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Tuesday, March 19, 2024
March 19, 2024

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Will: Illinois governor reforms may help U.S.

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The most portentous election of 2014, which gave the worst-governed state its first Republican governor in 12 years, has initiated this century’s most intriguing political experiment. By electing businessman Bruce Rauner, it initiated a process that might dismantle a form of governance that afflicts many states and municipalities.

Rauner, 58, won by promising to change Illinois’ political culture of one-party rule by entrenched politicians subservient to public-sector unions. Consequences include more than a dozen credit-rating downgrades in five years, leaving Illinois with the lowest rating among the states, and unfunded public employees’ pension liabilities estimated, perhaps conservatively, at $111 billion, the nation’s largest such deficit as a percentage of state revenue. Public pensions consume nearly 25 percent of general state revenues. The state owes vendors $6.5 billion in unpaid bills, and more than 1 million people have left Illinois in the past 15 years.

Four of the previous nine governors went to prison.And bad-but-routine practices are astonishing. Some legislators practice law, specializing in real estate tax appeals: They are paid a portion of what they save clients by reducing the clients’ bills under the laws the legislators have written.

Rauner says previous governors from both parties have been complicit in the unionization of about 93 percent of government employees. Unionization began in the 14 years (1977-1991) of Republican Gov. Jim Thompson. Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, now an inmate, instituted “card check” unionization. Rauner says union organizers would tell people: Sign the card or else; we know where your wife works, and your children go to school.

Rauner said he plans to break “a totally rigged system.” He has stopped the government from collecting for unions “fair share” fees from state employees who reject joining a union. This, he says, violates First Amendment principles by compelling people to subsidize speech with which they disagree. The unions might regret challenging this in federal court because it could have nationwide consequences.

Rauner said he hopes to ban public employees’ unions from making political contributions, whereby they elect their employers with whom they negotiate compensation. Rauner said he also hopes to enable jurisdictions to adopt right-to-work laws, thereby attracting business that will locate only where there are such laws.

He said he hopes the Legislature will empower voters to ratify changes to the state constitutional provision that says public pensions can never be “diminished or impaired.” He also proposes shifting state employees to a more affordable benefit plan for the state. And he said he hopes to end practices that now have more than 11,000 retirees receiving six-figure pensions.

Another 2016 referendum would impose term limits on state legislators, ending the careerism on which the corrupt system depends.

By allowing a temporary tax increase to be temporary — to lapse — Rauner increased his leverage with the Legislature, which lusts for revenues not swallowed by pensions.

Former Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson once said, “Cleanliness is next to godliness, except in the Illinois Legislature, where it is next to impossible.” If Rauner emancipates Illinois from an interest group that lobbies itself for perpetual growth, so can other states. And the nation.

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