Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 January 1907 — Kankakee Drainage Bill Looks Rotten. [ARTICLE]

Kankakee Drainage Bill Looks Rotten.

There is a bill now pendjng in the state legislature which was drawn up for the exclusive purpose of completing the drainage of the Kankakee valley. Representative Meeker of this district is the nominal sponsor of the bill but he surely never read it over or he would not have consented to having his name attached to such a measure. The actual originators of the bill are the same crowd who pushed thru the drainage of the Kankakee valley above the east line of Jasper county, and piled up an expense bill of $35,000 on top of a work which cost only SBO,OOO to execute and even that was probably far too much. Of this enormous expense account of $35,000, about $13,000 was for attorney fees, and this seems mostly to have gone to Mayor Darrow, of LaPorte, the chief booster of this proposed new special law, and the principal lobbyist jfaow pushing it thru the legislature. He is the same man who was recently declared disbarred from practicing law in this state becau e of his methods, but is holding back the effects of the disbarment by an appeal to the Supreme Court. This bill is so drawn up that as soon as it becomes a law a few of the big land owners, or even a few holders of stock in some land company in the region, can form an association and elect a self-perpetuat-ing board of directors which from the day of their organization will practically hold the whole Kankakee region in the hollows of their hands, and this power will include not only the region adjacent to that part of the river still to be improved,but all that along which the work has already been done can be dragged in also by a simple order of the directors. The bill provides, among many other incredibly iniquitous features this one which is the very quintessence of iniquity: The district which the little gang of three to seven conspirators who will be ready to jump in and organize the association will lay out, may be extended into as many counties as they mny think or pretend to think will be benefitted in any way, and then a petition to order the proposed work may be brought before any judge or any board of commissioners iu any one of these counties, even if not 20 acres in that county be affected, and if they decide in favor of the work that de ision binds all the rest of tie counties and no one can even appeal from the decision. On the other hand if they try before one judge or commissioners’ court and are decided* against they can immediately try again and can keep trying until they find some judge or board of Commissioners who can be bought or bulldozed into deciding in their favor. r After this decision is once secured ther** is nothing in the way of the little close corporation with its board of directors. - They can extend the limits of their district to any extent they please, make ditches, drains and dikes when and where they please, expend every dollar they collect just as they please, and moreover can practically make the assessments on land what they please. * Thus, tho boards of commissioners are oompellied to have the original assessments made in their respective counties, yet these directors ' have unlimited* and irrevocable power to make any changes they please in the assessments. And from the directors’ assessments, as well as any other acts ' they do or leave übdefae/thefe ia no appCal to any power on earth or . under or over the earth.« By way of a blind. Undoubtedly, the MH makes some sort of a proviso holding this board of directors responsible far their acts bat no bonds art required df them' and no financial stand-

ing either and thus the provisions requiring responsibility are utterly worthless. If a few schemers had deliberately set out to improve their own lands at the expense of others and to enrich themselves by expense fees in the operation, and ultimately to force practically all other land owners in the valley to sell to them at their own prices, this is exactly the kind of a law to do their business. The so-called “five mile law” so named 1 because it skinned every man within five miles cf any of its benefits, and thru the provisions of which that’ unparelleled iniquity, the assessmen tof the Iroquois ditch, was made possible, was a veritable promulgation of Aristides the Just as compared with this proposed Kankakee law.