November 12, 2018
The (Champaign) News-Gazette
Pritzker eager to take the helm
Triumphant Democrat J.B. Pritzker celebrated a smashing victory in last week’s gubernatorial election with an animated speech in which he promised to “overcome our biggest challenges” with bold and dramatic policy changes.
“… ladies and gentleman, rise we will. We make no small plans for Illinois,” he declared to a cheering crowd.
That sounds good. That’s why Illinoisans hope Pritzker, a billionaire businessman who has never held public office, will be as successful in lifting this state out of the fiscal gutter as he promises.
But winning election nights are one thing - governing in this state is quite another.
Pritzker certainly won’t face the legislative roadblocks that doomed his predecessor, Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner. But the yellow brick road he’ll walk on the long journey to fiscal recovery is littered with major hurdles.
They include the long-standing Illinois tradition of passing deficit budgets, $7.6 billion in unpaid bills (as of Sept. 30) and, worst of all, a mammoth unfunded public pension liability of, at a minimum, $130 billion.
So what Pritzker is attempting will be, at a minimum, extremely difficult and, at maximum, virtually impossible.
Pritzker didn’t waste any time getting to work. He announced transition teams made up of the usual cross-section of government, business and financial leaders.
He also gave a series of interviews in which he discussed - on a superficial level - his plans.
Pritzker, apparently, will rely on revenue generated from his planned legalization of marijuana as well as a dramatic expansion of gambling (sports betting in addition to what’s already in place).
He also spoke favorably of a multibillion capital spending plan, while pointedly not embracing the inevitable tax hikes - gas or mileage - needed to fund it.
He acknowledged what everyone already knows, that passing an amendment to the Illinois Constitution in 2020 is a time eater.
Pritzker also appeared to back off his plan for an immediate increase in the current 4.95 state income tax to generate the additional revenue he’s seeking.
Will he feel differently in February or March? Maybe, maybe not.
A state legislative committee recently reported that, as a consequence of a stronger state economy and a series of tax increases, “the first third of FY 2019 shows general funds ahead of last year by $595 million.”
That’s a welcome addition to the state’s coffers. Unfortunately, in the context of the state’s overall debts and deficits, it’s chump change.
State elected officials have long recognized that Illinois’ financial problems make it difficult to shower favored groups with financial benefits. They can, however, use their legislative authority to make private sector entities spend money.
So it’s no great surprise that Pritzker also has said one of his highest priorities will be to increase the minimum wage, in stages, to $15 an hour. That’s good news for those who will get the wage hikes and bad news for businesses operating on thin margins and the employees, many of them young people, they will have to lay off to control their costs.
Pritzker’s statements so far offer mere hints as to what is forthcoming.
The election took place less than a week ago, and he won’t be sworn into office until January. The public will learn much more as he and the overwhelmingly Democratic Legislature start charting policy changes in earnest.
That’s when Pritzker will be torn between what he has said he would like to do - pass major social spending programs and raise taxes to pay for them - and what the state’s weak financial standing will allow him to do.
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November 8, 2018
The Quincy Herald-Whig
With campaign in past, Illinois must move forward
There were few surprises election night as results were reported across the Land of Lincoln, which saw Democrat J.B. Pritzker handily defeat Republican incumbent Gov. Bruce Rauner.
More than 640,000 votes separated the two in what was a landslide victory for the billionaire Pritzker, who claimed 54 percent of the statewide vote. Rauner was done in by four years of gridlock, an unwillingness to compromise on the budget stalemate and perceived mismanagement of the Legionella outbreak at the Illinois Veterans Home in Quincy.
That, coupled with a suburban electorate eager to turn out to voice their displeasure with President Donald Trump, led to a 15-point blowout for Pritzker, a Democratic sweep of statewide offices and gains in both chambers of the General Assembly. The so-called Blue Wave might not have materialized across the country in the manner some had predicted, but in Illinois, it was thunderous.
That wasn’t so across West-Central Illinois, however. In Adams County, Rauner took nearly 66 percent of the vote, down 10 points from his 2014 win, but still an impressive local haul. Republican candidates up and down the ticket here fared well, cementing local GOP dominance. No statewide candidate took any of Adams, Brown Hancock or Pike counties. Only incumbent Secretary of State Jesse White even came close.
Again, there were few surprises.
Plans now are being laid for what comes next.
Simply put, if Pritzker fails, Illinois fails. And if Illinois fails, we all fail. We do not want that to happen.
Looking back at the campaign, we are heartened by many of the things we saw from Pritzker.
While some decried the lack of details to many of Pritzker’s proposals, we were encouraged by his notion the problems facing the state will take multifaceted solutions. He said repeatedly he looks forward to negotiations and compromise to find a path forward for the state. There will be no simple solutions, he told us.
We applaud Rauner, who in his concession speech Tuesday night, called on the state to come together.
In claiming victory, Pritzker spoke of bridging divides.
It’s our profound hope Illinoisans of all political stripes remember this and work to move this great state forward and rise once again to meet the challenges before us.
“Ladies and gentleman, rise we will,” Pritzker promised on election night.
Let’s all pray that we do.
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November 9, 2018
Sauk Valley Media
The election’s over; let’s solve problems
Elections have consequences, and election night’s vote was for change in Illinois.
When new officeholders are sworn in come January, Democrats will be in the driver’s seat. They will have supermajority control of the state House and Senate, and will control all statewide elected offices beginning in 2019, led by Governor-elect J.B. Pritzker.
Democrats will control the levers of power, but that does not give them ownership of Illinois government. The government still serves all the people, and the tax and regulatory burdens that government now imposes are driving some people and businesses out of state.
It will take Democrats and Republicans working together to solve this problem in the years ahead.
Republicans faced tough realities in this midterm election. President Donald Trump is unpopular here. At the top of the state ticket, Gov. Bruce Rauner trailed in the polls for months, and eventually lost by about 15 points and became the first governor in more than 40 years to be unseated after a single term.
Though voters had myriad reasons for voting as they did, there are several things for which they did not vote.
Few people went to the polls on Tuesday to vote for higher taxes for themselves. When Pritzker talks about raising income taxes on “the wealthy,” most of us assume he is talking about people like himself - now the wealthiest political officeholder in America, with a fortune of more than $3 billion and who spent a staggering $171 million on his campaign.
Pritzker was content to foster that assumption. He scrupulously avoided providing any information about who would pay more in taxes under a graduated tax plan, which will require amending the state constitution. We’re still waiting to see how many of us eventually will learn we are wealthy.
Any move to increase income taxes without shifting the school funding burden away from the property tax will make this Democratic dominance in Springfield short-lived. It’s the property tax burden that’s driving people out of Illinois; it must be reduced.
Few of us voted for state government to ignore the pension liability that continues to consume more of the state’s budget.
Few of us voted to abandon the cause of reform. In addition to property tax relief, concepts such as term limits for legislators and legislative leaders, and fair drawing of legislative maps are widely popular among voters in this state. They should be given an up-or-down vote in Springfield or an advisory vote at the ballot box. It is time to stop fighting these initiatives - let the people vote on them.
When 2019 begins, Pritzker and the party he leads indeed are in the driver’s seat in Springfield. It will be their prerogative to act on their agenda in the future. As Illinoisans, we will share in that future and so we hope for success for our state under his leadership.
But that future should be shaped by the good ideas of members of both parties. The election is over, and we all must work together to solve our state’s problems.
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