Excerpt from Illinois Business Review, Vol. 43 The last component of infrastructure investment included in Build Illinois is flood control. The program directs $5 million annually for 5 years to the improvement of levees, deepening of channels, and modifying of spillways in seven counties, mostly in the area around Cook County. The administration estimates that million will be saved annually by these measures, which means that the projects will take about 19 million million) years to pay for themselves, not taking any inflation into account. Economic development and the creation or retention of jobs has been emphasized time and again in Build Illinois. How likely are these to occur and when? In the short run, Build Illinois will definitely create jobs. As spending under the program takes off, construction workers, engineers, and so on, will be employed to design and install the new roads, sewers, and improve the existing rail lines and flood control facilities. However, the long-run growth in jobs is tied to the economic development aspect of the program. As was seen in the much-publicized case of the Saturn plant, a company thinks and evaluates a long time before deciding where to locate a new facility. To be sure, the measures included for infrastructure improvement are a major consideration for a relocating or expanding firm. However, it takes time to make the improvements and time to build plants (both of which, of course, create jobs) before actual production begins and the permanent employment can take place. In other words, the long-run employment prospects associated with Build Illinois are very tenuous, contingent on many factors. Further, will the kind of industry Illinois is trying to attract enjoy long-term growth? These investments may attract firms that are subject to major cyclical swings, such firms as are already abundant in the state. Personal and business income will go up in the short run also, as the Build Illinois funds are received as income by businesses making the proposed improve ments and their employees. But it is difficult to estimate how much of that money remains in the state after the initial spending. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.