Illinois has earned a reputation as the place people like to leave. Data from the IRS, the Census Bureau, U-Haul and United Van Lines, and most recently from the Allied-Zillow Magnet States study, all show that Illinois is bleeding more people than almost any other state in the country. Practically all of the fresh leakage is due to outmigration driven by high taxes, arrogant governance, and toxic corruption.
The root cause of the Illinois exodus is that our politicians see us as bit players. “Extras” in movie-speak. Or what are called “non-playing characters,” or NPCs, in video games. They have rote lines, take no initiative, and usually get killed. They’re how the real players rack up points. But here’s a subversive twist. In some gaming platforms, NPCs can revolt. Win bigger roles. Make things happen. That’s what Illinois needs. Very, very soon.
There’s a movie you should see on HBO Max called “Free Guy.” It’s about a simulated world where only wired operators wearing special glasses can accumulate power and status. Illinoisans can think of them as the Madigan class. In “Free Guy” the other main characters are roving thugs who terrorize NPC citizens daily with violence and robberies. The atmo is dire: low-cruising airships and street warriors spewing bullets, ubiquitous burning pyres, and one poor guy whose hands are locked into an “Up” position because he’s been mugged so often. The unanointed just roll over for domination by the selfish, nasty few. They know nothing else.
But one NPC is a bank teller named Guy and something’s been quietly written into his character’s code by the game’s developers. Eventually Guy leads a grassroots uprising. All the NPCs – that’s us Illinois taxpayers, okay? – realize they can take their world back.
Appealing, huh? Every now and then this happens in real life. Since November there has been a revolt in cities. And in an entire state: Virginia. One marquee contest there involved Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe. He lost to Republican Glenn Youngkin partly because he said parents had no right to challenge skewed, racialized curricula.
Voters ousted a clueless trio from the San Francisco school board in February. Voters elected a pro-police, pro-charter school Democrat named Eric Adams the Mayor of New York City. Yes, the jury’s still out on him. That’s okay.
Voters chose a law-and-order Republican as City Attorney in Seattle. They rejected a Minneapolis ballot measure to end the police department as currently conceived.
In Chicagoland, parents and students in suburban districts rose up against unreasonably extended COVID mask mandates all around, including at Glenbrook High Schools North and South, and in Park Ridge-Niles District 64.
If Illinois wants to draw population again – rather than repel it – public officials need to check their arrogance. It starts with understanding the ongoing Illinois exodus is fueled by a well-deserved perception: “They don’t hear us. We don’t count. To them we really are bit players. There are friendlier climes. Bye.”
So here are a few ideas for the Democratic supermajorities in the State House and State Senate and our billionaire Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker. And for their election challengers this year.
Don’t short-circuit transparency and full debate on landmark legislation. Specifically, don’t approve a sweeping 786-page criminal justice reform bill in the wee final hours of a lame duck session, without public debate. I’m talking about the one rushed into law in early 2021 by majority lawmakers and Pritzker.
The legislation does many things. Some of it might even be good. But to the rightful chagrin of police it sharply limits pre-trial detention even for alleged violent criminals. It sharply cuts length of post-prison supervised release for Class X, Class 1, and Class 2 felons. It morphs rightful police accountability into a “gotcha” set-up. This by allowing for anonymous officer decertification complaints to the state; and rescinding required sworn affidavits for local complaints against police. The law also institutes a state review of removing the legal shield – called “qualified immunity” – that cities provide to police officers. Qualified immunity protects police from paying damages if they lose lawsuits alleging their split-second discretionary actions deprived defendants of “clearly established” civil rights.
There’s more that major players can do.
Don’t treat us as fools. Pritzker promised a fair and impartial approach to required remapping of state legislative districts, and then caved to the naked partisan instincts of his party by signing off on new maps aimed at protecting the Democratic supermajorities.
Ease up on taxes and the fiscal hemorrhaging. Illinois has the heaviest household tax burden of all 50 states, according to a recent report from MoneyGeek. A married couple with national median household income, one child, and a standard-priced home would pay more than $13,000 a year in state and local taxes in Illinois. This isn’t a one-off. A Kiplinger report last November found Illinois to be the least tax-friendly state in the nation.
Don’t prop up Chicago Public Schools by doubling operational per-student expenditures as enrollment slides dramatically. And let the free market and performance data drive CPS decisions about which schools to keep open and which to close. Yet, to a 2021 bill mandating an elected school board in Chicago, the legislature attached a moratorium until 2025 on closing any Chicago schools. Keeping open schools with one-third or two-thirds of the seats empty makes no sense.
Taxpayers aren’t made of money, although shocking tax hikes in Chicago and Cook County suggest that officials think so. Like state lawmakers micro-managing local school closure powers, politicians see us as non-playing characters in their fantasy world.
Local officeholders and legislative enablers treat us like nobodies in another way. Through stealth voter suppression. They should quit allowing local elections in odd-numbered years that slash registered voter turnout to around one-third in Chicago and less than one-fifth in Cook County suburbs and other jurisdictions statewide.
With cooperation of state lawmakers – a new bunch of them, let’s hope – local elections should be allowed to be scheduled at the same time at Presidential contests. When turnout runs to 70 percent or higher. Assuming local officeholders want more voters rather than fewer.
Odd thing is: these weird local election schedules have been in place for years. There’s the big tell. Local officeholders don’t want more civic engagement. Not through expanded voting.
In “Free Guy,” the protagonist comes to a breakthrough. He tells an assembled throng, “Are you sick of living in the background?…Of being taken hostage?…Robbed?…Things can be different…We don’t have to be spectators to our own lives.”
Illinois voters: it’s an election year. No one will blame you for moving to one of the most popular states for inbound migration. Like Tennessee, the Carolinas, Florida, Texas, and Arizona. Although there’s another option. You can help set the new agenda of Illinois.
But first you have to step up.