Description
Nowlan and Johnson start with the history of how some of the prosperous states of the 1950s became a present-day mess riven by debt and discord and an increasing number of abandoned by both businesses and citizens. Among their more than ninety proposals to restore Illinois to greatness:
• An overhaul of state pension systems that includes more reasonable benefits and lengthening of the retirement age, among other changes;
• Reducing some of the nation’s highest corporate tax rates to draw business;
• Medicare reform through an insurance voucher program;
• Demanding that schools raise expectations for success, particularly in rural and impoverished urban areas;
• A new approach to higher education that features a market-driven system that puts funds within the hands of students moderately than institutions;
• Broadening of the tax base to include products and services and reduction in rates;
• The creation of a long-term plan to handle the state’s five-star transportation infrastructure;
• Raising funds with capital construction bonds to update and integrate the antiquated information systems used by state agencies;
• Uprooting the state’s entrenched culture of corruption by means of public financing of elections, redistricting reform, and revolving door prohibitions for lawmakers.
Pointed, honest, and pragmatic, Fixing Illinois is a plan for effective and honest government that seeks an even nobler end: restoring our faith in Illinois’s institutions and reviving a sense of citizenship and state pride.