A day after delivering his first State of the State message, Governor Bruce Rauner hit the road to talk more about his agenda.
Rauner stopped at the Holiday Inn in Mt. Vernon Thursday to talk to residents and was greeted by a trio of people who believes he wants to get rid of unions. But Rauner says he is not anti-union. He wants to give people a choice if they want to join a union by creating employee empowerment zones to improve Illinois' business climate.
"Do they want to empower employees, and create zones or regions in the state where we can compete with Texas, compete with Tennessee, compete with Indiana, who have more employee flexibility in their regulations. Here we’re closed shop, we have restrictions. So we’re losing companies and we’re not competing."
Rauner says he has a lot of union support for his proposal, but he understands some people perceive him as a union buster.
The governor also said prevailing wage and project labor agreements in Illinois create an uncompetitive bidding process. He says this costs the state billions of dollars by raising the cost of construction projects by 15% to 35%.
"You, in your school district, on average you have to spend 20% more than you would otherwise spend to build a new school, or to build a bridge, or build a new road or repave. Think of how many more schools we could build, think how much more we could do to build our locks and dams, roads and bridges, and canals, if we didn’t have to spend 20 or 25% more for every project?"
Rauner also reiterated his call for term limits. The governor says no one should serve in any office for more than eight years. He says the voters should decide.
"What I’ve asked is, let’s get it to the voters in a referendum on whether we should make a constitutional change or not. And if you don’t want to do it, don’t vote for it.”
Rauner says people who serve in the same office for decades creates an environment for corruption.
