No acknowledgment that this is a state government that is ranked last by almost every objective and measurable standard. A state government that fails every single one of its residents, day after day — and has failed its residents for decades. A state government that demands more and more money each year, to deliver increasingly less value to Illinoisans. A state government that cannot pay its bills, cannot make good on its promises, cannot help people in need.The author wasn't fired as a whistleblower. She quit.
But well-heeled entrepreneurs, rent-seekers, and heirs are pouring money into gubernatorial campaigns as if a football franchise or a tech company office park at stake.
Self-government has failed in the nation’s currently fifth-most populous state (Pennsylvania soon will pass it). Republican Governor Bruce Rauner will seek re-election with a stark warning: The state is approaching a death spiral — departing people and businesses suppress growth; the legislature responds by raising taxes; the exodus accelerates.Those retirees might be subject to state income tax in Texas or Florida: even the reality that pension payments are exempt from Illinois income tax isn't reason enough to stay. (You can't build basements in much of Florida or Texas, thus I'm still here.)
Rauner, whose net worth earned as a private-equity executive is $500 million, give or take, probably will be running against someone six times richer. The race might consume $300 million — “maybe more,” Rauner says — eclipsing California’s $280 million gubernatorial race in 2010, when that state’s population was three times larger than Illinois’.
The strangeness of the contest between Rauner and the likely Democratic nominee (J.B. Pritzker, an heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune) is that Rauner’s real opponent is a Democrat who has been in the state assembly since Richard Nixon’s first term (1971) and has been speaker all but two years since Ronald Reagan’s first term (1983). Michael Madigan from Chicago is the “blue model” of government incarnate. This model is the iron alliance of the Democratic party and government workers’ unions. Madigan supports Pritzker, who is committed to the alliance. This is the state of the state under it:
Unfunded state and local government retirement debt is more than $260 billion and rising. Unfunded pension liabilities for the nation’s highest-paid government workers (overtime starts at 37.5 hours) are $130 billion and are projected to increase for at least through the next decade. Nearly 25 percent of the state’s general funds go to retirees (many living in Texas and Florida). Vendors are owed $9.5 billion. Every five minutes the population — down 1.22 million in 16 years — declines as another person, and an average of $30,000 more in taxable income, flees the nation’s highest combined state and local taxes. Those leaving are earning $19,600 more than those moving in. The work force has shrunk by 97,000 this year. There has not been an honestly balanced budget — a constitutional requirement — since 2001. The latest tax increase, forced by the legislature to end a two-year budget impasse, will raise more than $4 billion, but another $1.7 billion deficit has already appeared.
Mr Pritzker is running against Christopher Kennedy, son of the late attorney general. And Mr Rauner has been attempting to make of Michael Madigan what Our President is attempting to make of Elizabeth Warren. There's a recent commercial in which the Rauner campaign has Republican governors of neighboring states saying "Thanks, Madigan" for the migration of voters and businesses into Indiana, Missouri, and Wisconsin.
George Will, confessed Cub fan, hopes that Illinoisans can arrest the decline before it's too late. "The nation has a huge stake in this brawl because the 'blue model' is bankrupting cities and states from Connecticut to California, so its demolition here, where it has done the most damage, would be a wondrous story enhancing the nation’s glory."
The story has been nailed to Newmark's Door.
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