Candidates respond to Daily Herald questionnaire

The 44th state House seat is held by Fred Crespo of Hoffman Estates, a Democrat, who is being challenged Streamwood Village President Billie Roth, a Republican. Here are their responses to the Daily Herald questionnaire.

Q. What is your Number 1 campaign issue?Crespo: Doing what's right to fix what's wrong. Since taking office, I have stood up to party leadership and taken stances and votes that have not made me many friends. I helped lead the effort to roll back Todd Stroger's Cook County sales tax increase. This tax increase was bad for our area and unfortunately many elected officials in the legislature and the cook county board are very Chicago-centric and fail to see or even care how their actions impact the suburbs. I have always advocated for the best interest of the residents of the northwest suburbs.

This year, Governor Quinn put the needs of Chicago above the needs of the children of my district by vetoing SB2499. I am again fighting my own leadership to get school district U-46 the money that they rightfully deserve.

Roth: Jobs and the economy.

Q. What is your Number 2 campaign issue?Crespo: Cutting lawmakers pay. Because so many are struggling financially, I believe that elected officials must share in the sacrifice. During my first year in office, I led the effort to abolish lawmakers' pay raises. When a raise took place, I chose to donate that money to local charities. This was before being anti-pay raise was a talking point on every legislator's political agenda. The following year when pay raises began to be discussed, I supported the effort to overhaul the system which awarded these raises without public approval or even a vote by the legislature.

I have also voted to make legislators work 24 days without pay and I am continuing to advocate for an additional 10 percent cut to all elected official's pay and am continuing to fight for more reforms to the system of awarding raises by requiring voter approval before a raise can be enacted.

Roth: Fiscal and governmental responsibility.

Q. What is your Number 3 campaign issue?Crespo: Savings taxpayers' money. Illinois needs to be managed like a business, with every dollar spent scrutinized to make sure we are investing in programs that add value and are efficient. The legislature took steps to reform spending this year by revamping our pension system with more realistic benefits for those hired after Dec. 31, 2010. This change will save Illinois residents millions of dollars and ensure that these systems become sustainable.

More needs to be done to improve Illinois' current fiscal climate. We need to promote and encourage new ideas and partnerships to promote innovative ways to deal with the budget crisis. House Bill 6419, which I introduced, will give school districts the opportunity to save millions in energy costs through the use of green technology. Creative ideas such as HB6419 should continue to be cultivated to allow cost savings to be realized.

We cannot, and should not, always burden taxpayers for additional funds. I've been one of the leaders to look at performance based funding for higher education (SJR88). While this is a small piece of the overall budget, this concept can be used rein our state's overall spending. I am also currently advocating for quarterly reviews to eliminate poorly performing programs, and a line-by-line annual audit of the state budget to stop wasteful spending and protect vital programs like education from cuts.

Roth: Hold the line on taxes.

Q. What should be done to solve the state's budget crisis? What specific measures should be cut for how much in savings? Would you support or oppose an income tax increase or a state sales tax increase? Lay out a specific plan of what needs to be done.Crespo: At this time, I cannot support any tax increases. I believe as a state we need to come up with a multiyear plan based on a prioritized list of goals that is developed by the legislature with public input. Once these are defined we need to look at the revenue we have and determine how much of our state funds we should allocate to prioritized goal.

The first step to all of this will need to be a line-by-line audit of the state budget to determine which programs are effective and where misspending is occurring. Programs will have to be evaluated each year and only those performing well and helping Illinois meet its outline goals will continue to receive funding. This is a paradigm shift from the current spend, spend, spend practices I have witnessed in my short time as a state legislator, but now more than ever I think people are more willing to re-engineer our state's budget process.

Roth: First let's get back to basics: let's not pass budgets in which spending exceeds revenues, as required by the Illinois Constitution.

I do not believe an income tax increase of 33% or 66% is the answer. People are hurting and Illinois has lost over 700,000 jobs, we cannot afford a job-crippling tax increase.

Some items that I would like to see cut from the budget would be eliminating the fleet of state aircraft, saving roughly $25 million and eliminating General Assembly Scholarships, which are often abused and cost us roughly $12.5 million. These are just two examples of awful government waste.

We need to go through to budget, line-by-line and eliminate waste. The State's budget needs a forensic audit to identify waste and inefficiencies. When I first became Village President of Streamwood, the village was operating with a budget deficit. Today, we have a balanced budget and reliable municipal services, and we did all that while lowering property taxes 39%. I proved it can be done in the Village of Streamwood, I will prove that it can be done in Springfield as well.

