People who don’t follow Statehouse debates closely, which is probably most people, likely didn’t realize that Gov. Bruce Rauner’s property tax freeze, voted down in the House this week, actually went far beyond freezing property taxes. The proposed legislation included provisions for local governments to bypass prevailing wage requirements and to limit collective bargaining rights for public employee unions. Rauner hasn’t made a convincing case for his anti-union agenda; it appears to come more from conservative ideology than serious interest in reform. The concern is that the politically inexperienced governor won’t know when to back off his radical hard line and will cause a lot of damage to Springfield in the course of learning his job. –Fletcher Farrar, editor and publisher
This article appears in Jun 11-17, 2015.
