Policy wonk
Your article on Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn [see “Governor in waiting,” Dec. 18] brought back memories. When he was state treasurer in the early 1990s,
I researched public policy issues and wrote press releases for Quinn before
moving on to a second career in academic life. You captured the essence of the
guy.
Quinn wasn’t just about ethics reforms and photo ops. I was as far down in the pecking
order as you can be and still work in the Statehouse (my desk was in a storage
attic above the Banking Division), so I wasn’t involved in his policy decisions. But I read the clips. In fact, I cut them
out and faxed them up to the Chicago office.
More of the clips were more positive than I would have expected from a guy who
was still blamed for the legislative Cutback Amendment, and they were oriented
more to government and the economy than politics. Taking office during a sharp
economic downturn in 1991, Quinn used the linked deposit program of the
treasurer’s office to help finance affordable housing, economic development, small
business startups and job retention packages all over the state, to, in his
words, “jump-start the economy.”
I remember Quinn as an omnivorous reader who wanted to know more about
practically everything. He’d call me into his office, ferret through the papers on his desk and hand me a
half dozen slips of three-by-five memo paper with two or three words, or maybe
a book title scrawled on them.
Ask anyone who’s worked for Pat Quinn about those little slips of paper. At first I thought
they reflected his spur-of-the-moment flights of curiosity. But he never forgot
about them. In time I learned they were definitely part of a system, and you
were meant to follow up on every one of them.
In a two-week period around Thanksgiving 1992, for example, I got three-by-five
slips asking about the allocation of Illinois lottery funds; a study of housing
trends in the Chicago area by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in
Washington, D.C.; John Naisbitt’s Megatrends for Women, a pop sociology book then on the bestseller list; the Kennedy School of
Government’s innovation awards; an article on TQM (short for “total quality management,” the business school buzzword of the day) initiatives in Florida and
Massachusetts; and a Carnegie-Mellon University study titled “Improving Local Service Through Intergovernmental and Intersectoral Cooperation.”
So where others saw Quinn as a gadfly and/or a rising political star, I saw him
basically as a policy wonk. After some of the adventures of the last four to
eight years, I think we could use a policy wonk in the governor’s office for a change.
Pete Ellertsen
Springfield
Signs of slurry trouble
I am not against coal mining. Nevertheless, the possible reopening of Monterey
Mine No. 1, is of concern. It is important that all applicable mining rules be strictly adhered to for the
protection of the environment and human health.
Applicable mining rules require at a minimum the slopes of the huge coal slurry
impoundments
be vegetated, and obviously they are not. The erosion and contaminant seepage
are signs of trouble on the south face of the coal waste slurry impoundment #6 at Monterey 1 in Carlinville.
The impoundment is estimated to hold 25 to 30 million cubic yards of gob and
slurry. If it’s two-thirds slurry then it’s 4 billion gallons. This is much larger that the recent coal waste impoundment
failure in Tennessee. Will the new mine owner fix the high hazard dam at
Monterey 1?The coal waste is slurry sludge left over from washing coal. All coal waste impoundments contain very toxic metals, such as arsenic, lead,
mercury, cadmium, beryllium, chromium, cobalt, manganese, nickel and selenium. The lake that provides drinking water for Carlinville is
near the mine waste impoundments.
Permanent waste impoundments are not allowed and a mine permit’s Operation Plan must describe removal of waste impoundments. Yet this is not
the case for the existing Monterey 1 permit. If left permanently, engineers tell me that the dams will eventually fail; it is
only a matter of time.
There is no reason why the prosperity that the reopening of the mine might
provide should be compromised by allowing the mine to avoid existing mining
rules and regulations.
Mary A. Bates
Hillsboro
This article appears in Dec 25-31, 2008.
