A brief history of the Illinois Municipal Utilities Association

In 1948, President Truman had his hands full. The war in Europe had come to an end less than three years before and much of that continent remained in rubble. The Marshall Plan, which would eventually rebuild Europe , was just beginning. Tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union boiled over as the Communists blocked the roads to Berlin . In response, America organized a massive airlift of supplies into the city. Communist rebels were on the move in China . Not many people knew where Korea was. In two years they would, as American became engaged in another war. Even fewer people new where Vietnam was. Ronald Reagen was a Hollywood actor. Air conditioning and TV were rare in American homes. Computers? What exactly is a computer?

Across Illinois , the people who ran the state's municipal utilities also sensed they were looking at a different world. What kind of a future will this be for these locally controlled systems? How will they insure high quality service to their citizens? How would these independent, individual systems react to the growth and promise the coming years held? Perhaps, some municipal leaders believed, there needed to be an organization to represent the mutual interests of municipal utilities of all kinds. Perhaps they needed to work together in a more formal way than they had in the past.

In the old Leland Hotel in Springfield , on March 18, 1948 , a group of municipal utility superintendents came together. They were a cross section of municipal utilities at the time. Art Perier from Bushnell was there, as was R. M. Shoulders of Cairo, M.L. Burgin of Geneseo, J.E. Everson of Princeton, John Hunter and S.T. Anderson of Springfield, L.O. Skaggs of Rock Falls and a Mr. Russell of Rochelle. Since the meeting was held under the authority of the Illinois Municipal League, their executive director Alonzo “Lon” Sargent chaired it. (Both Bloomington and Jacksonville were represented at the meeting. Neither operates an electric or gas system today.)

The gathering discussed such matters as mutual emergency aid, the exchange of operating ideas, the acquisition of an emergency portable generator, establishing a public relations program, state and federal legislative assistance, and educational programs. Committees were formed, additional meeting dates were set, and by October the new Illinois Public Power Association, or IPPA, was holding its first annual meeting. (The IPPA later was renamed the Illinois Municipal Utilities Association, or IMUA, and remains so to this day.)

On that October day in 1948, the IPPA's special guest speaker was Carlton Nau, general manager of the American Public Power Association. Appropriately his presentation was entitled, “Let's Hang Together or We'll Hang Separately”. That title is taken from a famous quote by Benjamin Franklin, who warned his revolutionary colleagues that they'd better stick together or they would surely suffer the consequences.

From where municipal utilities stand today, it seems that not much has changed since those waning days of the 1940s. That belief is reinforced when you read the original bylaws of the Illinois Public Power Association which were adopted at its second annual meeting in 1949. With all that has changed, from the deregulation of the natural gas and electric industries to the arrival of this new age of information, the original mandate of the Association still rings true. According to the bylaws, the Association was organized to conduct legislative programs, collect and disseminate helpful information, give publicity to happenings related to municipal utilities, promote cooperation among the member cities, and render service toward the solution of problems related to the construction, operation, administration, improvement and extension of municipal utilities.

That's what it's has done for more than fifty years. That is what it stands prepared to do for fifty more.