Rauner talks budget impasse, education funding

Gov. Bruce Rauner sounded off on several topics, including education funding and the state budget impasse, during a Monday question-and-answer session with area business leaders.

Rauner and fellow Republican U.S. Rep. Peter Roskam were the featured guests at a Greater Oak Brook Business Leaders event at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn.

Here's an edited transcript of Rauner's responses to some of the questions:

Q. Can you comment on consolidation?

A. Illinois has more units of government than any state in America. We have roughly 7,000 units of government. The second-worst state has 2,000 fewer units.

We've got to get Springfield off the backs of local voters. My big mantra is: local control. Do you want that district? You should be able to decide. Don't have Springfield keep it and force it on you.

The schools are yours. The local voters should control schools. Local voters should control the municipalities. Local voters should control townships and counties and run these entities the way they want.

Just let people decide. Run your communities how you want to run them. If people agree with the status quo or like how Illinois is run or want to keep it, God bless them.

Q. Should education funding be redistributed so more money is sent to less-wealthy districts?

A. We can't be taking lots of money away from some districts and giving it to other districts. That's not fair, and it doesn't work.

That said, we also need to come up with a different, better way to fund our schools because the gap between what high-income schools receive and what low-income schools receive in terms of financial support is the biggest gap in America.

Our low-income neighborhoods and our low-income schools get so little resources from the state, it's denying the American dream of a high-quality education for too many of our young people. That's not fair. So we've got to come up with a way to make it better.

To make it better, it's going to take more money from the state. It just will. It's going to take the state stepping up and doing more.

I'm an anti-tax, low government spending person. But the one place I am passionate that taxpayer dollars should go to is education. For me, that's the most important thing we do collectively as a community. That's our future. So school funding should come first.

Q. What do you think will happen after the stopgap budget expires on Dec. 31?

A. We have been going down a road of spending more money than we bring in for decades. It's basically bankrupting our state. We can't do this anymore.

I've said I'm willing to raise taxes as part of (balancing the budget). But what I won't do is raise taxes and have no reforms or no changes. I won't do it. I just won't.

The other thing I won't do is sign an unbalanced budget. We've got to stop doing this. It doesn't work. And we're not the federal government. We can't print money.

Let's do some material reforms that will grow our economy so we don't have to always just raise taxes.

Every reform we've advocated ... has strong Democrat support and Republican support. But the entrenched powers who controlled Illinois for decades want no change. They love the status quo. They and their buddies are making tons of money from this current system. And they refuse any reform at all. So we're knocking heads. That's why this election matters so much. We need reformers.

Q. Do you need to do a better job of educating the public about what you're trying to accomplish?

A. That's probably my single biggest frustration ... how hard it is to get a message out effectively. What we need to do in Illinois is hard to explain in a 30-second TV ad. You can get a little tiny sound bite. We're doing the best we can. What we have decided to do is get much more aggressive and sophisticated in using social media. That helps, and that's clearly gaining some traction.