- When Judy Baar Topinka walked into a room the lights got a bit brighter, the temperature became a bit more comfortable, and her hosts became a lot less grumpy.There aren’t enough adjectives to describe the straight-talking, blunt, energetic, pragmatic, smart, funny, knowledgeable Topinka. Or, perhaps the right adjectives were never invented.
Illinois Comptroller Topinka died Wednesday, less than 24 hours after suffering a stroke. Her death came as a shock. She was the youngest 70-year-old we’ve ever met and campaigned with the vigor of someone half her age as she won re-election in November.
She was a state representative, a state senator and a three-term state treasurer, and she was going to be sworn in next month for her second term as comptroller. She was the first woman in Illinois to serve in two state constitutional offices,
Voters kept electing Topinka — usually by wide margins — because she was so much like them. There was not a hint of pretentiousness in Topinka. She’s the only person we knew who drank coffee through a straw, perhaps explaining her abundant energy.
She played the accordion, loved to dance polkas and loved her dogs (see Scott Reeder’s column). She spoke four languages — English, Czech, Spanish and Polish. Five, if you count common sense as a language.
What you saw was what you got with Topinka, and Illinois residents got a lot.
She knew the value of a dollar. She was as thrifty and shrewd with her own money as she was with the state’s. She shopped in Goodwill stores and at garage sales. She would brag about a sale item as much as — if not more than — she would about the successes in her office.
And successful she was.
As treasurer, she modernized the office, trimmed the size of her staff, cut her budget and earned a record amount of money for the state. Her “Bank at School” program introduced students to the world of money and banking.
As comptroller, she brought transparency to the way the state’s money was being spent by launching two websites, The Ledger and The Warehouse.
The only blip on her record occurred in 2006 when she ran for governor, and Rod Blagojevich spent oodles of money on television commercials deluding us into thinking Topinka was something she wasn’t.
Topinka hoped to see the day when the offices she held — comptroller and treasurer — would become one. She had long favored a merger. She once told us that splitting comptroller/treasurer is like going to a bank where you can cash a check but not deposit your money “Now everything is computerized,” she told us a couple of years ago. “We use the same numbers so we don’t have to reconcile the same numbers. We’ve got the auditor general, we’ve got the bureau of the budget, we’ve got four legislative committees that look at this, we’ve got the legislative audit commission. We’ve got enough oversight to choke a horse.”
The accolades Topinka received Wednesday probably would have embarrassed her.
“Judy was a trailblazer in every sense of the word,” Gov. Pat Quinn said. “Never without her signature sense of humor, Judy was a force of nature (who) paved the way for countless women in politics.”
Gov.-elect Bruce Rauner called Topinka one of the state’s “all-time greats” and noted her “one-of-a-kind personality (that) brought a smile to everyone she met.”
Topinka loved the people of Illinois and did what she thought was right. Illinois won’t be the same without her.
Our condolences to her family and friends. Rest in peace, Judy.
Read more: http://www.rrstar.com/article/20141210/Opinion/141219895#ixzz3LiIs9g3Y
Our View: Illinois will miss ‘one of a kind’ Judy Baar Topinka - Opinion - Rockford Register Star - Rockford, IL
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