Curran on Transit, Progressive Tax, Bears
Senate GOP Leader John Curran (R-Downers Grove) speaks at a news conference last year.
Republicans head into another spring legislative session flailing in the superminority, desperately trying not to lose seats in November, and trying to influence some of the biggest issues moving through the statehouse.
Senate GOP Leader John Curran (R-Downers Grove) says Democrats who run the General Assembly have regularly missed on major public policy issues, like an energy bill passed during the fall veto session that doesn’t provide relief to consumers struggling with high energy prices.
“[CEJA] is knocking generation off the grid and that’s what’s driving up prices. So the attack on coal has knocked generation off the grid and the attack on natural gas has made it worse. Natural gas is abundantly cleaner than coal,” he said. “If we’re going to stabilize prices, we’re going to need more generation on the grid. And that is turning more to natural gas and stop knocking it off. And natural gas, along with nuclear, are the two forms of energy that are that are well positioned to deal with spikes.”
While there appears to be a push among some progressives to put a graduated income tax question before voters again this fall, Curran says the 2020 result against changing the state’s income tax structure should mean the issue is settled.
“The voters have had a say. How many times are we going to go to the voters with that question? The voters had a say and they told us no,” Curran said.”We need to respect the will of the voters. They have spoken and [we should] move on from that. If you think about the last several budget cycles in what we have seen play out with the demand for more and more spending on the Democratic side, if that had passed, we would see those rates getting tweaked up year over year.”
He did find a little common ground, at least, with Gov. JB Pritzker’s handling of the Bears stadium fight.
“This is an area I do agree with the governor. I mean, the infrastructure is something that we should be obligated if you’re going to have a major economic development that’s going to be a major driver of economic improvement in an area, having the infrastructure around that to support that is the role of government,” Curran said. “Property taxes are one of the biggest barriers to continued economic investment in the state of Illinois. So I certainly understand the Bears wanting to have property tax certainty of some scale before they invest billions of dollars in that Arlington Heights site and increase economic activity in that area tremendously, which is going to have a broader public benefit. I agree with the governor that we don’t want to put tax dollars directly into building a stadium. But and the fact that he’s out there saying infrastructure is the appropriate role for us to support a major economic development [shows] the governor’s going to have to, I think, lean into this a little more if something’s going to happen here. I think that’s where the governor needs to give a push.”
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