The Illinois Tollway board is set to vote Wednesday on a plan to hike passenger tolls that is being called the biggest increase in state history. GOP gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey doesn’t want to see that happen.
In fact, Bailey wants tolls — a system that has been in place in Illinois since the 1950s — to go away completely.
“Stop the raises, appoint a new board, come up with a plan to pay this debt off and upon completion of paying the debt off, we open the tolls. No more tolls,” Bailey said.
The revenue helps pay for roads and bridges, plus snowplowing and roadside help from the Illinois State Police. The potential toll increase is largely due to a plan passed in Springfield meant to fund mass transit. It’ll be an increase of about 45 cents for drivers and a 30% increase for commercial vehicles.
As for Bailey’s plan to replace the toll revenue, he said, “The money is there within our budget. It’s there. It’s being wasted. It’s being squandered. I sat and watched it inflate from $32 billion in our state budget to $56 billion.”
On Monday, Pritzker said he hadn’t seen Bailey’s plan.
“I can’t wait to see. I know that he believes that magic beans can take care of everything,” Pritzker said. “Every one of the proposals that I’ve seen from him is unrealistic. He doesn’t understand the state budget. He does not understand the challenges of meeting the needs of people, especially the most vulnerable in our state.”
Pritzker picked up a key endorsement yesterday from the Illinois Educators Association. Bailey said he has some endorsements on the way, as well.
As for spending in the race, Pritzker just added $65 million to his campaign war chest. NBC 5 Chicago spoke to the nonpartisan non-profit Reform for Illinois about the effect his personal wealth has on the race.
“He has the ability to buy many more TV ads, mailers, radio ads, to really flood the airwaves and voters’ mailboxes with his own message,” said Alisa Kaplan, executive director of Reform for Illinois. “When people can spend unlimited funds from their own personal wealth, it creates the possibility where they can really distort the discussion because they have this giant megaphone to get their message out.”
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that candidates have a legal right to self-fund their campaigns, she explained. There is also a loophole in Illinois state law that allows a gubernatorial candidate to put in a certain amount of money, then the caps are off in the race and their opponent can accept unlimited contributions, as well.
What effect does that have on the political system?
“It becomes more and more expensive to compete in the political field, and unfortunately, what it does is it does deter a lot of people, a lot of good, talented people, from running for office,” Kaplan said.
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