Casey Urlacher: Candidate Profile

Back to 26th State Senate District

Note: Answers provided have not been edited for grammar, misspellings or typos. In some instances, candidate claims that could not be immediately verified have been omitted. Jump to:BioQA Bio City: MettawaWebsite: www.caseyurlacher.netTwitter: Candidate did not respond.Facebook: Candidate did not respond.Office sought: 26th State Senate District Age: 36Family: I am engaged to Jeanna and we are planning a June, 2016 wedding. My parents are deceased and my closest relatives in Illinois are my brother Brian and his family, who live on the same street as me in Mettawa; and my sister Sheri and her her family who live a couple of miles away.Occupation: Real Estate / Construction ExecutiveEducation: I attended the New Mexico Military Institute and I graduated from Lake Forest College with a degree (B.A.) in Business.Civic involvement: I try to give back to the community at every opportunity as a volunteer for conservationist issues and as a fundraiser for charitable causes. In addition to serving as the Mayor of Mettawa, I am involved as a volunteer or fundraiser for Conserve Lake County and St. Jude's Research Hospital. I was also appointed to serve as a Member of the Illinois Civil Service Commission.Elected offices held: Mayor of the Village of Mettawa.Questions Answers What needs to be done structurally to make the legislature more effective? Will you vote for your current legislative leader? What is your position on term limits in general and specifically for legislative leaders? Do you support the ongoing drive for a constitutional amendment on redistricting? What will you do to promote implementation of any changes you recommend?When Illinois' founding fathers created our legislative structure, I doubt they envisioned hordes of special interest lobbyists with suitcases full of cash controlling the votes of legislators. In addition, the Leaders have too much control over the system. Each issue should be allowed to have a fair hearing. The most effective way for this to happen is to change the rules of the Senate and House to eliminate the Rules and Assignments Committee. This way, individual legislative members are able to have their issues heard. There should be consideration of requiring a minimum 48 hours to review a final budget bill prior to its' vote. Too many times budget deals have been struck with legislative members having absolutely no idea why or what exactly they are voting for. I have made no commitment to vote for any person to serve as the Republican leader of the State Senate. All state legislators should be term limited to 10 years. This gives ample time for new members to utilize other members "collective wisdom" while at the same time the mindset should be to represent constituent's interests, rather than self-interest. If term limits are not put into place, then I support a term limit on legislative leaders. I wholeheartedly support a non-partisan redistricting entity, which operates independently of the state legislature, to draw state legislative and Congressional districts. Legislators should not be drawing their own districts and the tie-breaking draw out of a hat winner-takes-all system that Illinois employs is downright embarrassing.What approach do you support toward fixing the public pension systems, not just for teachers but for public safety personnel as well?The state of Illinois has had a long history of chronically underfunding the state pension system. To further exacerbate the situation, the previous Governors and the legislature continued to approve pension sweeteners for politically-connected individuals and to secure AFSCME support for re-election. Given the current condition of the governmentally controlled public employee pensions, no new employee in their right mind should trust the state government to manage the money they need to support themselves in their old age. Therefore, moving forward, I support the placement of all newly hired public employees into a 401k-retirement system plan. In the private sector, defined benefit retirement plans have proven to be unsustainable and have been scuttled in favor 401k plans. The current pension obligations obviously must be considered different due to the Pension Clause in the Illinois Constitution. Recent Supreme Court rulings made clear that the Pension Clause bars the General Assembly from unilaterally reducing these benefits of current employees and retirees. As for the current pension obligations, I believe we should continue to try to negotiate with public pension employee stakeholders to reach a reasonable compromise (within the legal framework provided by recent court rulings), which makes the pension system for current employees sustainable through their lifetimes. While this may not result in a huge number to immediately fix the States' budget issues, it will put the state on a sustainable track to fully live up to its' pension obligations while simultaneously saving state dollars.On Illinois' budget, specifically, where do you believe cuts need to be made? Specifically, what tax increases, changes in tax policy or other