GOP Gubinatorial candidate Darren Bailey made a bus tour stop in Westville Friday afternoon. One thing the 55th District state senator talked about was education. He served on the North Clay School Board for 17 years, and then with his wife Cindy started a private Christian school. And as governor, he says he would push hard for school choice.
AUDIO: Private eduction will never replace public education. Public education needs help. And I think public education can only become stronger if and when people have choice, and are able to send their children somewhere else and maybe get out of a failing school. You know the Illinois Education Association is partly to blame for this. Some of their radical ideas are destroying public education.
Bailey is one of many state legislators who has declined to participate in the General Assembly Retirement System. And when it comes to the whole “state pension funding problem” Illinois has had for years, Bailey says there are ways to climb out of it.
AUDIO: There are simple modifications that we can make that do not affect the actual earned benefits. If we can work with COLA (cost of living adjustments), if we can work with health insurance; there are certain aspects that if we begin to work on, there are some buyout programs taking place right now. That’s actually been most of the reason why three billion dollars of every budget for the past 25 years has either; bonds have been sold, or money been borrowed; to get that.
And the farmer from rural Louisville, Illinois who serves as minority chair for the State Senate Ag Committee certainly has his agricultural positions. As governor, Bailey says he’d fight nuisance regulations and mandates.
AUDIO: One of the best things that the Illinois Department of Ag can do, and that a government official can do, is stand up and push back against unneeded regulations. EPA regulations, and other regulations in the state of Illinois, also add to that unnecessary burden. There’s a lot of potential regulations to come down the line that could impede us on the farm. I look forward to standing up and stopping some of that.
And being a Southern Illinois farmer, Bailey certainly has an opinion on the proposed Grain Belt Express that would transport wind energy from Western Kansas across to Indiana. He says he’d never support an eminent domain driven project like that. And despite what others say, no, this proposed line across Southern Illinois would not do anything good for the state.
AUDIO: As I was debating with one of the northern senators, he actually said, “no, it’s a good thing, because we might need to tap into those lines for energy one of these days.” I think that is appalling, because when that line goes across (Southern Illinois) what it’s going to signify, other than devalued property to the farmers and the landowners that have that in their way, it’s going to signify a 30 percent increase of utilities, and we cannot stand for that.
Other Republican candidates for governor include entrepreneur Gary Rabine, Aurora mayor Richard Irvin, and Former State Senator Paul Schimpf.
