If not now, when?

I’m talking about one of the state’s best-kept secrets. On Nov. 4, we’ll decide in a referendum whether to hold a state Constitutional Convention. The Con Con, as it’s informally known, is on the ballot every 20 years, thanks to the foresight of the people who drafted our state constitution in 1968. Like Thomas Jefferson , they thought the citizens of each generation should have the right to look at how their state government does business and change it if they want.

In 1988, the citizens of Illinois decided, "Hey, things aren’t so bad. We just adopted our Constitution 20 years ago. Let’s not mess with it now." So we didn’t have a Constitutional Convention.

This year, however, maybe we will have a convention because things are so messed up in Springfield that we can’t get anything done on things we care about— such as health care and education funding and mass transit and immigrant rights and…