Q. What is your view on the pension legislation passed last year? Do you support or oppose lower benefits and higher employee contributions for current state workers? Specifically, how should state officials resolve underfunding problems?

Crespo: I supported the reforms to the pension system that passed the General Assembly this year. These changes only affect those hired after December 31, 2010 and reflect studies that show increasing life-spans and put all state government employee retirement systems in line with the retirement age for Social Security. My support for these reforms was to ensure that these systems are sustainable and are able to meet obligations to current and future retirees.

I believe that in the future it is imperative that Illinois continue to abide by the year by year appropriations outlined in the pension reform passed in 1995 except for in time of financial emergencies.

Roth: Currently, the State has a legal obligation to fully fund the pension system. I believe the reforms that passed this year are a step in the right direction but need to go further. Just as I feel elected officials need to share the sacrifice the taxpayers are, so do public employees. Lost in the debate is the fact that these pensions are funded by taxpayer dollars while the taxpayers are losing their retirement benefits due to the global recession. With the state broke and personal income dwindling, taxpayers cannot afford to front the bill for big government pensions.

In the 1990s, the Illinois State Senate adopted a 50 year amortization schedule to fully fund state pensions. Under the Blagojevich administration, this legislation was changed and the pension funds have not been adequately funded since. I believe similar legislation should be reinstituted for proper funding of state pensions.

Q. Do you oppose or support civil unions? Gay marriage? What abortion restrictions do you support? What about parental notification? Late-term abortion? Should there be controls on gun ownership? If so, what would you support? Crespo: I believe that marriage is a religious institution in which government should not interfere. With that said I have heard compelling arguments for and against civil unions. Additionally, Civil unions/gay marriage is not really an issue that has been brought up while I have been going door-to-door. People are worried about improving the economy, creating jobs and putting an end to the corruption that has plagued out state. This is what I am currently focusing on.

It is my hope that no woman should ever be in the situation where she would have to have an abortion. But because this is such a personal decision, I believe that it should be a woman's choice not the governments. With that said, I believe Illinois should invest in resources and education to minimize the number of women that have to make this decision. While I believe in the second amendment and a person's right to own a gun, it is absolutely necessary to have common-sense gun regulations. I oppose the sale of semiautomatic weapons. I support ensuring that handguns are equipped with trigger locks, to prevent accidental shootings and increasing punishments for those found to be selling guns illegally.

Roth: Marriage in my view is, by definition, a union between a man and a woman. I am pro-life except if the life of the mother is at risk. I am pro 2nd Amendment; however I do favor safety locks for the protection of children.

Q. Where do you stand on campaign finance caps for legislative leaders and parties? Will you vote for your current caucus leader? Do you support an amendment for a different political map system? Why or why not?

Crespo: This year, I supported capping campaign contributions for the first time in Illinois history. This new law also increases transparency and frequency in financial disclosure laws and gives more enforcement power to the State Board of Elections. This legislation was backed by the state's leading reform organization, Change Illinois, and limits the amount legislative leaders and political parties can contribute during a primary. I believe we should continue to work to find a way to extend these caps to the General Election and also address the concerns that these caps will give an unfair advantage to special interest groups that don't have the best interest of the general electorate.

I'm willing to consider any capable person who wishes to put him or herself forward as caucus leader.

I also voted for Senate Constitutional Amendment 121 which overhauled the process of redrawing political maps in Illinois. These changes would have brought public input into the redistricting process, protected the interest of minority groups and changed map drawing criteria to help ensure a fair map that embraces the diversity of Illinois but since no Republicans voted for these reforms this measure did not pass. I will continue to fight for reform, such as those outlined in the Paul Simon Public Policy proposal as I believe it is extremely important to take political considerations and incumbent protection out of the equation. I am also open to looking at proposals that would take utilize computers to draw the map, as was done in Iowa.

Roth: Maintaining the independence of each legislator in Springfield is very important. I support campaign finance reform that imposes limitations on legislative leaders. I support House Bill 5008.

Q. Legislation recently passed that exempts the evaluations of all public workers from FOIA. Do you support such an exemption? For a certain class of public employees (e.g. police officers, road workers etc.)? Explain.

Crespo: I voted against legislation that would exempt all state workers evaluations from being available under the Freedom of Information Act. I will have to do more research in consultation with law enforcement officials and press organizations on potential pros and cons of exempting state and local police officers before making a decision on the governor's amendatory veto.

Roth: I have always believed government needs to be 100% transparent. Anytime taxpayer dollars are being spent, that information needs to be completely available to the public. I am against the exemptions of evaluations of public workers from FOIA.