Governor-elect comes to Springfield
ANALYSIS | Bruce Rushton
Governor-elect Bruce Rauner visited Springfield last week to say thanks for electing him.
You would never have guessed the election was over, with Rauner winning by a bigger margin than most pundits and pollsters had predicted, if they had envisioned a Republican win at all. Three days after the polls closed, the governor-elect spoke at Café Moxo against a backdrop of campaign signs tacked to a wall. He wore a Carhartt jacket, a black one instead of the tan model that became his trademark on the campaign trail.
“We want Illinois to become the greatest state in the greatest nation on earth,” Rauner declared to a room full of cheering supporters. “That’s why we’re running.”
Oops. There was little in how he looked and what he said to differentiate Rauner the candidate from Rauner the governor-elect. He said most of the right things – we have a lot of problems, we need to come up with bipartisan solutions, we have to show compassion toward the poor and disadvantaged, we need to improve schools – while offering no specifics, which isn’t surprising for a businessman-turned-politician who centered his campaign on the failures of an incumbent who was the most unpopular Democratic governor in the nation. There is no upside, after all, in showing your hand when you’ll soon be playing poker with House Speaker Michael Madigan.
And so a palpable sense of “what now?” remains as Rauner prepares for inauguration day, with voters sending more mixed message than mandate.
On the one hand, the electorate rejected business as usual in tossing out Pat Quinn, the accidental governor who won re-election four years ago thanks largely to the GOP’s inability to put forth a moderate, aka electable, candidate. On the other hand, the Democratic legislature remains veto-proof, despite a statewide poll taken last spring that showed that Madigan was even less popular than Quinn.
Minutes after Rauner last week told supporters that he’s going to solve problems and that he doesn’t have any time to waste, former governor Jim Edgar stood outside Café Moxo and tamped down expectations. A tax overhaul, presuming there is one, won’t come until the end of the 2015 legislative session, Edgar predicted, and even then it will take years for the state to turn around its shaky finances. While Madigan has the best political smarts in state government, Edgar said, Rauner is the key.
“The governor is the 800-pound gorilla in this thing,” Edgar said. “If he provides the leadership, he has a chance of getting it done. If he doesn’t, it’ll never get done.”
If Rauner has a shot at anything substantive, it’s fixing one of the nation’s most regressive tax systems. Illinois has the secondhighest property taxes in the nation and is on pace to pass New Jersey to become number one, according to a January report published in Chicago magazine. It is one of the few states that doesn’t tax retirement income, and an estimated 60 percent of the state’s economic activity goes untaxed because Illinois, unlike most states, doesn’t tax services. Meanwhile, the state budget is a train wreck, propped up by an income tax hike set to expire in January. Three years after lawmakers raised income taxes by 66 percent, the state budget still has a deficit measured in the billions of dollars.
If ever there was a time to expand the tax base, and so fundamentally change the tax system, by instituting taxes on retirees as well as lawyers, doctors, accountants, barbers and other service providers, it is now. It is, at least in theory, politically possible, especially if the state exempts the first $50,000 or so of retirement income while rolling back the 2011 income tax increase. On the campaign trail, Rauner suggested taxing services, and neither Madigan nor Senate President John Cullerton have said they won’t go along.
Kent Redfield, professor emeritus of political studies and public affairs at University of Illinois Springfield, says that Rauner may have a lot to learn about government, but he is smart and versed in the art of the deal.
“You don’t get to where he is without being able to cut deals,” Redfield points out. “That’s something that Madigan and Cullerton are going to be willing to do.”
So long as the politics make sense, with Madigan keeping his stranglehold on the House while Cullerton runs the Senate, progress on taxes, including a sales tax on food, is possible, Redfield says, but new taxes alone won’t bail out the state. Budget cuts will also be needed, he warned, and the legislative leaders and the governor will have to figure out ways to share the blame, with Madigan delivering votes to cut state services while Rauner finds Republican lawmakers to support new taxes. Everyone can end up winning if the economy and state finances rebound before the 2016 elections so that incumbents in the legislature can defend tough votes, Redfield offers.
A lot of ifs, to be sure. But Redfield points out that Madigan and Cullerton have both been lawmakers under Republican administrations, and the House speaker has arguably worked better with Republican governors than he has Democratic ones.
“On some issues, I think they’re going to be able to work together,” Redfield said. “Rauner, at least, introduces a new dynamic.”
Contact Bruce Rushton at [email protected].