Kane County Board passes resolution calling for state budget reform

Applause from union members and "yes" votes from Republicans Tuesday showed Kane County Board members may have successfully navigated the thinnest partisan tightrope to be strung during Chairman Chris Lauzen's tenure so far.

County officials were in a tough spot from the minute Gov. Bruce Rauner appeared in the county to ask for support for his turnaround agenda. The sample resolution Rauner asked for an endorsement of was loaded with support for empowerment zones, pension changes and the death of prevailing wage considerations. All those issues could have found support from the majority-Republican county board. But it only would have come by sacrificing allegiances with the Democratic members of the board.

"We needed something that (Rauner) would value that didn't cost us our unity," Lauzen said.

The result was a resolution that passed 21 to 3 Tuesday, with only three Aurora-based Democrats objecting. The vote signaled a bipartisan win for a document that calls for budget and pension reform in Springfield while also being a document local union supporters, like Fox Valley Building Trades President Scott Roscoe, lined up to support Tuesday.

"I rise today to thank our county board," Roscoe said. "Thank you for not including support for right to work, repeal of the prevailing wage act or bans against project labor agreements. We all agree Springfield has work to do. The state of Illinois should be looking to Kane County to see how efficient and effective government operates and how to work within its means."

In reply, county board member Mike Kenyon, a former chairman of the Kane County Republican Party, voiced his appreciation for local unions.

"I've come to realize that if we didn't have organized labor we wouldn't have paid vacations. We wouldn't have health insurance. We wouldn't have sick days. And I don't think it's fair for anybody to blame any of the state's problems on organized labor," Kenyon said.

After the vote, Lauzen said the county's resolution was initially misunderstood by many of the people who showed up to speak at recent public meetings. There was a mistaken belief the county was contemplating Rauner's resolution rather than a clean draft of its own reform wording, Lauzen said.

"People had objections to something that wasn't there," Lauzen said. "When people say we took certain things out, we never took them out because they were never in. It was never a consideration of somebody else's work. This was an expression of what I believe represents 523,000 peoples' thinking, which is reform it. People said you can't put pension issues in there, or you have to stay away from tax issues. What we said is, 'No, you have to stand up and reform.' "

The document calls for a low state income tax, lower sales tax, spending cuts and consolidation of the state's comptroller and treasurer's offices. It calls on state lawmakers to reject unfunded mandates for local governments, reduction of county government authority and any attempt to merge underfunded pension systems with fully funded pension systems.