Quinn's budget director learned from Naperville

SPRINGFIELD — In the mid-1990s, David Vaught joined a Naperville Unit District 203 committee to try to get a local tax increase approved.

It failed.

But in the process, Vaught would learn firsthand lessons that would help him during a similar, higher-profile fight years later, as budget director for Gov. Pat Quinn.

“That teaches you, in an in-depth way, that people don't like taxes,” he said in a sit-down interview with the Daily Herald. “It's not academic. It's very personal in a local school board.”

Quinn got a $7 billion income tax increase earlier this year. The money has gone a long way to start addressing problems with Illinois finances — deemed beforehand to be among the worst in the country. But it also took money out of the pockets of millions of Illinoisans who are worried about the security of their jobs and are often facing years without pay raises.

Vaught heard the very vocal criticism of Quinn's tax increase pitch firsthand, but he says it's often more amplified on the local level, where he has served on school boards both in Naperville and downstate. There, he knew the officials, the teachers and the parents personally.

“That makes you understand when people stand up in the General Assembly and don't want to raise taxes. It's not just their political motives,” he said. “They're representing a real feel out there.”

Vaught still lives in Naperville while holding one of the most important jobs in Quinn's administration, largely responsible for the management of state government's most basic function — spending money.

Vaught moved to Naperville in 1990, shortly before Quinn hired him to work in the state treasurer's office. Vaught wanted to turn his law career toward investing instead and wanted to be closer to Chicago to do it.

He had already served on a downstate school board and first got involved with the Naperville schools on the tax referendum battle that failed. He called the attempt a “disaster,” arguing that the superintendent at the time lost credibility with voters.

“When you're selling a referendum to the public, you'd better have your facts straight,” he said.

Shortly after, Vaught was elected to the school board and eventually was part of a divided board that pushed for the superintendent to leave.

“It was pretty brutal at times,” he said.

Privately he is an outgoing storyteller, but that is a big difference from his public persona, often all business when trying to sell Quinn's budget plans to reporters or lawmakers.

It's not like he is a hired gun for Quinn. The two actually go back to 1972, when both were southern Illinois campaign workers for Democrat Dan Walker's campaign for governor. Although based hundreds of miles apart — Quinn in the St. Louis area and Vaught on the other side of the state in Carmi — both had to attend regular campaign meetings in Chicago. Vaught, a pilot, would rent a small Cessna plane at 4:30 a.m., fly to pick up Quinn, then land in Chicago at Meigs Field in time for the meeting.

“He was the only guy on the staff that would fly with me,” Vaught said. “He liked the free ride.”

So it shouldn't have been surprising when, in the winter of 2008, Quinn turned to Vaught even before he ascended to the governor's office, knowing Rod Blagojevich's impeachment was imminent and inevitable.

The two met in an Oak Park restaurant, where Quinn made his pitch. They knew taking over the governor's office would be different from when Quinn took the treasurer's job in the early 1990s, when they had months after the election to prepare.

“You don't have a transition when the guy's being impeached,” Vaught said. “There's no cooperation. There's no exchange of information.”

Vaught was with Quinn after the governor took the oath of office in the Capitol, walking shortly afterward into the governor's office a floor below for the first time.

Vaught says Quinn told the on-edge workers to relax.

“Don't worry about it tonight,” Vaught said Quinn told the staff. “Then we literally walked, and he carried his suitcase. And we went to the mansion, and we had a nice dinner.”

Quinn took office among lots of goodwill, given the difficulties of his predecessor. But his administration has at times traversed a rocky road since. The tax increase he campaigned on was highly controversial. And Vaught himself faced heavy criticism for getting a 20 percent pay increase when he was promoted from an adviser to budget director.

The budgets the two have proposed have faced criticism from lawmakers, who have often chosen to go their own way. Vaught says he and the governor have wanted to keep the lines of communication open, though, and he expresses pride in the observation that the budget process appears to be getting better.

“You look back over the last three years and think: Maybe we should have done it even more,” he said.

“Very few people have ever been involved in $50 billion budgets, including governors and legislators and everybody. It's a steep learning curve, and there's a lot going on.”

Illinois Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka agreed that Vaught has worked to be accessible. She referenced a notorious story about Blagojevich's aversion to working on the state's financial problem.

“It's kind of nice Pat Quinn doesn't hide from (Vaught) in the bathroom,” Topinka said.

“We don't worry about political posturing,” she said. “He's never disagreeable.”

Between Vaught's stints working for Quinn in the treasurer's and governor's offices, Vaught started an investment firm in Naperville, starting it out of his wife's law office.

“She would let me use her fax machine line,” he said. “Some of the time.”

Vaught remains a named partner of Mitchell, Vaught and Taylor Inc., but says he doesn't do any work on the daily operations.

The company moved from Naperville to Chicago in 2007 to better accommodate employees who lived throughout the area. Vaught still lives in Naperville, though, and says he particularly enjoys walking through Spring Brook Prairie Forest preserve, not to mention the activities at Clow International Airport next door.

“I can watch the airplanes at the same time,” he said. “It's one of those places where you've got to feel lucky to be able to live there.”

Vaught doesn't fly Quinn around anymore but sometimes flies with him.

“Now I ride in the back with him, and we talk budget or we talk problems,” he said. “You can't shut him up, you know.”