By Monique Garcia
Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO — Gov. Bruce Rauner is expected to propose hiring more correctional officers and call for broader changes to the state’s criminal justice system in his first State of the State speech Wednesday.
The rookie Republican chief executive will suggest to lawmakers an overhaul of the parole system and higher spending on programs that help inmates find jobs and readjust to the community after they’ve served their time, according to an aide for Rauner with knowledge of the speech. Specifically, Rauner will talk about a program known as Adult Redeploy, which provides grants to counties to develop ways to keep nonviolent offenders out of state prisons.
Those efforts, coupled with the hiring of an unspecified number of correctional officers, are aimed at addressing what Rauner will call the “unsafe environment” for prisoners and guards alike because of the state’s high prison population.
While many details of the speech were being kept under wraps Tuesday, the Rauner aide said the larger theme of the speech is “empowering people.”
The State of the State address comes after Rauner spent the last couple of weeks touring the state offering what he billed as previews of his debut presentation to lawmakers. The governor painted a dreary portrait of Illinois on the edge of collapse because of the policies of Democrats who held unfettered control of state government until his swearing-in about a month ago.
But Rauner offered few specifics beyond renewing his call for a broadening of the sales tax base and suggesting skyrocketing Medicaid health care costs for the poor must be reined in. Rauner also took aim at traditional Democratic allies, arguing state employees are paid too much and unions should have their powers clipped.
It’s a return to the campaign trail strategy Rauner briefly abandoned during the time between winning election and taking office, when he sought to strike a conciliatory tone with talk of bipartisanship in addressing the state’s problems. While the political tactic is aimed at distributing the blame for the “shared sacrifice” Rauner contends is needed to turn the state around, the combative tone could make it even more difficult for him to push his agenda through the Democrat-controlled General Assembly.
The governor’s offensive on organized labor is likely to continue in Wednesday’s speech. He is expected to call on unions with state contracts to include more minorities in their apprenticeship programs, and require work crews on taxpayer-funded construction projects to “reflect the diversity in the surrounding area,” according to a Rauner aide. The move has the political benefit of tweaking unions while also appealing to minority voters.
Rauner also is expected to propose creating a program that would help minority-owned businesses get off the ground.
The governor has been raising the pressure on unions for the last week, contending they’ve helped fuel the state’s financial mess. He argues Democratic politicians inflate state bureaucracy to help strengthen the employee unions that then support them during campaigns, labeling it a “corrupt bargain” that leads to the state spending more while providing fewer services.
“If that went on in business all the time, somebody would get fired at a minimum, but probably somebody would go to jail,” Rauner said during a recent stop in Champaign.
Rauner hinted at other union changes he’d like to see in a memo he sent to lawmakers Monday, highlighting federal employee rules that allow workers to collectively bargain over work conditions but prevent bargaining over wages, benefits and pensions. Federal employees also are banned from strikes or picketing and cannot be forced to join a union, Rauner’s memo noted.
The governor said the regulations could act as a model for “common-sense bipartisan reforms to our employment rules that are fair to both state workers and taxpayers.”
Rauner also sent a new PowerPoint slide to legislators that compares Illinois state government pay to counterparts in the private sector. The slide states that a barber working for the state is paid an average of $70,561 compared to a barber from an “average Illinois working family,” who earns $44,480 a year. State records show the majority of barbers employed by the state work for the prison system, a different working environment than the corner barbershop.
A union spokesman decried Rauner’s attempts to “blame middle-class workers who serve the public,” saying the attacks on employees ignore the state’s larger fiscal problems.
“Given the scale of the real challenges facing the state, it’s inexplicable why the new governor would seek to invite conflict and division that helps no one,” said Anders Lindall, spokesman for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31, the largest state employee union. “The false allegations in which the governor blames middle-class workers who serve the public will do nothing to bring the state together to make us more prosperous or to solve problems for the common good.”
While Rauner is expected to provide broad themes for his first year in office, the underlying question for every proposal will be how the state will pay for any new or expanded programs. That’s because so many of the state’s key concerns are directly related to the budget, particularly after the income tax rate dropped in January and left Rauner to inherit an immediate budget hole of at least $1.4 billion. The shortfall will grow much worse in the new budget Rauner will propose Feb. 18.