IL-Gov. 2018 Megathread

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kennedy apparently told a bunch of old people "if you don't vote for me you'll die alone"

Link to an article/video, please.

friend of a friend was there

Video proof or article would be better, if this is somehow real though...

[Kingpoleon]

kennedy apparently told a bunch of old people "if you don't vote for me you'll die alone"

Link to an article/video, please.

friend of a friend was there

Once the goons of Pritzker and Madigan pick up on this, Kennedy might be dead. We better hope at least Drury runs.

[Ye We Can]

kennedy apparently told a bunch of old people "if you don't vote for me you'll die alone"

Link to an article/video, please.

friend of a friend was there

Once the goons of Pritzker and Madigan pick up on this, Kennedy might be dead. We better hope at least Drury runs.

Drury has no hope in the primary imo, and even if he did he'd have a hell of a time trying to rally the Dem base as Rauner-lite. 

Not trying to be snarky here, but I don't get your affinity for Kennedy.  He isn't a centrist, seems to have missed his relatives charisma gene, and is essentially piggybacking off his last name without a plan for anything else.

[Donerail]

kennedy apparently told a bunch of old people "if you don't vote for me you'll die alone"

Link to an article/video, please.

friend of a friend was there

Once the goons of Pritzker and Madigan pick up on this, Kennedy might be dead. We better hope at least Drury runs.

Speak for yourself. I'm an Illinois resident and I couldn't care less about the campaigns of Chris Kennedy or Scott Drury (current preference order is 1. Biss, 2. Pawar)

[#gravelgang #lessiglad]

kennedy apparently told a bunch of old people "if you don't vote for me you'll die alone"

Link to an article/video, please.

friend of a friend was there

Once the goons of Pritzker and Madigan pick up on this, Kennedy might be dead. We better hope at least Drury runs.

Scott Drury is running.

lol....Rauner refuses to implement budget:

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Hopefully he continues until a property tax freeze and legislative term limits are acceded to.

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lol....Rauner refuses to implement budget:

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Good.  If opposing tax increases hurts his reelection then we're in some Bizarro Universe.

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

I thank governor Rauner for standing up to the people of Illinois, who can't afford a 32% tax increase.

[#gravelgang #lessiglad]

lol....Rauner refuses to implement budget:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Good.  If opposing tax increases hurts his reelection then we're in some Bizarro Universe.

Ideally, Rauner pushes the legislature into lowering the property tax burden and instead shifting the burden of taxation into a hybrid progressive income / consumption or GST-type tax system with property taxes as a supplement. A budget that is so dependant on property tax receipts results in extreme sensitivity to economic trends, moreso than other states.

 A higher flat income tax and astronomic property tax makes employment in the state or interstate immigration difficult. Rents are expensive, property taxes pose an impediment to home ownership and high income taxes for businesses and employees make other states more attractive. A progressive structured income tax helps alleviate the regressivity inherent in the consumption tax, while ensuring that employees move to Illinois expecting low taxes on their entry level jobs. A lower corporate rate encourages Illinois' companies to remain in Illinois and to continue to attract top-tier companies to the state (see, e.g., Boeing's move to IL, Amazon's corporate support office expansion).

Long post short, tax increases or decreases shouldn't be the goal; moving to a modernized revenue system while maintaining similar levels of overall revenue should. Of course, this would require addressing (read: scaling back on) pension spending for current recipients, which would require a constitutional amendment.

[Kingpoleon]

kennedy apparently told a bunch of old people "if you don't vote for me you'll die alone"

Link to an article/video, please.

friend of a friend was there

Once the goons of Pritzker and Madigan pick up on this, Kennedy might be dead. We better hope at least Drury runs.

Drury has no hope in the primary imo, and even if he did he'd have a hell of a time trying to rally the Dem base as Rauner-lite. 

Not trying to be snarky here, but I don't get your affinity for Kennedy.  He isn't a centrist, seems to have missed his relatives charisma gene, and is essentially piggybacking off his last name without a plan for anything else.

I really hate the Cook County machine. Quinn, Madigan, the Daleys, and their gang are all terribly corrupt. Kennedy has the best shot, in my opinion, of taking them down a notch.

[muon2]

 A higher flat income tax and astronomic property tax makes employment in the state or interstate immigration difficult. Rents are expensive, property taxes pose an impediment to home ownership and high income taxes for businesses and employees make other states more attractive. A progressive structured income tax helps alleviate the regressivity inherent in the consumption tax, while ensuring that employees move to Illinois expecting low taxes on their entry level jobs. A lower corporate rate encourages Illinois' companies to remain in Illinois and to continue to attract top-tier companies to the state (see, e.g., Boeing's move to IL, Amazon's corporate support office expansion).

