By now you’ve been pummeled with so many negative ads in the 2014 Illinois gubernatorial race that your head is spinning. Putting aside the advertising hyperbole, you’re left with two candidates with vastly different approaches to achieving a few common goals — mainly, more jobs, better schools and healthy state finances.
With that in mind, here’s what each candidate wants to bring, if elected, to Illinoisans of various categories. We contrast each perspective with a dose of financial reality.
College student:
The governor’s race could change what the job market looks like when you graduate and how much money you’ll need to spend on your education in the meantime.
Bruce Rauner told a group of Millennials that job growth would be one of his biggest priorities if elected governor, including helping businesses grow so they can hire more employees. He’s discussed traveling the world to bring business to Illinois.
Gov. Pat Quinn points to steadily declining unemployment in Illinois through much of 2014 as a sign that the job market already is improving.
Quinn has suggested doubling funding for awarding need-based financial aid. Rauner said he plans to increase support for vocational and technical training.
Keep in mind, however, that neither Quinn nor Rauner would be in a position to increase funding for much of anything. Rauner wants to allow the income tax rate to fall by 25 percent as scheduled on Jan. 1, which will reduce available revenue by around $4 billion. Quinn doesn’t want to let the income tax decrease, but even with the higher rate, the state faces a bill backlog that hovers around $5 billion.
Parent:
Whoever is elected governor could have a say in how your children are educated.
Rauner is a fan of charter schools, and even has a charter school named after him. He has said that he is in favor of providing school vouchers for students, so they and their families can choose to whether or not to attend a public school or a private school. He has also said that, if elected, he would increase education spending in the state, though some have raised questions about from where in the budget that extra money would come.
Pat Quinn told the Chicago Tribune editorial board that he is not in favor of providing school vouchers to students, and that he believes in the power of a public school education. He has also supported channeling resources to early childhood education, including providing prenatal care and supporting preschool. He has challenged Rauner’s claims that his budget plan would allow for increased education spending, saying that Rauner would not be able to both cut the income tax and increase education spending.
Again, though, how either candidate would put more money into schools given current state finances (or given Rauner’s desire to cut taxes) remains unanswered.
Business owner/employee:
Making Illinois’ business environment more hospitable for growth has been a focal point of the 2014 election cycle.
Rauner has run on the platform of applying all that he learned being a businessman to government. One of the biggest reasons Rauner has said he wants to be governor is to make the state attractive for business again. Rauner has said that he supports closing corporate tax loopholes and offering a more competitive overall corporate tax structure, instead of just offering tax breaks to individual businesses. He is in favor of raising the minimum wage, but only if it comes coupled with various business reforms for the state. He is in favor of right to work policies. He has said he wants to lower business registration fees and encourage vocational training. Rauner has been a staunch critic of Illinois’ workers compensation costs, which remain much higher than in neighboring states despite reforms in recent years.
However, Rauner stumbled at the final gubernatorial debate when asked to name a business that his private equity firm owned or invested in that had created jobs in Illinois.
Quinn’s campaign has been endorsed and supported by several unions. He supports raising the Illinois minimum wage. He has supported Advantage Illinois, a program designed to “accelerate investments and ease the credit crunch for small businesses, thanks to more than $78 million from the federal State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI) of the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010.” Quinn said he wants to lower LLC fees to $39, down from $500.
But Quinn’s business policies have drawn criticism from business groups like the Illinois Chamber of Commerce and National Federation of Independent Business. His administration’s granting of tax credits to large corporations that threaten to leave the state has earned the ire of small business owners, who say their concerns get short shrift from state officials.
Public Employee/Retiree:
No matter who wins the election, public pension reform will be on the table during the next legislative session, and whoever is governor will surely weigh in.
Rauner is in favor of moving away from the current pension system and making public employees’ pension plans look more like private-sector 401(k) plans.
From Reboot Illinois’ Election Scorecard about Rauner:
Opposed pension bill currently under court challenge.
Wants to “cap the current system and move towards a defined contribution system” and eliminate the ability of government employees to receive large pay raises before they retire in order to increase their pension.
Quinn is in favor of keeping, but restructuring, the current pension model. He believes in the constitutionality of the pension reform bill passed this year.
From the Reboot Illinois Election Scorecard about Quinn:
Quinn tried to cancel lawmaker paychecks when they did not send him a pension bill by July 9, 2013. He said in 2012 he was “put on this earth” to solve the pension crisis, but the legislature has criticized him for not being part of the process. Unveiled Squeezy the Pension Python in 2012 to illustrate the problem. Helped push reform bill through General Assembly he signed into law in December 2013.
At this point, neither candidate is in control of the future of Illinois’ pension situation. If the Illinois Supreme Court upholds the pension reform bill that Quinn signed into law in December, Illinois will be on a 30-year road to recovery. If the court strikes down the bill, the next governor will need to work out an acceptable way to restructure or pay a pension debt that, over the next 30 years, amounts to $100 billion.
Neither Quinn nor Rauner has offered any “Plan B” should the current law be invalidated.
Homeowner:
Rauner has said he would like to freeze all property taxes if elected. According to the Daily Herald, Rauner said he would wait until after he was elected to hammer out the specifics of how he plans to freeze property taxes with state legislators.
According to the State Journal-Register, Quinn supported an idea to give homeowners a $500 property tax credit earlier this year, though the plan did not pass in the General Assembly. Quinn still supports the credit. The credit, however, would only apply to about 180,000 homes–homeowners would have to pay $10,000 in property taxes to be eligible for the credit.
Any Illinoisan who pays taxes:
Quinn and Rauner have nothing in common on tax policy.
Rauner has said he does not support making 2011′s state income tax increase (to 5 percent, up from 3 percent) permanent, and would like to see it fall to 3.75 percent as scheduled on Jan. 1. If elected, he wants to gradually reduce the rate to the original 3 percent by the end of his first term. He also has said he would make up the decreased revenue by cutting wasteful spending, closing corporate loopholes (he called it “corporate welfare”) and revising the state’s sales tax to include some services (only goods are taxed now).
But Rauner’s proposed reforms don’t come anywhere near closing the $4 billion gap that would be created if the income tax rate falls from 5 to 3.75 percent. And he’d need help from a Democrat-controlled legislature to enact any of his sales tax and spending reforms.
Quinn has said he is in favor of keeping the state’s income tax at 5 percent. He has called Rauner’s tax plan “irresponsible” and said it will lead to drastic education funding cuts.
Should Quinn win, it’s all but certain that the legislature would interpret his victory as a mandate to keep the current tax rate. Whether the legislature would put an expiration date on the tax this time (as it did in 2011) is not known.
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Caitlin Wilson is a staff writer for Reboot Illinois. She graduated from Loyola University Chicago, where she studied journalism and political science. Caitlin has become both endeared to and frustrated with her adopted home state and wants to bring Illinoisans the information they need to actively participate in the politics that directly affect them. You can find Reboot on Facebook here and on Twitter at @rebootillinois.