Local lawmakers are optimistic after Gov. Bruce Rauner's State of the State address Wednesday. (WJBC file photo)
By Joe Ragusa
BLOOMINGTON – Local lawmakers say Gov. Bruce Rauner's State of the State address Wednesday was bi-partisan and set the tone for his upcoming budget address.
State Rep. Dan Brady (R-Bloomington) says there's no way for Rauner to please everybody.
"No matter what this governor does, he is going to make a group, associations, whatever, upset, because there aren't good answers to these problems, and there are painful solutions that he is going to have to try and implement," Brady said.
One such proposal in Rauner's State of the State speech Wednesday was consolidating local governments. Brady said he's in favor of that idea, all the way up to consolidating the comptroller and treasurer's offices.
"I'm not talking about taking a meat cleaver to something, I'm talking about taking a surgical scalpel and cutting out the areas where we have redundancy and duplication of services that can be done better," Brady said.
Another proposal that Rauner offered Wednesday involves raising the state's minimum wage to $10 per hour in seven years. State Sen. Jason Barickman (R-Bloomington) said the economy needs to improve before the legislature raises the minimum wage, so seven years isn't too long to wait.
"We've clearly got some immediate work to do where we repair our business climate and we make our state competitive," Barickman said. "We create more jobs, more good jobs, and the result is that people, hopefully, have more opportunities to earn a higher wage, even higher than the minimum wage today or that's proposed for tomorrow."
Barickman also likes Rauner's proposal to give citizens more power over their local government's spending.
"If we can relax mandates and empower local voters to help control those local costs, I think you'd see an immediate return to the taxpayer," Barickman said.
State Sen. Bill Brady (R-Bloomington), an opponent of Rauner in the Republican gubernatorial primary last year, said Rauner didn't hide from the big problems facing Illinois.
“We are learning more and more every day just how big Illinois’ problems are, but I appreciate that we have a Governor who is clearly focused on job creation, helping taxpayers, and implementing the necessary government reforms to put Illinois back on track,” Brady said in a written statement.
Rauner is scheduled to deliver his budget address Feb. 18.
Joe Ragusa can be reached at [email protected].
