McHenry County Blog

Ending his mass transit career the way he started it, outgoing Metra Board chairman Jeff Ladd called for a tax hike.

The 65-year old Ladd entered my memory bank big time in 1974 when he debated on the tax hikers’ side sitting next to a League of Woman Voter and a third person the non-incumbent Democratic Party candidate for state representative Ron Stroup of Huntley against all of us legislators who lived in McHenry County at the time:

State Senator Jack Schaffer (R-Cary)
State Representative Tom Hanahan (D-McHenry) and
Yours truly, Cal Skinner, Jr. (R-Crystal Lake)

The referendum proposal included authority for a 5% RTA gasoline tax and a parking tax, plus ripping state tax money off the top of the General and Road Funds. We predicted Chicago would have control, which it did when a Waukegan RTA Board member sold out the suburbs and voted for CTA Chairman Milton Pikarsky for RTA Board Chairman.

At the time the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad, the primary commuter train serving McHenry County was still making money. Passage of RTA allowed its stockholders to stick their arms deeply into the taxpayers’ cookie jar. RTA didn’t even get ownership of the downtown terminal in the purchase of service agreement. (Ladd was not involved at that point.)

I’ve published the McHenry County pamphlet that the opposition group known as know RTA used in McHenry County here and here, in case you are interested. Undoubtedly we passed it out at the meeting.

7% of the folks in McHenry County took Ladd’s side.

We lost the referendum by less than 13,000 votes and were not allowed a re-count. While researching McHenry County results, I found one downtown Cary precinct had voted in favor of RTA.

I called one of the judges to try to figure out why and got a very startled response. I was told that the RTA referendum had actually failed. The judges had apparently reversed the numbers when they entered them in the report to the County Clerk’s Office.

So, future historians, don’t think there was one “enlightened” precinct in Cary that supported the RTA. The RTA failed in every McHenry County precinct, regardless of what the official record says.

Ladd was also on the wrong side of public opinion after the Fox River Grove school bus crash. He actively opposed my bill to lower the Metra speed limit to 50 MPH even going so far as to call his law firm’s employee (maybe I’m using the wrong term) House Republican Leader Lee Daniels, instructing him to kill the bill. Daniels couldn’t deliver.

After the Regional Transportation Authority was re-organized in a deal cut between House Speaker George Ryan and Chicago Mayor Jane Bryne, Woodstock’s Ladd and now convicted felon Don Udstuen, formerly of Crystal Lake, engineered the 1984 election of Ladd as Metra chairman. (Undoubtedly, McHenry County GOP Chairman Al Jourdan, Jr., was heavily involved in Ladd’s selection.)

In 1994 Ladd decided to run for Attorney General. He faced off against DuPage County State’s Attorney Jim Ryan. Due to the hard work of Crystal Lake Republican precinct committeeman Charlie Nelson, Ryan even carried McHenry County.

I supported Ladd in exchange for no primary opponent and carried my precinct for him. He never did understand that the nature of my father’s coalition was not that anyone could order them to do anything. I got a primary opponent every other election.

At Ladd’s Holiday Inn fund raiser, I figured out that there were many Metra contractors or would-be contractors in attendance.

While Ladd is officially retiring, he is doing so because Cook County Republicans thought it was time he left his leadership post.