Macon Reporter

In the 2020 William K. Reilly Awards discussion, the man for whom the award was named spoke somberly about the jobs crisis in his hometown of Decatur. 

William Reilly served as Environmental Protection Agency administrator in the George H. W. Bush administration, was president of the World Wildlife Fund, co-chair of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling under former President Barack Obama, graduated from Yale and Harvard Universities and served in U.S. Army intelligence.

"[Decatur] has lost Warner, Caterpillar, Bridgestone Tire and Sire Tire," Reilly said at the awards ceremony. "It is an economy that has just wilted away. It basically didn't wilt away, a lot of it went to China with full understanding that was happening at the time and without appreciation for consequences."

Decatur was an industrial giant for decades throughout the 20th century after its takeoff in the 1920s, and still retains a few large manufacturing facilities as one of the bigger cities in central Illinois. 

The city saw its peak in the 1990s, though, and lost 400,000 manufacturing jobs from 1990 to 2017. 

A resident quoted in an article by Illinois Policy says that Decatur now has "all of the drawbacks of a big city with none of the benefits."

The article outlined the city's high taxes on gasoline and food/beverage, rates that are becoming harder and harder for aging consumers to handle. Additionally, Decatur business owners have seen property tax hikes year after year. 

Reilly remains hopeful that there is still life for his home city, despite it having been the state's fastest-shrinking city from 2010 to 2016. 

"There are awarenesses of those matters in this administration and that is tremendously exciting," he said. "[...] There ought to be a coming together of reindustrialization and a new, greener economy that gives people permanent, incredible, effective jobs."