You might be surprised to learn how much Andy
Van Meter cares about your health. He’s so concerned about
protecting you from salmonella and meningitis and diseases borne by
fruit flies that he dug deep in his pocket and spent $14,300 of his
own money just to ensure that every lousy mosquito in Sangamon
County will face one efficiently unified public health department,
instead of two.
Yes, I’m talking about the
“health department merger” again — that shaggy
dog issue that crops up whenever a Republican eyes a possible
opening. The latest round began in December, when Springfield City
Council member Frank Kunz (a Democrat) told some Republican buddies
that he would vote to let the Sangamon County Health Department
take over the Springfield Department of Health if they could prove
it would make good financial sense.
Now, if you’re like me, you’re
sick of the whole health department debate, because the lead
players insist their only interest in such a merger is the prospect
of building a better public health agency — one that could
provide more services for less money. The fact that control over
all those jobs would shift from Democrats to Republicans is just
a coincidence, they say.
But campaign finance disclosure forms
published online earlier this week show that when the question was
put on the ballot in non-binding referendum in April, Republicans
spent about $20,000 wooing voters to their side. Democrats, by
contrast, apparently spent about $8,000. The Republicans, er, I
mean the pro-merger side, narrowly won, but at a price of $1.66 per
vote.
Most of that money came from Van Meter,
chairman of the Sangamon County Board. In the days leading up to
the vote, he donated $500 each to a trio of Republican council
members — Ward 1 Ald. Frank Edwards, Ward 7’s Judy
Yeager, and Ward 10’s Bruce Strom. (After the referendum
passed, he gave another $300 to County Board member John Fulgenzi,
also a Republican.)
On April 13, about a week after the vote, he
gave $12,000 to the Sangamon County Republican Foundation, which in
turn transferred $10,000 to the Sangamon County Republican Central
Committee. That committee then reimbursed Edwards $5,740, Yeager
$4,236, and Strom $1,250 — mostly for TV ads.
Van Meter says he can’t remember how
much he gave to the Republican foundation, although he admits it
was a significant amount.
“I definitely donated substantially to
the referendum, no question,” he says.
But Irv Smith, chairman of the Sangamon County
Republican Party, has no problem confirming that Van Meter gave $12,000
to the party.
“I backed it up and took it out of the
foundation,” Smith says. “Whatever he sent, we spent.
We paid the bills.”
Smith himself stayed out of the mix at the
request of other Republicans who didn’t want the
party’s aroma to taint the debate. “They didn’t
want me in because I was too political,” Smith says.
He claims Democrats poured as much money into
the vote as Republicans did, although he can’t pinpoint
expenditures. Few of the reports filed with the State Board of
Elections specify that funds were spent to promote the merger;
clues can be found in the dates and types of expenses listed.
Sangamon County Democratic Party chairman Tim
Timoney bought yard signs and radio ads under his Friends of the
Party organization. Aldermen Chuck Redpath and Tom Selinger spent
some campaign funds on fliers and postage promoting the merger as
well as Democratic candidates for Capital Township posts —
all of which came to about $8,000.
The biggest expenditure by any Democrat was
$13,000 spent by Mayor Tim Davlin on March 21, days before the
April 5 election. That money funded a poll that gauged voter
opinion on a variety of subjects, including the merger.
To Kunz, these figures confirm what he suspected
throughout the campaign — that the question of how to serve the
health needs of the community had been swept away in a tsunami of
political maneuvering. And as the Democrat who prompted this round of
debate — by pledging to cross party lines and vote for the merger
if convinced it would lead to a better health care system — Kunz
was punished by his party.
“What upsets me the most about this is
I just tried to do the right thing and be honest,” Kunz says.
“The Democrats got pissed off because they said I was giving
away jobs.”
For now, nothing has changed. Even though the
mayor and some aldermen pledged to carry out the wishes of the
referendum voters, the merger is stalled in a legal struggle
between the city and county concerning old tax revenues. And
despite new tangible evidence that Van Meter spent thousands to
influence the vote, he continues to insist the merger proposal is
not about jobs but rather about those fruit flies, salmonella, and
meningitis.
“It’s sad if this issue becomes
all politics, all about money spent, which obscures the fundamental
issue of what’s right for our community,” Van Meter
says.
I couldn’t agree more.
This article appears in Aug 4-10, 2005.
