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We need new jobs, not a shell game

Saturday, May 17, 2008 11:24 PM CDT

When he visited Southern Illinois last week, Gov. Rod Blagojevich was asked about a plan to move a division of the Illinois Department of Transportation from Springfield to Southern Illinois.

"All I know is there will be 150 new jobs and I'm really excited about it," Blagojevich said.

Within a matter of days, the number of jobs supposedly on the move list was down to 110. The difference? The division's leaders, and their staff, get to stay in Springfield.

Huh?

We truly are left scratching our heads, and wondering whether anyone believes the governor is being truthful when he talks about moving an IDOT division, and that he wants to do so to help the economically depressed Southern Illinois region.

This "plan," supposedly conceived about two years ago, is now pitched as a way the state could save money by canceling a $1.7 million lease on IDOT's current facility in Springfield.

The state may, indeed, be paying too much for the current lease and should look into alternate locations. In fact, every lease the state has should be examined and savings potential.

We're certainly not opposed to our region playing host to state operations, and the jobs that go with them.

But there are too many nagging questions about this proposal. Though presented as a "plan," it sounds more like something the governor suddenly envisioned.

When state Sen. Gary Forby was asked in Springfield why the governor's office would suggest moving the IDOT division without having a specific site identified in Southern Illinois, Forby replied, "That's the governor's office. I don't have a clue."

By his own actions - suggesting certain prison closures, then reversing positions, as one example - Blagojevich alienates the very lawmakers he needs to pass the programs he wants.

Blagojevich recently forged ahead to expand the state's health care programs for the needy without legislative approval. The merits of such expansion is open for debate; how Blagojevich went about it infuriated lawmakers.

So when he suggests moving families for the sake of helping a depressed part of the state, there is both healthy skepticism and solid factual grounds for questioning the merits of the plan.

Instead of merely moving existing state jobs from one region into another, which critics have accurately described as "robbing Peter to pay Paul," the Blagojevich administration should be concentrating on attracting new jobs to the state of Illinois.

We acknowledge that Blagojevich and his people played a key role in bringing the once-promising FutureGen project to Mattoon. But now that the plan has been scuttled by the U.S. Department of Energy, what's being done as an alternative?

State manufacturing jobs are declining and our unemployment rate is still higher than the national average. Locally, we learned earlier this week that 187 miners in Galatia are being laid-off, perhaps permanently.

This isn't the time for a state employment shell game, even if the jobs are moved into Southern Illinois. Our fear is that at some point in the future, the shell game might again be used to move state jobs out of Southern Illinois into another struggling area.

We need leadership from our state government and a vision for future employment. Let's focus on the state we hope to be in coming years, one that identifies and embraces growth industries and employers.