Brian Scopa: 2026 candidate for Illinois House District 84
Bio
Office sought: House District 84
Party: Republican
City: Naperville
Age: 48
Previous offices held: None.
Q&A
What do you consider the three most pressing issues facing the state in the next four years, and how should they be addressed?
Reform the SAFE-T Act. I address this in question #3 below, but I’ll start by stating that violent crime is a regressive tax on our state’s most vulnerable citizens, and it’s a choice to tolerate it.
Affordability. I hear every day from the residents of my district that Illinois is becoming unaffordable, due to the highest combined tax burden in the nation. We desperately need to reduce property taxes, which are the highest in the nation and approaching 2% of a home’s value. We have the second highest gasoline tax in the nation. We must invest in our electrical grid to bring the spiraling price of electricity under control, because the cost of electricity has gone up over 50% in the last five years. Our citizens need economic relief.
Economic Growth. We need to dig ourselves out of our worst in the nation’s unfunded pensions. We’re well past the peak of the Laffer Curve, so we’re not going to get out of this crisis by squeezing taxpayers harder. We can’t keep driving our businesses to more friendly states. Illinois has barely added any net jobs in the last eight years, and wage growth has completely stalled out
How would you assess the General Assembly's handling, to date, of the various proposals surrounding a Chicago Bears stadium in Arlington Heights? What proposals would you have been willing to support and in what ways, if any, might you have approached it differently?
I think we all agree that the General Assembly has done a poor job in getting the new stadium across the goal line. This issue has been in the works for years, and in true Springfield fashion, the General Assembly kicked the can down the road until what should have been a routine issue became a crisis, much like our underfunded public pensions.
The Mega Projects bill did not seem like an equitable solution to me. Senate Amendment 2 to House Bill 958 seemed like a much better solution, because it would allow Arlington Heights to build the stadium financed by bonds, and then lease the stadium to the Bears. That would have given control of the stadium project to the municipality hosting it, without requiring a huge infusion of funding from the rest of the state.
I think less important to the Bears than the mechanism for funding the building of the stadium and tax breaks, was the fact that Indiana’s legislature approved their proposal in February. The contrast in stability between the Illinois and Indiana legislatures couldn’t be starker, which is why the Bears will be just another in the long line of Chicago businesses heading east for a more predictable regulatory environment.
Now roughly three years into the elimination of cash bail in Illinois as part of the SAFE-T Act, how would you assess the success or failure of the criminal justice reform measure? What changes, if any, would you support?
The SAFE-T act has failed in keeping offenders with multiple violent crimes off the streets. We don’t need to return to cash bail to reform the shortcomings of the SAFE-T and Pre-Trial Fairness act. We do need to place the burden of proof for release on the defense for violent crimes, with a presumption of pretrial confinement for crimes committed while already on release and for offenders with previous violent crimes. Electronic monitoring isn’t appropriate for the most violent and disruptive 1% of criminals.
We also need to adopt a statewide risk assessment tool to help standardize pretrial release conditions. This would not only help make our justice system fairer statewide, but it would also provide important feedback to voters on judges who routinely release violent criminals onto the streets against the objective risk assessment.
It’s the people at the lower end of the economic ladder that suffer most from violent crime, which drives off businesses, drives down property values, and destroys the very jobs necessary to move up the economic ladder. Tolerating violent crime is a regressive tax on our state’s most vulnerable citizens, and it’s a choice we don’t have to make.
Illinois homeowners face one of the highest relative property tax burdens in the country. What specific proposals could you offer to ease the burden on state residents?
Having the highest property tax in the country is one of the major causes of Illinois’ affordability crisis, which is leading to net outmigration and eroding the very tax base we need to pay for our services and fund our pension debt. The very first thing that should be done is for Springfield to pass a law that limits the rate at which property tax can be increased in a given year to 3% or less. That would at least stop the bleeding.
Once that’s done, the legislature should explore more direct school funding from the state, so that municipalities don’t have to continually raise property taxes to pay for unfunded mandates that also originate in Springfield.
Ultimately, all our funding and tax problems will be solved by capping spending, attracting businesses and investment to our state, and growing our tax base to fulfill our pension obligations. We cannot keep running off our wealthiest citizens and largest businesses if we’re going to right the ship.
Gov. JB Pritzker recently paused a state initiative granting incentives to data center developers, and residents statewide have concerns about how such developments are affecting their access to water, utility rates, and the environment. How should the state approach data centers going forward?
