'Absolutely' Rauner supports a study for the Southwest Illinois Connector

Governor Bruce Rauner said he would "absolutely" support Senate Joint Resolution 54 that would create a task force to move forward on the Southwest Illinois Connector.

That resolution was filed last week by Sen. Paul Schimpf (R-Waterloo). The proposed highway would connect Carbondale with the Metro East. In his weekly newsletter, Schimpf said the "task force is the best way to get all the data on the table regarding this proposal."

In his State of the State last month, Rauner laid out Illinois' strengths as an economy. However, in a meeting with Southern Illinois LOCAL Media Group last Friday, he acknowledged that there is still work to be done in southern Illinois.

"This should be a rapidly growing place with good jobs and rising incomes, but we've been suffering here because we're hostile to job creators, to industry," said Rauner.

Along with the study of the proposed highway, Rauner said that "cutting red tape and restrictions on business" are key to the economic development, especially in southern Illinois.

"Manufacturers don't want to come here," he said, noting that surrounding states like Indiana have fewer regulations.

Preparing people for good-paying jobs in the workforce is also part of his vision, especially when it comes to education.

"One of the reasons I ran for governor was to really try to create the best school system in America for our young people," said Rauner, claiming that $1.2 billion has been added to the state funding. "Lower income, smaller, rural districts now get more money per student than we used to," he said.

How that funding is actually to play out remains to be seen after lawmakers in the House and Senate voted to override Rauner's veto of SB 444, a technical cleanup measure meant to align the financial models relied on by the lawmakers with the Illinois school code.

That vote took place less than an hour before Rauner delivered his State of the State address.

Rauner used his amendatory veto powers in an attempt to expand a tax credit program for private schools added to the education reform bill in a last-minute, bipartisan compromise.

Rauner told SILMG that ensuring "every student has an outstanding education" with the "resources to do it" is a priority for him. That, he said, means bringing back vocational, technical, and career training.

"Not every student can or should go to a four-year college," he said, "but every student deserves a good-paying career, not just a minimum wage type of job."

To make his point, Rauner noted the economic demand for welders. He said students could become certified in high school, allowing them to enter a welding career making around $50,000 a year.

Rauner said that education funding could be increased without raising taxes. "We have so much inefficiency in our government. There's a lot of money there to be wrung out of government bureaucracy and put into the schools."

Rauner used that to segue to plans to balance the state budget and roll back the state income tax.

His plans to do that, he said, included trying to replace House Speaker Mike Madigan.

Over the past three years, Rauner and Madigan both refused to budge on their beliefs of how to implement a balanced budget, resulting in a 793-day-long budget crisis in Illinois.

"This election, we're asking General Assembly candidates to sign a pledge," said Rauner. That pledge includes two promises - putting term limits on the ballot to allow citizens to vote it up or down and to elect someone else to replace Madigan.

"Speaker Madigan has been in power for 35 years and he's sort of created the current problems that we've got," said Rauner. "Unfortunately, he's one of the politicians who's got a property tax appeal law firm on the side. He's become a millionaire by advising people to get their property taxes down while causing taxes to go up by his policies."

Rauner said that even if Madigan stays in power, he still has several options including not allowing districts to be gerrymandered after the 2020 census and keeping the flat tax, and even lowering it.

"Madigan and his hand-picked candidate for governor, Pritzker, have both said they want to put in a brand new huge income tax hike," Rauner said, noting his belief that such a tax would unfairly target the middle class. "As governor, I can stop that."

Rauner said he hopes the General Assembly will elect a new Speaker. "There's a lot of great Democrats and great Republicans," he said. "We need somebody new with fresh ideas."