’s a really easy scenario: Why would a Republican bring up something unless they’re going to control it?”
Edwards hopes to have a hearing on his proposal Jan. 19.
Meanwhile, council agendas forecast other topics that may challenge party loyalty. For example, the mayor (a Democrat) wants $80,000 to hire an executive assistant, presumably to work alongside his two secretaries.
Will Kunz support his party-mate’s request?
“Oh yeah,” he chuckles, “like when hell freezes over.”
This article appears in Dec 9-15, 2004.
