By Patrick Baron

BLOOMINGTON – Amidst a re-election battle, Governor Bruce Rauner visited Bloomington Thursday afternoon to tour GROWMARK.

Following the tour, Rauner advocated for his latest budget proposal. He reaffirmed his plan to shift pension costs to school districts, which has been met with uncertainty by local school boards.

“We should do what many other states have done and put the responsibility for paying teacher pensions where they belong, at the local school district level, where the benefits are determined and who gets the benefits is determined,” Rauner explained. “We need to align the responsibility with the payment responsibility and do that at the local level.”

Rauner said higher payments from the state and phasing in the shifts over four years will “more than offset” those costs. He explained once the pension reform is approved by the Illinois Supreme Court, the state will see a one billion dollar tax cut.

He said his plan is not only balanced, but is written in such a way that the state will see a surplus.

“Even without the pension reform and without the tax cut, we’re having a balanced budget – and in fact we proposed a budget that has a $350,000,000 surplus in it that we can use to pay down bills,” Rauner said.

Rauner said to counter his billion dollar tax cut, the budget proposal gets rid of wasteful Medicaid spending and cuts the structure of group health insurance plans inside state government.

Patrick Baron can be reached at [email protected].