Ralph Black: 2026 candidate for Illinois House District 44

Bio

Office sought: House District 44

Party: Republican

City: Hanover Park

Age: 64

Previous offices held:

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?

High Taxes, Exit Migration, and Pension Debt.

High Taxes- The assembly needs to stop spending money it doesn't have, live within the budget, it is there for a reason. Restructure local property tax caps and relieve Seniors of the property tax burdens by significantly lowering their tax requirement and upping the income allotment for tax freeze for permanent availability and provide targeted relief for middle class families. Also remove the double dipping on pensions and reform the amount of school district superintendents moving forward.

Exit Migration- Removing the high taxes will solve a lot of the problem, keeping the Build Act from becoming law, remove the highest gas tax in the country that goes up every year and reduce the burden on small businesses so more jobs can be created. Can the idea of a $7 entry and exit fee into and out of Chicago and bring back some common sense.

Pension debt- Remove the double dipping by keeping public servants from retiring or quitting one job after pension qualifying only to take on another job offering a pension they already qualify for and receiving 2, or at times even 3 pensions. Too many school super intendants avg salary over $230K.

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?

Dismal at best. I would have started negotiating with them a lot sooner. The general assembly treated them like they did not care where they went. The amount of tax dollars we will lose simply from concessions, apparel sales and local businesses serving the Bears population before during and after games will be huge. Restaurants, bars and entertainment centers as far out as Hanover Park, Dundee, Barrington etc. would have been able to arrange bussing into and out of Arlington Heights returning them to their establishments after the game and many more possibilities including an increase in CTA income. I would have worked on a solution providing both parties with a solution that benefited each other enough to satisfy everyone. A sliding scale in taxes over the years, a requirement to fulfill their obligation on the previous stadium renovation or negotiate with a new team like the women’s soccer team, or another team. Offset some of it with a tourist center at the stadium highlighting places to tour in Chicago and the surrounding suburbs and an open/close dome requirement with enough seats to support a Super Bowl bringing even more tax dollars.

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?

This has been a massive failure. Criminals running rampant recommitting crimes and increasing violence and unnecessary deaths throughout the city. Creating a blanket law without thinking it through seems to be the M.O. lately. I understand that those that are severely economically challenged having to pay high cash bail they can't afford, were sitting in jail for sometimes years waiting for a trial, but letting violent criminals out without bail is an accident waiting to happen and eventually it happens because there is no recourse. We need to reevaluate the bail, and structure it in a commonsense way. make violent crimes cash bail high, while misdemeanors, maybe little or no bail 1st offence then repeat offenses the bail increases and so on.

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?

There are a couple of policies that could be enacted. One would be to merge redundant local special-district governments, cutting administrative duplication which tend to drive cumulative increases. Another would be something my competitor mentioned but never got done and that would be to have school districts holding more than 50% of their annual operating expenses in reserve, to stop them from boosting property tax levies when they already had large amounts of unspent cash available. The Illinois School Code mandates that every school district must employ at least one superintendent. Illinois spends more per student on administration than any other State and twice the national average. Vice principals- Indeed shows an avg salary of $87,592 per year across the state with an average now of 1 vice principal per 718 students. We do not need that many. Nepotism has gotten out of hand and we now average 1 superintendent for every 2112 students with an average salary of $239,000.00, some over $400k. The law could be changed to require 1 Superintendent per x number of students and place a limit on the number of executive positions allowed.

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?

First make them responsible for their own power consumption. Implement rules to establish separate, higher electric and water tariff classes and mandatory financial collateral for large-scale data centers. There is technology now that has a machine that turns 60 tons of trash a day into 24 Megawatts and you can have more than one machine and the cost is about 6 million per machine but they would produce their own power and get rid of our trash fills at the same time. The remnants are ash that can be used for roofing materials and concrete. The other concerns need to be evaluated by looking at existing data centers and making them responsible for any environmental effects. If sound is as big an issue as it has been made out to be sound barriers can be required and so on. We should not keep technology from advancing; we just need to do it in a commonsense way.

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?

The Safe-T Act encourages criminal behavior. The Sanctuary policy has been abused to give illegal migrants free cell phones, free Medicare, free room and board, all at the cost of the Illinois taxpayer and an insult to the migrants that came here before them and had to work for every dollar and meal to survive and pursue the American dream. I would remove those policies as quickly as possible. Somebody thought it was a great idea to let as many people across our boarder as possible for reasons all of us could speculate on, but it has done nothing but injure American citizens physically and financially if you want to see what open boarders does just look at Paris and Europe now. It does not work. We do need to address immigration especially for those immigrants who have been here for many years working starting families and paying into our social security system.

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?

Based on the recent accusations and the reports of sitting on information without doing anything about it, there seems to be some. It should be handled in the same way any corporation that has a complaint must handle it.

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 think they are well thought out and other than The Legislative Ethics Commission, which is a bipartisan, 8-member body consisting of commissioners appointed by legislative leadership which issues subpoenas, and conducts administrative hearings based on formal complaints. I think the Commission should be required to appoint 4 Democrats and 4 Republicans to keep things on the up and up for both sides.

What personal qualifications do you bring that would make you an effective legislator?

I have an exorbitant amount of commonsense and over 18 years in quality management, something I think our State is in desperate need of. My ability to see how new laws will affect our community downstream before they are voted on will be of benefit and I have negotiated large corporate deals using my ability to listen to both sides and formulate solutions that work for both sides, this talent will work well in crossing the isle to work with all parties involved and create solutions that work not only for the assembly but more important for the citizens of our State.