Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 133

Section 2 (ThitaSO (Tribune Wednesday, April 21,1 993 South GOP pens door to tax caps in Cook 1 Eric Zorn Senators OK caps on malpractice awards. Page 4. By Rick Pearson and Tim Jones Chicago Tribune SPRINGFIELD The new Republican majority in the Senate sent the House one of its top priorities Tuesday, a bill that would extend collar county-style property-tax caps to suburban Cook County. The 37-17 vote came despite complaints from Democrats that the bill would hurt all Cook County school districts, including the deficit-plagued Chicago Public Schools, at a time when education needs more money. and I will run with that any time, any day and I'm going to tell you one thing: I will be reelected." The fate of the legislation is far from certain given Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan's staunch opposition to property-tax caps.

The Senate's passage of the bill, however, makes it a key GOP item in the traditional end-of-session negotiations with Democratic leaders. Madigan and other Democrats have opposed tax caps, saying residents can vote out local officials who increase taxes. And the irony that the vote came on mu nicipal election day did not escape Senate Democrats. "If people don't do the job, the bums should be thrown out," said Sen. Grace Mary Stern (D-Highland Park).

Democrats also have complained that Edgar is being inconsistent by proposing to take income-tax surcharge dollars away from municipalities at the same time he is trying to cap their ability to raise revenue. As in the collar counties, the measure would cap the growth in collections by Cook County taxing bodies to 5 percent or the rate of inflation, whichever is- less. Chicago, Cook County gov-eminent and "home-rule" municipalities would be exempt. Edgar originally called for statewide property-tax caps. But Philip acknowledged that Down-state Republicans were opposed.

Senate Democratic leader Emil Jones (D-Chicago) said the caps would further harm the Chicago Public Schools, which are not a "home-rule" unit of government. The schools anticipate a $383 million deficit next fall. "Here you are, telling the poor students in the City of Chicago, we're not going to give you any See GOP, pg. 12 The legislation also calls for a non-binding statewide referendum on the 1994 general election ballot, asking voters whether they favor real estate-tax limits. Such a move would provide Gov.

Jim Edgar with a sure re-election platform that could bolster voter turnout "Do caps work? You're darn right they work," said Senate President James "Pate" Philip of Wood Dale. "I hope it's going to be on the ballot next time Daley aides set for 911 showdown rsj ll Vv A i xi- 1 I si K0- it- Schoo girls came first this time I felt cheated Monday just like you. Probation? For the most hated couple in America? What, no stoning? No flogging? No ritual bloodletting or extended sentence in a dank, putrid prison? Yet there were David and Sharon Schoo, smirking if not actually smiling as they left the Kane County Courthouse, apparently well satisfied with a plea bargain that saw them sentenced to a modest nine days of community service and one month's home confinement over a two-year probationary period After all that. After all the tabloid cartwheels, foaming-at-the-mouth radio shows and David Letterman jokes. After the mini-cam stampedes, the exposure of unpleasant Schoo family failings and the thousands of wise allusions to the "Home Alone" movies.

No proportional revenge. Not even an explanation. The Schoos' defense lawyer, Gerard Kepple, had promised we would hear another side to the story of the St Charles-area couple thai David and Sharon Schoo begin their monthlong house arrest. Story, Page 6. left their 9-year-old and 4-year-old daughters to care for themselves while they vacationed in Mexico, and that the public's perception of his clients would change dramatically when they told their story in court.

"It will turn out quite differently from what you suspect so far," he said on Dec. 30. for one, tingled with anticipation. What revisions would they offer to put a positive spin on this Dickensian tale? Now it looks as if we'll never know. The Schoos had every opportunity to explain themselves after sentencing Monday, but declined.

The best Kepple could do Tuesday was to say, "everyone has a reason for whatever they do." "I believe the public feels cheated because I feel cheated," said David Clark, administrative chief for Kane County State's Atty. David Akemann. "The question on everyone's mind is but the law can't make them tell us why. A good trial or two might have helped loosen the tongues on this pair of Schoos, but-prosecutors backed down and settled for a mild punishment and no trial, an agreement that a courthouse telephone operator said lit up the switchboard with angry callers Tuesday. But Akemann's office did not cut their disappointing deal because they have a soft spot for bad parents, Clark said.

