The 115th district covers parts of five counties including Jefferson, Perry, Jackson, Union, and Washington.
There’re three candidates are running for this seat, which is currently held by Republican Terri Bryant. Bryant is vacating the seat to run for State Senate.
Republican Paul Jacobs, Green Party Randy Auxier, and Libertarian Ian Peak.
All the candidates have their own reasons to represent the 115th.
Green Party candidate Randy Auxier is a Philosophy professor at SIU.
“I have visited Carbondale when I was looking for a graduate school and I was very happy to move here and I’ve been here ever since I live in Murphysboro and I love it here in Murphysboro and I love it in Southern Illinois and that’s part of the reason I want to run, I identify as progressive, I do consider myself a progressive conservative, but that’s in a very broad sense of the word conservative.”
Republican Party candidate Paul Jacobs is an optometrist and business owner in Southern Illinois.
“I need to help control the exorbitance in taxes and stop the out migration of Illinois residents, I want to work for a truly balanced budget, I want to realize that government should not and realistically it can’t do everything.”
Libertarian candidate Ian Peck has a background in restaurant management and says he’s a regular working guy.
“We keep sending doctors, lawyers, businessmen and career politicians to Springfield and they’ve gotten us into a mess, if we had more regular people in Springfield that just knows what the daily life is like for common folk in Illinois, I think things would be a lot better.”
On the topic of ethics reform Jacobs supports the Public Service Trust and Accountability Act because it will increase economic disclosures, creates term limits and more.
“It’s its going to try to end the conflicts of interest, it’s going to ban lobbing for any of the legislators for three years, right now they can actually retire or just finish their term and become a lobbyist, I think that’s ridiculous, legislators can’t lobby with the new law.
Peak says elected officials should only listen to the voters.
“To me its absurd that we’re asking the general assembly to do something about the corruption of the general assembly, if you’re asking me what I’d do if I was elected, I think that banning lobbying is a good place to start, make politicians listen to their constitutes and not the lobbyist and not the donors.”
Auxier says he also supports the Public Service Trust and Accountability Act and as a state employee he’s seen the evolution of the ethics laws and thinks they’re reactive.
“I would like to see a complete code that makes moral sense and I would like to contribute to writing such a code and so right at the moment OEIG as well, its not functioning very well from my opinion, I’ve had interactions with them and so there’s some work to be done there.”
The Illinois Comptroller’s office estimates the state owes over 8 billion dollars in backlog payments.
Peak says he would look for ways to consolidate departments instead of continuously raising taxes.
“One of the best places to start is the fact that we have over 200,000 public sector employees pulling in salaries of over $100,000 a year, the connected are getting rich off of our tax dollars and there isn’t enough tax dollars to go around for that.”
Auxier points to the graduated tax amendment before voters this November as one option to address budget problems. But he wants to be cautious in doing so.
“The current system is not working and if we amend the constitution we can then have a very serious discussion as to how to reform taxes in Illinois, right now because of the flat tax every single thing you do gets taxed so that the state can get enough revenue to develop and deliver its services.”
Jacobs says he’s the “no tax guy” and the state needs to reduce spending instead of passing underfunded budgets.
“During my tenure I would prefer to reduce taxes even more and actually if we can’t do that at least maintain the current level, but without tax bopping and without the spending stopping and reducing it we’re not going to be able to get anywhere.”
Another part of Illinois’ budget problem comes from the states pension obligations, which is underfunded by over 100 billion dollars.
Jacobs thinks legislators need to come up with a solution by considering changes to the current pension systems, retirement age and tier hiring.
“What you need to do is find legislators that are willing to work on the pensions and who can honestly go to the people, the constituents that are recipients of those pensions and honestly tell them what you need to do to fix it.”
Peak believes the state should move away from a pension system entirely.
“I think the best thing that we can do is for new state employees starting tomorrow, instead of a pension offer them a 401k or IRA, a more traditional retirement system like we see in the private sector today, the private sector got away from pensions like decades ago, they saw they weren’t working and they got out of it.”
Auxier feels a gradual change to the states pension is required to turn things around starting at the point of entry to the system.
“I do think pension reform is an option, but not reforming the of those who are already part of the system, this has to be a long term fix, I believe that we can change the conditions and the terms when people join the system as they become state employees.”
Early voting ends on November 2, the day before Tuesday's election.
