CBA Nov.-Dec. 2020

The Illinois Constitution at 50: A Reform Charter with Unrealized Potential By James D. Wascher W ith great fanfare 50 years ago this December, Illinois voters ratified a new state constitu-

tion to replace a century-old charter that had been derided as unnecessarily burdened by minutia, unduly resistant to amendment and better suited for the horse-and-buggy era than the space age. The 1970 Constitution included signifi- cant reforms and innovations, but many observers also believe that it largely pre- served the status quo, missed a number of opportunities to be a truly transformative document, and may well have been trans- formative in ways that have undermined the state’s well-being. When 116 delegates gathered in Spring- field in December 1969 for the state’s sixth constitutional convention, Illinois government was in distress, due at least in part to the shortcomings of the 1870 state constitution. One of those delegates, Jeffrey R. Ladd, then a 27-year-old real estate developer from McHenry County who later became an attorney and chaired the Metra Board of Directors for 22 years, recalls that “a lot of us went down there with the idea that this was a government that was hamstrung. We had a government that was barely able to function in a variety of ways, both at the local level and the state level,” especially in terms of raising sufficient revenue to meet their increasing needs. James D. Nowlan, who was a state representative from the Peoria area both before and after the convention, says that local governments were in a “strait jacket” because they were required to seek enabling legislation from the General Assembly to address so many of their problems. When the convention finished its work in September 1970, the resulting charter addressed the core issues that had prompted calls for a convention in the first place. The proposed constitution was Shortcomings of the 1870 Constitution

noticeably shorter than the document it replaced, largely because the delegates stripped what scholars refer to as “legisla- tive detail” from the constitution. UIC John Marshall Law School Prof. Ann M. Lousin, who served on the staff of the convention’s revenue committee and is now the preeminent scholar on the Illinois constitution, has written that the chief characteristic of the 1870 Constitution was “its long lists of restrictions on the institutions of government, particularly the powers of the General Assembly,” as well as “provisions that should have been placed instead in statutes so that they could have been repealed more easily when they became superfluous.” Examples included provisions relating to the state’s boundar- ies, warehouses, municipal subscriptions to railroads or private corporations, canals, and convict labor. Critics had also contended that the 1870 Constitution was too difficult to amend. In fact, during the 100 years that it was in force, the 1870 Constitution was

amended only 13 times. The delegates to the 1969-1970 Constitutional Convention addressed this issue in several ways. First, they reduced the vote required in each house of the General Assembly to propose a constitutional amendment from two-thirds to three-fifths. Second, they reduced the popular vote required to ratify any pro- posed amendment by referendum, again from two-thirds to three-fifths. Finally, they provided that the state must hold a referendum every 20 years asking the elec- torate whether to call a new constitutional convention. Voters rejected calling such a convention in 1988 and again in 2008, but have ratified a total of 13 amendments to the 1970 Constitution out of the 21 on which they have voted – or the same number of amendments that were adopted after the 1870 Constitution, but in only half the time. Another former delegate, Frank Cicero, Jr., now contends that “the difficulty of amending the 1970 Constitution was over- stated,” citing the “Gateway Amendment”

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