In Chicago, yesterday’s reform is tomorrow’s reform

As any Chicagoan knows, the longer you hang around the railroad tracks, the more likely you are to see the train heading back from whence it came at full speed with the engine still on the same end — raising a question of whether it is going backward or forward.

We’re speaking metaphorically here, because as it happens, there are a number of items in the news right now that raise this very point.

I refer in particular to three stories that would seem to have nothing in common:

• Gov. J.B. Pritzker signing legislation to stop the practice of the state suspending driver’s licenses to punish people for unpaid parking tickets and such;

• Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle proposing to give herself and the board more power over the county’s hospital system; and

• New city Planning and Development Chief Maurice Cox emphasizing the need to return the long abandoned former U.S. Steel South Works site to some sort of industrial use instead of pushing for housing development as the solution.

As it happens, I’ve been hanging around the tracks long enough at this point to have witnessed all three of those trains headed purposefully in the opposite direction.

Let’s start with the one where I’m fairly confident our elected leaders are now pointed in the right direction and moving forward.

That’s the legal change that does away with the overly punitive practice of using driver’s license suspensions as the hammer to force Illinois residents to pay fines owed to local municipalities for parking violations and such.

From now on, suspensions will be reserved for moving violations, as originally intended.

I can remember when these non-moving violation suspensions were enacted as a way to help local governments crack down on “deadbeats.”

Over a period of time with the addition of late fees and interest, the practice morphed into a revenue generator for cash-strapped local governments looking to balance budgets.

And in the process, a lot of poor people were put in a position where they couldn’t afford to pay their fines, even if they wanted, then found themselves in even more serious legal jeopardy every time they needed to drive to work, the store or the doctor.

As Pritzker explained, it was a practice that reinforced “cycles of instability.”

State Sen. Omar Aquino, D-Chicago, was one of the chief sponsors of the new License to Work Act.

Aquino is 32 years old and has been a member of the legislature for fewer than four years at this point, so he wasn’t on the scene when these “get-tough” laws were enacted.

But he allowed that in discussing the measure with his fellow legislators he spoke with several who admitted they had probably voted previously in favor of the very practices he was now seeking to undo.

Back then, as I recall, lawmakers thought it was a logical way to get everyone to pay up, not fully appreciating the consequences.

Even now, I’m sure someone will argue the change will lead to a resurgence in “deadbeats,” although Aquino notes the city still has other enforcement methods it can use, including the Denver boot and vehicle impoundment.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot has also been a proponent of stopping the practice of pounding the poor further into the dirt.

Now to the train whose direction leaves me uncertain: Preckwinkle’s plan to re-exert control over the county health system.

It was just over a decade ago that local leaders backed by U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin came together to pry the Cook County Hospital, Provident Hospital and their related facilities out from under the direct control of the county’s politicians.

At the time, an unpopular Board President Todd Stroger was at the helm of the county, making it easier to approve a reform that placed the county’s public health system under the purview of an independent board.

Now Preckwinkle says she needs to have more control of that board for purposes of “communication, accountability and transparency,” in the process eliminating some of that independence.

It’s a definite case of reversing course but remains to be seen whether it’s also a sensible one.

Then there’s that beautiful South Works site on the city’s south lakefront, 415 acres begging for decades to be developed.

A residential development, the emphasis in recent years, would look great. So would anything that brings jobs to an area that once relied on the location as its economic engine, as others have sought.

Sometimes, though, you just have to get the train back on the tracks.