Guest columnist Wade Keats: The cost of doing business in Illinois has reached critical mass

As co-chairman of Keats Manufacturing in Wheeling, I am proud to continue my family's legacy of providing high-quality custom metal stampings, wire forms and assemblies since 1958. And until recently, along with the rest of my family, I was especially proud to continue our legacy as an Illinois business in Cook County since our founding. Unfortunately, decades of bad state and local policymaking have put our business and thousands of other Illinois businesses at serious risk.

The fallout from poor governance has been worsening each year, with a record 105,000 residents leaving the state last year alone, according to recent Census Bureau data. This marks the ninth consecutive year of population decline in Illinois, the second worst in the entire United States (West Virginia has suffered 10 straight years of negative population growth). What's worse, businesses and the jobs they provide are fleeing at an even higher rate, with three of our biggest Fortune 500 companies - Boeing, Caterpillar and Citadel - officially moving their respective headquarters last year. In their eyes, a multibillion-dollar upheaval seemed more appetizing than our worsening business climate.

Amid significant economic headwinds for Illinois businesses - post-COVID-19 fallout, record inflation, high borrowing costs, a labor shortage and continued supply chain bottlenecks - lawmakers have doubled down on anti-business policies that make the cost of doing business in our state unbearably high. In the business community, we call these "stacked costs."

For starters, last year, the state Senate passed SB2408, the most radical climate legislation in the country. An attempt to reduce carbon emissions to zero in just two decades and achieve 100 percent carbon-free energy by 2050, this legislation already has led to families and small businesses picking up a disproportionately high tab for energy costs that are rapidly outpacing already record-high costs across the country.

In the same legislative session, lawmakers also passed SB72, The Prejudgment Interest Act. "Stacking costs" in a different manor, Illinois businesses are now liable for the nation's highest interest rate on potential future damages - 6% - starting the day a lawsuit is filed. Businesses must now allocate dollars toward pretrial interest before they've even had a chance to defend themselves in court.

These higher legal expenses are now inevitable, forcing businesses to raise prices, cut costs elsewhere (i.e., jobs) and allocate more dollars toward legal defense. Of course, higher prices hurt consumers the worst.

Illinois is also one of the worst states for workers' compensation cases. Our backward system prevents employers and employees from working together to resolve disputes, kicking nearly every case to courts instead. As such, both parties are forced to pay court costs and victims receive a smaller portion of whatever damages they may be owed once attorneys' fees and court costs are subtracted.

On the other side, small- and medium-sized businesses with limited runway for legal expenses are often left with no choice but to settle. Knowing this, many Illinois plaintiffs' lawyers abuse our system by filing countless bogus claims and collecting settlements from the businesses that can't afford court. As with SB72, the cost of doing business goes up for employers, prices go up for consumers and we lose thousands of jobs as resources are reallocated to legal funds.

Given all this, it should come as no surprise that Cook County was rated the fifth worst jurisdiction in the country on the American Tort Reform Foundation's annual "Judicial Hellholes" list.

The list of stacked costs and anti-business policies is nearly endless, but it has resulted in each Illinoisan paying an annual "tort tax" of over $1,500 per person across the state (over $2,000 per Chicagoan) and yearly lost jobs topping 190,000.

Illinois business owners are a proud bunch, and I know my family is proud of our long and storied history in the Prairie State. Unfortunately, many of us have had to face tough choices recently regarding whether we can continue to do business here any longer (for reference, Keats has a plant in Texas that is much less expensive to operate). I hope lawmakers recognize this critical moment in time and empathize with the Illinois business community.

We want to stay here, continue serving our loyal customers and continue employing thousands of hardworking men and women across the state. Now more than ever, we need our legislators in Springfield to hear us and reverse course.

• Wade Keats is co-chairman of Keats Manufacturing in Wheeling.