I believe in local control, so if a city decides that they don’t want a data center built in their community, they should have the final say. That’s also why I’m opposed to the BUILD Act. For the same reason, I don’t think the state should prohibit data center construction against the wishes of the people who will live with it. Data centers can be built in a way that hugely benefits a city, and there are many cities that have figured out how to make it work, both economically and environmentally.
Tax incentives can help drive needed investment in Illinois, but much like with the Bears, there’s a balance that needs to be found.
Many states with data centers have seen electricity costs come down as supply rises to meet the demand. Having served five engineering tours in the Navy, I understand how vital reliable power is. As AI drives electrical demand, we must ensure it isn’t raising costs on our citizens who already pay some of the highest electricity costs in the nation. Requiring data centers to invest heavily in our electrical grid or even to supply their own power are all options to ensure they aren’t driving up the cost of electricity.
Illinois’ “sanctuary” policies concerning immigration have made it a target for the Trump administration and critics who say they encourage criminal behavior. How do you feel about those policies, and how, if at all, would you change them?
Immigration is a federal issue, which was settled by the Supreme Court in 2010, when the Obama administration sued the state of Arizona over the attempted enforcement of state immigration laws. If the President chooses not to execute the laws our representatives wrote, we no longer live in a democracy.
The Republican House and Democratic Senate created ICE under the George W. Bush administration in 2002, and it’s operated under both Republican and Democratic administrations since then. President Obama had the political power to overhaul or shut down ICE, and he chose not to.
That’s not to say that there isn’t room for change to the immigration laws the current administration is enforcing. As Lincoln famously said in his Lyceum Address, “But I do mean to say, that, although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still while they continue in force, for the sake of example, they should be religiously observed.”
That’s a long way of saying that the mechanism for changing unpopular or unjust laws is through the legislative process in Washington DC, not by putting state law at odds with settled federal law.
Many women in the legislature complain about a culture of sexual harassment in Springfield. Do you see evidence of this and, if so, what should be done about it?
I’ve been invited to Springfield on several occasions, and I was hosted by various groups and elected representatives. I’ve certainly never witnessed a culture of sexual harassment although I don’t doubt that it exists.
I think the way to address any cultural issues of sexual harassment start with reforming the Legislative Inspector General (LIG), which is hobbled by oversight from the very General Assembly it’s charged with bringing accountability to.
The LIC needs to be able to issue subpoenas without the approval of the partisan Legislative Ethics Commission (LEC). Since the LEC is an eight-member board, with half the members appointed by each party, either party can prevent subpoenas from being issued in any given investigation. While it’s critically important to protect witnesses and whistleblowers in an investigation, the LEC can also prevent public release of an investigation’s summary report. This allows both parties to escape transparency and public scrutiny, even in substantiated cases of misconduct.
Are you satisfied with the state's existing ethics policies for senators and representatives? If so, what about the policies should reassure Illinoisans that elected leaders abide by high standards? If not, what changes need to be made?
I don’t think the ethical issues that afflict our representatives require additional rules or regulations so much as transparent investigation and rigorous enforcement of the existing rules.
The larger issue is not with the LIC, but the Legislative Ethics Commission (LEC)’s authority and structure. I believe the LEC should not be comprised of current members of the general assembly, and the board needs to have an odd number of seats, so that it can’t be so easily deadlocked by either party. These simple reforms would go a long way towards giving the LIC the independence and authority it needs to fulfill its duties and increase the transparency and accountability of our General Assembly.
What personal qualifications do you bring that would make you an effective legislator?
I’m a retired Navy Commander, with 22 years of service. I have a BS in Psychology from the University of Idaho, and an MA in National Security and Strategic Studies from the Naval War College.
I was stationed on five ships and deployed six times. At sea, I primarily served as an engineering officer, including as a senior engineering officer on an aircraft carrier, the USS GERALD R. FORD. I have a deep understanding of issues relating to power generation, including nuclear power. I believe that experience qualifies me to help navigate our electrical grid challenges.
Ashore, I served in training and education roles, including as the Force Training Officer for the Atlantic Surface Fleet and the Navy Reserve, where I managed the Navy Reserve’s $60 million training and education budget.
I was successful in these duties because I drove change by building consensus across organizations and stakeholders. There’s politics aplenty in the military, especially at the senior ranks, and I was recognized for my ability to break down silos, and gain consensus for approaches that allowed everyone involved to win. Springfield needs more consensus building and less zero-sum partisanship.