March 29, 2024
Columns | Bureau County Republican


Columns

Create a Downstate Caucus to help rest of state

It’s time to act on ideas that would benefit the other 94 counties

Much of Downstate Illinois (the vast 94-county region outside the 8 metro-Chicago counties) appears to be dying.

Recently at mid-day, I went out onto the three-block main street of my county-seat town — and there wasn’t a solitary auto on the streets of my once-lively little burg!

Mid-size cities like Peoria and Decatur have also been hurt, by the flight of flagship corporate offices to Chicagoland. Several downstate public universities have seen enrollments implode, their host communities twisting in the wind.

The population loss that Illinois suffered in recent years is almost wholly from Downstate.

Our state is one of interdependent regions. The suburbs wouldn’t exist were it not for Chicago. And Chicago wouldn’t exist absent the 19th century synergies with Downstate (and the Midwest), which sent its corn and hogs to Chicago, and then to the East.

Today, however, metropolitan Chicago has to prop up Downstate schools, universities, parks and social services. Chicagoland sends much more in taxes to Springfield than it gets back in services. Downstate takes the rest.

We’re better than that, Downstate. We don’t want to be a drag on Illinois.

But where and how to start, if we want over time to rebuild our region?

CEO magazine annually ranks the Illinois business climate at 48th, or worse, among the states. I don’t think that’s fair, but if you were a CEO thinking about locating a new plant Downstate, who would you believe — Jimmy Nowlan or your peers?

First, we have to stop wringing our hands; the sky has not fallen.

Illustrations of Downstate success are everywhere. As for economic vitality, Rochelle, in northern Illinois, has attracted more than a billion dollars in investment in recent years, and the jobs to go with it.

There are vibrant, charming small towns, from Galena and Mount Carroll to Princeton, Pittsfield, Arcola, and way down to Anna-Jonesboro, to name but a few.

Year after year, the National Science Foundation awards more research dollars (hundreds of millions every year) to the University of Illinois than to any university in the nation. This is one reason the U. of I. is among the very top institutions in the world in patents and inventions, such as the world-wide web, which was hatched in Urbana-Champaign.

Second, we need to develop an agenda for reinvigorating the parts of Downstate that have withered, and it is possible to do so, though it won’t happen overnight.

I have just created two organizations: Downstate Matters Too and the Downstate Caucus. The first is a tax-exempt (awaiting IRS OK) educational organization that will strive to revive flagging spirits.

Downstate Matters Too will be a compelling social media presence, overflowing with content, to rally, inform, illuminate and have some fun telling the world — and ourselves — about all that is going on, and of what we have on the drawing board. Our goal is to attract scores of thousands of active followers.

I am recruiting a dynamic creative digital manager to run this operation. The good-paying job will not require relocation, so if you are — or know of — such a person who has an affection for Downstate Illinois, contact me at jnowlan3@gmail.com. Let's make things happen for Downstate.

The Downstate Caucus will be an advocacy group with broad individual, civic and business membership, to push elected officials and civic leaders to enact policies that can help jumpstart Downstate Illinois.

The focus will be on business climate, higher education, natural resources, and long-term thinking, something never, for some inexplicable reason, ever done in Illinois. Go to my book “Fixing Illinois” (University of Illinois Press, 2014) and to jimnowlan.com for more specifics.

Downstaters have to stop bemoaning our enervated state of affairs — and do something about it.

Note to readers: Jim Nowlan of Toulon can be reached at jnowlan3@gmail.com.