Dan McConchie: 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: Hawthorn WoodsWebsite: Dan4Illinois.comTwitter: Candidate did not respond.Facebook: Candidate did not respond.Office sought: 26th State Senate District Age: 43Family: Spouse - MilenaChildren - Sophia KristinaOccupation: BusinessmanEducation: MA, Christian Thought from Trinity Evangelical Divinity SchoolBA, Bible from Central Bible CollegeCivic involvement: Member, Board of Regents at The Fund for American StudiesMember, Board of Directors of Informed Choices Pregnancy and ParentingMember, Public Works Committee of Hawthorn WoodsElected offices held: State Senate, 2016 -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?One of the biggest problems we have in the Illinois legislature is that it is a top-down system where the leaders are very powerful and the rank and file has little influence on the process. I support requiring 24 hour notice before a final bill vote on any normal legislation and 72 hours before a final vote on the budget (given its size and complexity).I support a rule that would require any bill to be heard in committee when a legislator gets at least five other members to co-sponsor it. I also support a rule that allows a majority of legislative members to overrule the leader on any bill and allow it to come up for debate and vote.I will not decide how to vote until the various candidates for leadership lay out their plans for their caucus. I will then support the person who I think is best suited to lead.I believe voters are the ultimate term limit, but for that to work, we need a fair map and equitable campaign finance rules, neither of which currently exist in Illinois. I favor putting term limits on the ballot and term limits for legislative leaders. I support the ongoing drive for a constitutional amendment to create a non-partisan commission to establish the boundaries of legislative districts.I will advocate for any reasonable bill, rule changes or constitutional amendment that helps level the playing field and allows legislators to truly represent the interests of their constituents.Would you vote for an increase in state income taxes or sales taxes? Would you vote for new taxes, such as on services? What is your position on a graduated income tax?I do not support tax increases or the institution of a graduated income tax. Such policies encourage job creators to leave the state. We are already losing population relative to the rest of the country. Regressive policies that make it harder for job creators only accelerate the process.What changes, if any, do you support in education and education funding in Illinois? Please be specific.School funding ought to be adequate, equitable, efficient and promote excellence. No child should suffer a poor education simply because of where they live. I support a change in K-12 funding because we have one of the most unfair education funding systems in the nation. And thanks to state support for education being the worst in the nation, our property taxes are highest in the nation. I support the evidence-based model that many educators advocate for public school funding. The question is how do we solve ensuring every child gets a quality education when our primary tool is how to distribute limited state funding.One way of doing this that I support is to have the money follow the child. Instead of sending education dollars to centralized bureaucracies like CPS, the state could attach those dollars to the students, allowing parents to choose which school is best for their child. At the higher education level, we are facing a brain drain - our kids moving out of state because college tuition at our universities are 30 to 60 percent higher than other schools in the same conference. When our kids go to school in another state, they often don't return. It breaks up families when our future taxpayers go to school and put down roots outside of Illinois. Rather than being micromanaged by the state, universities need more autonomy on how to spend their money so they can bring down costs and make college more affordable.On Illinois' budget, specifically, where do you believe cuts need to be made?We should go through the budget, line by line, looking for ways to make the government more efficient. Some examples are:1. We should reform state purchasing rules and switch to online reverse auctions allowing anyone who can fulfill the service to participate. This increases transparency and lowers costs.2. There are some union negotiated rules that enable certain classes of employees to be automatically granted overtime whenever it is requested and the department heads have no control over it. This leads to unnecessary costs - costs that are borne entirely by the taxpayer.3. We should have an incentive program where state employees are rewarded for ideas that cut costs in their department while maintaining or even increasing service quality.4. We should get rid of the state owned fleet of automobiles and switch to a privately-managed leased car program for state vehicles.What approach do you support toward fixing the public pension systems?I support moving government employees away from a defined benefit plan to a defined contribution plan. This is critical to improving the state's finances and moving control of retirement funds away from politicians and toward retirees. I also support pension reform proposals that lower costs by providing a lump sum buyout of current and future annuitants.We also must reform the way pensions are calculated. The common practice of local governmental units to greatly increase an employee's salary in the last few years of employment dramatically increasing the state's pension obligation is wrong and must be changed.What other issues, if any, are important to you as a candidate for this office?We have far more governmental units than any other state in the country. We should provide counties with the authority to eliminate and consolidate unnecessary or duplicative governmental units wherever there can be cost and administrative savings while maintaining a high level of constituent services.Please name one current leader who most inspires you.Arloa Sutter of Breakthrough Urban Ministries in East Garfield Park, Chicago. For 22 years, she has helped homeless men and women find a future.What is the biggest lesson you learned at home growing up?The value of learning to budget. At 16 I was required to budget my own money within the safety net of being at home.If life gave you one do-over, what would you spend it on?I would have driven the car instead of the motorcycle to help a friend move likely avoiding becoming paralyzed from the waist down.What was your favorite subject in school and how did it help you in later life?Ethics - it taught me that everything we do has a moral component, whether we recognize it or not.If you could give your children only one piece of advice, what would it be?The value of patience is under-appreciated in today's culture. Learning when to wait is sometimes more powerful than learning when to act.