Long post short, tax increases or decreases shouldn't be the goal; moving to a modernized revenue system while maintaining similar levels of overall revenue should. Of course, this would require addressing (read: scaling back on) pension spending for current recipients, which would require a constitutional amendment.

Nice analysis. To add a little history to it I can say that there have been attempts to modernize the syste for decades. In the mid-1990's Pub Gov Edgar proposed restructuring the tax code to reduce the reliance on property taxes for education. In 2007 there was another attempt spurred by the unions to do the same including a broad expansion of the sales tax, since IL has the narrowest sales tax base of any state that imposes one. Both those efforts ran into interests on both the right and left that liked their tax advantages under the antiquated system, and a public mistrust of Springfield to get it right with new taxes. Even at the beginning of this year there was discussion of restructuring revenue as part of an effort to bring revenue back to 2014-levels, but by the time all the interests had weighed in, the only surviving proposal was to return the income tax to the 2014 rate.

[Young Conservative]

I thank governor Rauner for standing up to the people of Illinois, who can't afford a 32% tax increase.

[Shameless Lefty Hack]

I thank governor Rauner for standing up to the people of Illinois, who can't afford a 32% tax increase.

Thanks to that tax hike from 'slightly less than everywhere else' to 'around average,' I can now call 911 if I need to. I appreciate your concern but I'm honestly fine.

It is not a tax hike of 32%. It is an increase from 3.75% to 4.95%. While technically correct to call it a '32% hike,' it does not accurately reflect the situation. At all.

[MAINEiac4434]

I thank governor Rauner for standing up to the people of Illinois, who can't afford a 32% tax increase.

Thanks to that tax hike from 'slightly less than everywhere else' to 'around average,' I can now call 911 if I need to. I appreciate your concern but I'm honestly fine.

It is not a tax hike of 32%. It is an increase from 3.75% to 4.95%. While technically correct to call it a '32% hike,' it does not accurately reflect the situation. At all.

You're asking Republicans to be honest, man. It's not worth it.

Hope Rauner gets curb stomped.

[Green Line]

I thank governor Rauner for standing up to the people of Illinois, who can't afford a 32% tax increase.

Thanks to that tax hike from 'slightly less than everywhere else' to 'around average,' I can now call 911 if I need to. I appreciate your concern but I'm honestly fine.

It is not a tax hike of 32%. It is an increase from 3.75% to 4.95%. While technically correct to call it a '32% hike,' it does not accurately reflect the situation. At all.

You're asking Republicans to be honest, man. It's not worth it.

Hope Rauner gets curb stomped.

It actually exactly reflects the situation.  You pay a 32% higher income tax... how is that misleading?  What's the "honest" explanation?  If you make 50,000 your tax goes up from 1,875 to 2,475... Maybe if this is confusing for Democrats, it explains why they continue to screw us over again and again.

[#gravelgang #lessiglad]

I thank governor Rauner for standing up to the people of Illinois, who can't afford a 32% tax increase.

Thanks to that tax hike from 'slightly less than everywhere else' to 'around average,' I can now call 911 if I need to. I appreciate your concern but I'm honestly fine.

It is not a tax hike of 32%. It is an increase from 3.75% to 4.95%. While technically correct to call it a '32% hike,' it does not accurately reflect the situation. At all.

It was possible to call 911 before. This tax increase is paying for services that have already been agreed to (and in some cases) performed but illinois taxpayers have been pushing the bill down the line for decades.

Overly optimistic growth targets resulted in pension payments beyond what the state anticipated (i.e., the state budgeted payments for a 4% growth rate; lower growth rates in reality resulted in the state shouldering higher payouts than budgeted for. combine this with a revenue system deriving an abnormally high percentage from property tax receipts + a crash in real estate prices in 2007-2010 resulting in substantially lower revenues than forecasted and you have a recipe for a budget disaster).

Don't get me wrong, it was a necessity. Losing investment grade bond status would have been catastrophic for the state. It would have been unable to finance any major projects or really any level of significant borrowing. Doing so would have state services atrophy, which in the long run would have driven out business in search of talent that would no longer be attracted to the state.

There were two paths forward: 1) raising taxes to make up a portion of the shortfall; or 2) amend the constitution and pare back pension benefits. Ultimately, the legislature chose the former, but without the fixes that were critical to the state's long term fiscal health. But it's a path forward, which is better than the status quo.

[MAINEiac4434]

Oh, yeah, 4.95% is exorbitant

[Shameless Lefty Hack]

I thank governor Rauner for standing up to the people of Illinois, who can't afford a 32% tax increase.

Thanks to that tax hike from 'slightly less than everywhere else' to 'around average,' I can now call 911 if I need to. I appreciate your concern but I'm honestly fine.