They cut it because they have a soft spot for Nicole Schoo, now 10, and her kid sister Diana the two players in this odious public drama whose best interests seemed often forgotten. We all jumped on this story at once when it broke Dec. 21, in part because the parents' behavior was so extraordinary for middle-income suburbanites, in part because it was Christmas week and in part because of the irresistible availability of the popular movie title to sum up the circumstances. That the movie was a comedy and this was clearly a tragedy didn't slow the "Home Alone" engine. The brightly named tale of abandonment became a story around the world, and the elder Schoos became internationally reviled and locally ostracized.

And, by the way, they were lousy tippers! And Sharon Schoo had given up a child from a previous marriage and shame! was estranged from her father! And David Schoo lost his pharmacist's license in 1978 after stealing 1,900 Valium tablets from an Aurora drugstore! The dissemination of this humiliating trivia was a rough form of early justice in those early days when the legal process was just beginning. But the problem was and is that it's hard for the law or the media to ruin the lives of David and Sharon Schoo, who seemed so richly to deserve a comeuppance, without at the same time doing further damage to their daughters. Imagine seeing yourself at every turn portrayed as the offspring of evil incarnate and having every little unpleasant thing about your family become dinner-table talk from coast to coast. Imagine being just a kid and feeling an enormous public wedge being driven between you and the only parents you know, however imperfect they may be. This story had little chance of a happy ending, prosecutors realized, if the girls were forced to testify against their parents in up to five trials, each of which would likely have received saturation media coverage.

Now there is a chance. Nicole and Diana have the opportunity to begin to try to heal what surely must be gaping family wounds picked open again and again, an opportunity they, at any rate, deserve. It was therefore hard to feel cheated for long about the sentencing agreement. No tar, no feathers, no excuses, true but a final, spasm of scorn for the parents along with a hope for a new and private beginning for the innocent kids. And while the name Schoo remains synonymous here with faulty parenting part of the unofficial punishment let's try not to forget Bell, Johnson, Eken, Watson, Daniels and Wallace.

Those are the last names of children, all age 10 and under, murdered in our area already this year, allegedly by their parents. If you must feel cheated, feel cheated for them. 1 4 Beethoven fills the air of the old Dearborn Street Stations during the Merit Music concert. Joyful noise rings out of gathering By Louise Kiernan More than 700 young musicians sawing and blowing their way through Beethoven's "Ode to Jov" at once can produce quite an impressive noise. So impressive that some of the adults present at Tuesday morning's Merit Fest joked that the German composer must have been able to hear his music for the first time since he went deaf (not to mention his death in 1827).

Enthusiasm, loudly expressed, was the keynote of the performance at Dearborn Station, which brought together students from 37 Chicago elementary schools to show what they've learned in the Merit Music Program. The non-profit program provides music instruction to more than 3,000 children in Chicago and its suburbs, many of whom live in the area's poorest neighborhoods. And Tuesday was their day to show off. "Our students haven't stopped chattering about the concert," said Louise Perez, principal of Key School in the Austin neighborhood. "Our children have been exposed to things they've never been exposed to the instruments, the music.

They found out that there are hundreds of children of their ethnic group who like the same music. It was just beau-See Music, pg. 12 By Robert Davis Trying to coax out enough votes to approve bonding and a contract for a controversial $225 million emergency communications system, the Daley administration on Tuesday lured alder-; men behind closed doors and plied them with information and kind words about 91 1. In an apparent effort to head off embarrassing open and hostile questioning similar -to that dis played at last month's hearings; on the 911 plan, administration leaders staged what they hoped to be a preemptive attack. And attempting to skirt the Illinois Open Meetings Act, which; forbids quorums of governmental bodies from holding private meetings, small groups of no more than a dozen aldermen at a time huddled in City Hall with administration members and people scheduled to testify at a City Council Finance Committee hearing on 911 set for Wednesday.

