Howard W. Carroll served in the state legislature for 28 years — 26 of which were in the state Senate, where he was known for overseeing the budget appropriations process and championing bills involving health care and human rights.
Former state Sen. Howard Carroll in an undated photo. During his tenure in the Senate, Carroll showed his prowess with the budgeting process. (Family photo)
“He knew the appropriations process backward and forward, better than everybody in the legislature,” said former state Sen. William Marovitz, a longtime friend and fellow legislator. “He knew how to negotiate and what was fair. When you are chairman, you have a lot of chits, and Howie knew how to use those.”
Carroll, 79, died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease on Oct. 1 while in hospice care at the Auberge memory care community in Highland Park, said his daughter Jacqueline. He had been a Highland Park resident and before that had lived in Lake Bluff and Winnetka. He lived in West Rogers Park while serving in the state Senate.
Born in Chicago, Carroll grew up in West Rogers Park and graduated from Senn High School. He then earned a bachelor’s degree in business in 1964 from Roosevelt University, followed by a law degree from DePaul University. While at DePaul, he was a moot court partner of future Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley.
After law school, Carroll practiced law for several years before going into politics, facing no opposition in the 1970 Democratic primary for a House seat in what then was the 13th House District on Chicago’s North Side. He won the general election and almost immediately afterward ran in 1972 for what then was the 15th Senate District, also on the North Side. Carroll defeated Walter Duda in that general election and began a 26-year tenure in the state Senate.
During his tenure in the Senate, Carroll showed his prowess with the budgeting process, chairing one of the upper chamber’s two appropriations committees and forcing cuts and changes to then-Gov. James R. Thompson’s budget proposals. His role on the committee also lent him more prestige than other senators, as he held the power to approve or reject fellow senators’ pet projects.
“The budget process never moved without Howie’s stamp of approval on it,” said former state House Deputy Majority Leader Lou Lang, the executive vice chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party. “He knew every nook and cranny of the budget, and he used his knowledge of the budget and how state government works to make sure that important government agencies got the funding they needed to survive and thrive. He worked very closely with governors to make those things happen as well.”
Lang also called Carroll a “stalwart for the Jewish community” and remembered Carroll’s efforts to ensure that incumbent Jewish lawmakers would have districts to run in after the redistricting process.
“He was an important voice in Springfield for all things Jewish, and I was always proud to stand alongside him on many issues that we worked on together,” Lang said. “Howie stood on his head to make sure that the Jewish community was well represented and that Jewish members of the House and Senate had the ability to run in fairly drawn districts that represented their communities and were able to succeed.”
Carroll was an outspoken voice against Illinois neo-Nazis attempting in the 1970s to hold a march in Skokie, a predominantly Jewish suburb, and the neo-Nazi group was emboldened by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling effectively allowing them to march. Carroll even introduced a bill in April 1978 that would have made the public display of racial hatred a crime. The bill never became law.
“The Nazi group wants to display the swastika and their brown-shirt uniforms precisely because of their violent meaning,” Carroll wrote in a letter to the Tribune in 1978. “They want to go to Skokie precisely because that is where such violence will be most newsworthy. Theirs is not merely a demonstration of national socialism, but a direct assault on the Jewish survivors of the victims of past atrocities with a symbolic threat of future genocide.”
In June 1978, the neo-Nazi group chose not to march in Skokie, however, deciding instead to hold a march on Chicago’s South Side. Carroll’s behind-the-scenes brokering was the reason why, his daughter said.
“A bunch of Holocaust survivors were going up to (my father) and saying they had bought weapons, that they had watched family get slaughtered and they weren’t going to go down without a fight,” Carroll’s daughter said. “My dad said to (neo-Nazi leader) Frank Collin, ‘You’re allowed to march, the Supreme Court said you can; however, the next marches will be your funerals.’ And they didn’t march in Skokie.”
After the 1980 remap, Carroll served in the 1st Senate District, and after the 1990 remap, he served in the 8th Senate District. He eventually ascended to be assistant minority leader in the Senate. Among the laws he authored and successfully shepherded through the legislature were the Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan Act, enacted in 1987, a law providing pharmaceutical assistance for seniors, and the state’s Human Rights Act, which took effect in 1980 and barred age discrimination in the workplace.
In addition to serving in the state Senate, Carroll also was the 50th Ward committeeman for many years, and he held an annual Taste of the 50th Ward food fest for many years on Labor Day weekend.
In 1996, Carroll had a private audience with Mother Teresa while on a trip to India with his daughter Barbara Carroll Delano.
Carroll gave up his Senate seat to run for Congress in 1998 to replace the retiring Sidney Yates, who first had been elected in 1948. However, he lost to Jan Schakowsky in the Democratic primary, although he comfortably finished ahead of a 32-year-old heir to the Hyatt Hotel fortune named J.B. Pritzker.
After the 1998 race for Congress, Carroll and his wife moved to the northern suburbs, and he continued practicing business and tax law in his firm, Carroll & Sain. He continued working until the onset of Alzheimer’s disease forced him to stop working around 2017, Jacqueline Carroll said.
In addition to his daughters, Carroll is survived by his wife of almost 48 years, Eda; and two granddaughters.
Services were held.
Bob Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
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