It is not a tax hike of 32%. It is an increase from 3.75% to 4.95%. While technically correct to call it a '32% hike,' it does not accurately reflect the situation. At all.

You're asking Republicans to be honest, man. It's not worth it.

Hope Rauner gets curb stomped.

It actually exactly reflects the situation.  You pay a 32% higher income tax... how is that misleading?  What's the "honest" explanation?  If you make 50,000 your tax goes up from 1,875 to 2,475... Maybe if this is confusing for Democrats, it explains why they continue to screw us over again and again.

Saying it's a 32% increase makes someone who isn't paying attention feel like the income tax is being increased TO 32%. Which yes, a 32% flat tax would be ridiculous.

The most accurate way to describe it is as a 1.2% increase, since an additional 1.2% is taken out of your income.

Alas, Dems haven't really grasped that these distinctions matter, so they didn't fight back on it.

<snip, you have a conservative position on the crisis>

Surprise, I have a left wing stance on the crisis. Stabbing retired workers in the back was never an option, and not just because it was written into the constitution.

[#gravelgang #lessiglad]

^ This directly costs an Illinois employee on minimum wage $200 annually. As Green Line points out above, a family of 4 grossing $50k directly loses $600 yearly. That's $600 that they're unable save for their retirement, or spend on food or clothing.

And I wouldn't consider retiring at 55 on a lifetime pension worth nearly 100% of the worker's final annual salary with 3% compounding COLA increases being stabbed in the back. If anything, the current state workers who have worked hard only to have their benefits reduced in favor of current retirees have been stabbed in the back.

[Donerail]

Oh, yeah, 4.95% is exorbitant

When you already have the nation's highest property taxes, yeah it kinda is—or at least it's enough not to dismiss it as minor.

[#gravelgang #lessiglad]

Nice analysis. To add a little history to it I can say that there have been attempts to modernize the syste for decades. In the mid-1990's Pub Gov Edgar proposed restructuring the tax code to reduce the reliance on property taxes for education.

I'm relatively new to the state. What's the reason why the plan failed? Seems to me from reading archived information that it's similar to Rauner's plan: an increase in income tax in exchange for a reduction in property taxes. Does it stem from Madigan's intransigence?

In 2007 there was another attempt spurred by the unions to do the same including a broad expansion of the sales tax, since IL has the narrowest sales tax base of any state that imposes one. Both those efforts ran into interests on both the right and left that liked their tax advantages under the antiquated system, and a public mistrust of Springfield to get it right with new taxes.

Yeah, if I understand correctly, the state imposes a tax on far fewer services than other states that impose a sales tax and those service business didn't want to collect a sales tax. This is particularly unhelpful given that the US economy has largely transitioned into a service based economy and losing revenue on those services is detrimental to the state

Even at the beginning of this year there was discussion of restructuring revenue as part of an effort to bring revenue back to 2014-levels, but by the time all the interests had weighed in, the only surviving proposal was to return the income tax to the 2014 rate.

I'm aware that it failed in Michigan for reasons unrelated to the efficiency of it, but has there ever been a serious attempt to move the sales tax into the direction of a VAT? VATs don't care about the type of good or service being offered, making for a generally efficient form of revenue raising

[RINO Tom]

I thank governor Rauner for standing up to the people of Illinois, who can't afford a 32% tax increase.

Thanks to that tax hike from 'slightly less than everywhere else' to 'around average,' I can now call 911 if I need to. I appreciate your concern but I'm honestly fine.

It is not a tax hike of 32%. It is an increase from 3.75% to 4.95%. While technically correct to call it a '32% hike,' it does not accurately reflect the situation. At all.

You're asking Republicans to be honest, man. It's not worth it.

Hope Rauner gets curb stomped.

It actually exactly reflects the situation.  You pay a 32% higher income tax... how is that misleading?  What's the "honest" explanation?  If you make 50,000 your tax goes up from 1,875 to 2,475... Maybe if this is confusing for Democrats, it explains why they continue to screw us over again and again.

Hey, as long as they STAND UP TO RAUNER, who gives a shlt about the families of Illinois?

[#gravelgang #lessiglad]

Politico on the state of the race and the money that is expected to be spent.

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Politico on the state of the race and the money that is expected to be spent.

Only 300 Million??
Psssshhhhh
I DEMAND 1 BILLION DOLLARS ON THIS RACE

[Green Line]

And again, you basically can't deduct anything in Illinois.  The rate is what it is, which makes it effectively higher than a lot of other states which are technically higher

[Kingpoleon]

If I was in the legislature, I would go ahead with the 4.95% income tax, but also raise the sales tax to either 7.5% or 10.0%, and then take the resulting revenue to use to cut back at the property taxes.