Richmond: State of This State Is Pretty Shabby

• Editor's note: Dave Richmond is a Republican candidate for the 25th Senate District in Illinois. His are Jim Oberweis and Rick Slocum. The 25th Senate District has been restructured and now includes the east sides of St. Charles and Geneva and Batavia as far west as Randall Road. It also includes all or parts of Elburn, Sugar Grove, Montgomery, West Chicago, Bartlett, Wayne, Warrenville, Naperville, Yorkville, Oswego, Aurora, South Elgin, Campton Hills, Plano, and North Aurora.

Dear Editor:

Leading up to the governor's speech today, two independent agencies, Moody’s and the Civic Federation, provided a sobering assessment of the disasters’ road that Illinois is going down. The state of Illinois has become a safe place for career politicians’, but has disregarded the private sector. Gov. Quinn, Speaker Madigan and President John Cullerton have put their own self interests of getting re-elected ahead of the fiscal stability of this state and its residents.

“We have made Illinois a better state… And Illinois is a place that we can be proud to claim as our own,” said Gov. Quinn.

On Jan, 3, the governor released his three-year budget projections, which showed Illinois with an operating deficit of $500 million in FY2012 and a growing total of $818 million in FY2015. These numbers, though, do not show the annual costs of Medicaid, group health insurance, or the increase in unpaid bills in Illinois.

A little over a week ago, the Illinois Comptroller’s Office released the backlog of unpaid bills which stood at $4.27 billion dollars at the end of the quarter. This does not account for all of the bills that are held by other state agencies which are estimated to be another $4.2 billion dollars, bringing the Illinois’s unpaid bills to an outstanding $8.5 billion dollars.

Gov. Quinn stated, “Across Illinois, families were losing their jobs, losing their homes, watching their savings disappear… And we have invested in the people of Illinois, helping our working families ...”

The temporary tax increase set in place by a lame-duck Legislature in 2011 was sold to Illinois by telling them that the money would put us in a substantially better place to pay our bills, yet to the contrary all of those funds went toward paying our ill pension obligations.

Gov. Quinn stated that, “In the past three years, we’ve worked together to strengthen our economy and make Illinois a better place to do business.”  With the passage of the tax increase businesses in our state now pay one of the highest corporate tax rates in the industrialized world. This cased Illinois to fall behind 12 more states from 2011 to 2012 in terms of business climates directly contradicting the governor’s comments and moving us backwards.

Gov. Quinn told us that, “We’re back on course—Illinois is moving forward.” This is absolutely false. Illinois is moving backward and not making any new strides to put Illinois back on the road to prosperity. The legislature in Illinois lead by Gov. Quinn and Speaker Madigan are lacking efficiency and certainty coupled with a lack of political will to make tough choices about our budget. Now more than ever, we need leadership that will make the tough decisions in Springfield and cut spending and borrowing. Gov. Quinn and our leadership have failed us over and over again.

As of June 30 of last year, Illinois’ pensions were 43.3 percent underfunded ($83.1 billion). While a small part of the problem was incurred by investment losses in FY2008, the majority of the problem comes the state insufficiently funding the system. “Fixing the pension problem will not be easy, but we have no choice … That’s why I’ve assembled a pension working group to propose a solution that can be enacted this year,” Gov. Quinn said his his State of the State message today (Wednesday, Feb. 1).

This is yet just another way around making the tough decisions and enacting real reform. We as a country witnessed this first hand when congress assembled the “Gang of Six,” a “working group” that provided us with no solutions.

Gov. Quinn touted, “After three years of hard work and tough decisions, Illinois is back on course. Illinois is moving forward.”

With the 2011 tax increase, Illinois has lost upwards of an additional 200,000 jobs. We have become a net departure state.When people leave, they take their income and their talent with them. Illinois is far from a better place. Illinois is lacking the ability of making REAL tough decisions. Illinois has not moved forward under the leadership of Gov. Quinn, Speaker Madigan, and Senate President Cullerton. We need to turn Illinois into a destination again. We need to put fiscally responsible people in Springfield who will make the tough decisions and represent the people and not self interests.

Dave Richmond
Candidate for 25th State Senate