opportunities for revenue growth do you support? What is your position on a graduated income tax?Illinois has reached a dire budget crisis and cuts will be necessary to balance our checkbook. For at least 20 years, the lack of long term fiscal planning compounded by the lack of short-term fiscal restraint forces Illinois to make drastic cuts in state spending or face bankruptcy. Specific cuts that I would examine include ensuring the Medicaid SMART Act reforms, which were passed in 2012, are fully implemented. Medicaid takes up nearly one-fourth of the state budget; it would be impossible to balance our budget without taking a look at this program. Since the reforms passed in 2012, the Democrat controlled legislature could not help themselves and systematically began to roll back these necessary reforms. In addition, we must continue to scrub our rolls to determine Medicaid eligibility. Other options for cuts include across the board cuts in entitlement programs and poorly supervised grant programs that were expanded by the last two Democrat Governors to secure political support for their re-elections.I oppose a graduated income tax structure and any increase in the personal or corporate income tax rates as well as taxing retirement income. I believe the Illinois government has a spending and borrowing problem, which is directly impacting the sustainability of the Illinois economy. We need to provide stability and make it easier for businesses to succeed and thrive in Illinois. This will entail passing legislation to make Illinois competitive with other states in worker's compensation insurance costs and streamlining business regulations.What changes, if any, do you believe the state should make in the area of education and education funding? How will you act to promote the changes you wish to see?We must review the school aid formula; however, I would never support a new formula, which shifts money from the suburbs to Chicago. The suburban districts already receive very little state aid. It is unfair to cut the little they receive. We need to consider other options in reviewing our school funding. For example; we must eliminate school mandates that drive up needless costs. Programs the state imposes on school districts without any additional funding are a source of our school funding problems. Illinois imposes well over 100 mandates on our districts, such as requiring certain school holidays or requiring costly in-school behind the wheel drivers education training. While these mandates are put in place with good intentions, we must take the tough vote to bring relief from these mandates, saving schools the possibility of up to $200 million annually. These are dollars that would be much better invested in our children in the classroom. I also believe that school consolidation must become a reality. While I recognize this is a difficult task to accomplish, we must ask ourselves what is more important â#8364;#8220; maintaining the broken status quo or eliminating bureaucracy and investing additional dollars into our kids? There are over 850 Illinois school districts, we should target consolidating a third of these districts. Illinois leaders have been unable to take the politically difficult votes to bring state mandate relief and school consolidation. I will stand up and take these tough votes.Please list any elected office you have ever run for and what the result of that election was. Have you ever been appointed to fill an unexpired term?I was elected the Mayor of Mettawa in 2013. I was appointed by the Governor and approved by the state legislature to serve as a member of the Illinois Civil Service Commission.What other issues, if any, are important to you as a candidate for this office?The creation of a sustainable financial structure for the State of Illinois to manage the crushing debt we have inherited from the last two generations of politicians and a bipartisan agreement moving forward to prevent any such fiscal disaster from reoccurring. The irresponsibility of the political class in Illinois has caused a slower economic recovery in Illinois than other Midwestern states, and unless we prove that we can manage ourselves responsibly, we will continue to see businesses and jobs flee and avoid Illinois.Please name one current leader who most inspires you.Speaker of the House Paul Ryan for his thoughtful conservative approach to government and for not letting his position negatively impact his family life.What is the biggest lesson you learned at home growing up?The selfless commitment to one's family that I saw as my mom worked three jobs while raising three kids on her own.If life gave you one do-over, what would you spend it on?Not to fixate on situations or things I could not control.What was your favorite subject in school and how did it help you in later life?I loved history because you see the precedents for today's problems and for their solutions so as not to repeat them again.If you could give your children only one piece of advice, what would it be?In life you may have several jobs, different homes, and friends who fade away but family is always your rock in good times and bad.