As you toasted in the new year, you also should have been celebrating the Illinois income tax rate drop you just got as a late holiday gift. Yes, the temporary income tax increase to 5 percent, approved by Gov. Pat Quinn and a lame-duck legislature in 2011, actually dropped to 3.75 percent with the dawn of 2015 and you will have a little bit more in your paycheck as a result.

But will the drop in rate to 3.75 percent also turn out to be temporary? That is, perhaps, the biggest challenge Gov.-Elect Bruce Rauner faces as he readies to take over stewardship of Illinois at his inauguration Jan. 12. He faces many top Illinois challenges.

Indeed, Rauner, and all Illlinoisans, have a lot of work to tackle if we’re to turn Illinois around after years of decline. Kinda makes you wonder what did Rauner toasted to on New Year’s Eve?

Well, 2015 is here and in the spirit of fresh starts in tough times, here’s a list of what we think the top challenges are Rauner should resolve to embrace in the term ahead:

1. Taxes and budgeting. As we said, whether Rauner will be able to keep the income tax rate at 3.75 percent for long is perhaps the biggest question Illinoisans want answered. It won’t be easy. Since his victory, Rauner repeatedly has warned the budget is a big mess. We knew last spring lawmakers passed a way-out-of -whack spending plan, borrowing from various funds to make it appear as if the budget were balanced. With the income tax rate drop, Rauner and lawmakers just lost about $2 billion in revenues this fiscal year and about $4 billion in the next full one. Rauner has said he’s learned state department heads are seeking another $760 million just to get through the rest of the fiscal year which ends at the end of June. Rauner has talked, without much detail, of a complete tax overhaul. Whether he can balance the budget will go a long way in determining how credit rating agencies assess Illinois and how we’re rated will determine what kind of interest rate we pay when the state borrows money. One last reminder: Illinois starts 2015 owing about $4.5 billion to people who already have provided services to Illinois and its citizens.

2. Pensions. We’re sure you’re aware, Illinois has the worst pension crisis of all 50 states. Rauner recently was named by Institutional Investor, a financial trade publication, as the most powerful person in the nation when it comes to shaping pension policy. Perhaps the publication should have named the Illinois Supreme Court as the most powerful entity when it comes to shaping pension policy. As it now stands, that court later this year will have a huge say in how pensions may or may not be funded here. Rauner will have to respond after that and get control over a now $111 billion shortfall that threatens retirement security for teachers, state troopers, prison guards and plenty of other public service workers. Will Rauner move new state workers into a 401(k)-style plan as he has indicated he wants to do? Even if he does, that doesn’t fund the $111 billion gap. What will he do to fix the single biggest drain on Illinois’ ability to operate, get good credit, fund schools and social services, prisons and fix our roads, bridges and other infrastructure?

3. Schools and their funding. Rauner pledged during the campaign to boost school funding as one of the most important things we can do to improve the future of Illinois and the lives of our children. But the devil is in the details and the details were lacking. State Sen. Andy Manar, a central Illinois Democrat, has a plan to revise the way schools get funded in Illinois, essentially taking money, over several years, from wealthier school districts and giving it to poorer ones, but Rauner said during the campaign the legislation needed more work. SB16, as it is known, would take money primarily from suburban districts and give it to downstate districts, a plan which has many suburban residents concerned. Rauner and his wife, Diana, for years have immersed themselves in education policy. Making a difference here likely is at the top of the soon-to-be governor’s list of resolutions. It should also be on all Illinoisans. A better education and better-funded education is a basic birthright for every child that will mean each has a more productive adulthood, hopefully in Illinois.

4. All our children. While we’re talking children, what about the Department of Children and Family Services? All of us should want to do right by all our children. They are our future and leaving them a better home and better opportunities than the one we had is the motivation for much of what we do in our communities. Protecting and providing those opportunities for the state’s most vulnerable children is one of the critical measures of a decent, fair and well-run state. Recent reports vividly demonstrate Illinois has fallen far short. Children in youth prisons are not guarded closely enough and some have harmed themselves or others. In a recent series, The Chicago Tribune told in chilling detail how state child welfare officials at DCFS have fallen short. Children in their care have been attacked and abused. They flee the abuse, often only to live on the street or in other dangerous places, sometimes being prostituted out by others to survive. Caring for children who have known nothing more than more than hunger, poverty and abuse is one of the greatest challenges there is. But it is imperative. Fixing this and the Department of Children and Family Services is perhaps the biggest challenge Rauner faces that he might not have been expecting.

5. Let’s not forget about redistricting reform. A Rauner campaign cornerstone centered implementing term limits in Illinois, but that effort was stymied by Illinois’ courts along with redistricting reform. Hundred thousands of voters supported both efforts as a way to stem corruption in Illinois. Reforming the way political maps get drawn in Illinois would be a fundamental change that would produce lasting results. Last year’s bipartisan effort to end gerrymandering failed when judges made it clear citizen-led efforts to change the state constitution won’t fly. So now it’s up to all of us citizens to pressure Rauner, the state’s top legislative leaders and rank-and-file lawmakers to fix this for us. There is a way. And if ever there was a window to push for a fairer government and better politics in Illinois, ending rigged mapmaking that leads to rigged elections is it. Illinoisans, keep demanding better.

6. Relationship-building. Can we stipulate here that Democratic House Speaker Michael J. Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton are going to want to hand Republican Rauner some failures and Rauner will want to return the favor? Can we stipulate that Rauner has bashed union leaders and union members do not trust or like him much? Fine, but we all have to resolve that we are not going to allow any of that or any of these elected officials to leave us stagnant, mired in gridlock for the next four years. So far, relations between the key top elected officials seem to be off to a cordial start. Let’s build on that. At Judy Baar Topinka’s memorial service last month, former Gov. Jim Thompson noted voters picked a Democratic-controlled Legislature and a Republican governor, as they have before when he was the chief executive and when Jim Edgar and George Ryan were at the helm. When Republicans and Democrats both shared power before, the two parties got together, hammered out some compromises, and got some things accomplished for Illinois. Let us all resolve to lift our voices to make sure that happens again on the many significant challenges we face.

A new year has dawned and beckons each of us. It’s our state government. Each of us must take ownership and keep acting to improve it.

Together, we can resolve to confront our challenges, constructively. And if we do, together, we can improve Illinois.

NEXT ARTICLE: Illinois redistricting reform would be the best gift

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