Aldermen were given thick packs of background information on the proposed 911 system, and complicated, computer-generated flow charts meant to show them that although bonds would be backed by property taxes, the actual load on taxpayers would not be apparent because of anticipated payoffs of existing bond issues. In March, aldermen balked at approving the $230 million in bonds needed to finance the project after they learned the proposed cost of the 91 1 system had skyrocketed from an estimated $95 million just three years ago. They also expressed shock when administration officials said a 95-cents-a-month surcharge on telephone bills, imposed in January 1990 to pay for the system, would not be enough, and property taxes of as much as $16 million a year would have tosbe levied for the next 30 years. Although Aid. Edward Burke (14th), chairman of the Finance Committee, managed to get enough committee votes Marcp 5 to move the bond issue, Daley forces did not call for a full council vote when it became clear they did not have enough support to pass it.

On Wednesday, Burke will hold another Finance Committee hearing, featuring testimony from the John Buck the project manager; Fluor-Daniel the California-based firm hired to build the system; and various city officials in charge of the project. "Obviously, they were trying to do today what they should have done in the first place," said Aid. Joseph Moore (49th), one of the first aldermen called in Tuesday. "There is a certain degree of ego-soothing going on because they upset a lot of the aldermen last month." But, Moore said, he still was not convinced by the Daley plan, which still does not guarantee that the overall price will not top the $224.6 million now proposed. (Another $5 million in the bond issue will cover costs associated with selling the bonds.) Moore said he was told by one Daley aide Tuesday that the original $95 million estimate only covered Police Department emergency communications and not those of the Fire Department.

"Honest. That's what they told me," Moore said Tuesday. As recently as November, Mayor Richard Daley appeared at a ground-breaking ceremony for the new emergency communications center at Madison and Loomis Streets and announced the cost had increased to $150 million. But during the March hearings, Daley aides testified the mayor had been told months before his announcement that the price had 7 12 Michael Harris, 1 1 (in foreground) and Daniel Thomas, 10, play in unison (above), while Mari-bel Delgadillo, 11, waits for the trombone section to come in during the Merit Music Fest Tuesdav at Old Dear At f' born Street Station. 1 More than 700 young musicians from the Chicago area sang and played in the finale of the Merit Music program in schools.

Tribune photos by Nancee E. Lewis Oak Lawn bucks anti-incumbent tide Lake County voters scuttle riverboat. Page 11. Election tables on all the races. Pages 8-11.

By Jerry Shnay and Janita Poe Voters helped reshape the political landscape of the south suburbs Tuesday, but although that call included the election of the youngest mayor in Calumet City history, it didn't reach into Oak Lawn where Ernest Kolb was elected mayor for the fifth time. Kolb, 72, who had been severely pressed by trustee Robert Streit, 37, in the most heated race in the area, was an easy winner, taking more than 75 percent of the vote. In addition, three members of Kolb's Citizens Coalition for Integrity party won, giving the mayor a majority on the Village Board. "I'm so happy," Kolb fcid. financing her run with about $16,000 saved from her salary as an alderman.

There were a number of surprises in other contests, including races in Orland Park and Oak Forest. Former Orland Park Trustee Daniel McLaughlin defeated three candidates in the battle for village president of the booming southwest suburb. McLaughlin captured 32.8 percent of the vote, compared with Richard Nogal's 26.9 percent, Edward Schussler's 24.5 percent Another former trustee, Penny O'Sullivan trailed with 15.9 percent. After Orland Park Village President Frederick Owens died last See Mayors, pg. 10 "There aren't enough words to describe for what I feel for all my people." In Calumet City, 30-ycar-old political newcomer Jerry Genova won a three-way race over two aldermen Gregory Skubisz and Irene Donahue in the battle to replace retiring mayor Robert Stefaniak, who was in office for 20 years.

Genova, who was once a budget analyst for the Illinois House, won with 49 percent of the vote, compared with Skubisz's 38 per cent and Donahue's 13 percent. Genova promised his supporters, which included the presidents of the local police and firefighters unions, an influx of energy, "the likes of which Calumet City has never seen. When we're done with this city, it will be a proud, proud place. In the campaign, Genova and Skubisz took turns debating such issues as the influence of street gangs and the problems' of trash collection. Donahue ran a low-profilc campaign, saying she was Mary Schmich the day off..