Illinois governor candidates: What help do small businesses still need due to pandemic?
Eight candidates are running for governor of Illinois. We sent questionnaires to each of the candidates on the ballot, asking them to answer questions about pension obligations, state population, escalating costs of health care, how to handle a COVID surge and what small businesses need due to the pandemic. This is the fifth in a series of five articles revealing their answers to those questions – candidates are listed below alphabetically.
Question 1: Illinois governor candidates: What's your plan to improve the pension burden on cities?
Question 2: Illinois governor candidates: How would you work to increase the state's population?
Question 3: Illinois governor candidates: How will you bring down health care, prescription drug costs?
Question 4: Illinois governor candidates: How would you handle another surge in COVID deaths?
Darren Bailey (R)
One of the first things we can do to bring jobs back is not to force local businesses to close. Many of the problems businesses are experiencing directly result from the Pritzker lockdowns that Richard Irvin praised and enforced as mayor of Aurora. A Bailey Administration will prioritize the unemployment insurance fund, regulatory reforms to make it easier to start and grow a business, enact workers' compensation reform, and lower taxes. We need to make Illinois a destination state for businesses, which can only happen when we improve the business climate in our state..
Richard C. Irvin (R)
"When J.B. Pritzker ordered businesses to close their doors, we worked quickly in Aurora to provide local businesses with the support they needed. But local governments can only do so much when Springfield keeps trying to raise taxes on small businesses. Cutting income taxes and delivering property tax relief will be an enormous help to small businesses in Illinois – and give them the support they need to recover from the pandemic."
Beverly Miles (D)
"Create tangible resources to reboot their businesses without creating applications, processes, and barriers preventing small businesses recover from the pandemic."
JB Pritzker (D)
"I believe that protecting the health of our citizens is the most important thing I can do as Governor, while also doing everything possible to mitigate the effects of the pandemic on our economy. I have worked to save lives AND livelihoods and have always followed the science to ensure our economy would reopen when we had the proper tools to mitigate the spread, like masks and vaccines. We created the nation’s largest state program of its kind, providing grants and other support to over 12,000 small businesses. We led with equity and prioritized hard-hit industries in awarding state funding, including businesses that didn’t qualify for federal funds and businesses in disproportionately impacted areas of the state. While Republicans ignored science, encouraged people to inject bleach, lied about the dangers of COVID, and promoted conspiracy theories, I was assisting small businesses and helping workers and their families weather the health and financial impacts of the pandemic."
Gary Rabine (R)
Did not respond to repeated requests to fill out questionnaire.
Paul Schimpf (R)
Did not respond to repeated requests to fill out questionnaire.
Max Solomon (R)
"Deregulation and tax incentives."
Jesse Sullivan (R)
"The biggest thing small businesses need is leaders who represent them, rather than the corrupt virtue-signaling insiders in Springfield. Government is too often focused on making sure the insiders get their cut. We saw that in the past two years, and we’ve seen it for the entirety of J.B. Pritzker’s term.
"I’ve been an entrepreneur and job creator, helping small-business owners all over the world create the jobs of the future. I know what it takes to foster a business-friendly environment, from lower taxes to regulatory certainty, and I will bring that commitment to growth here to Illinois.
"Small businesses deserve the right to earn a living, without fear that they could be shut down again at any moment. I will deliver that for Illinois – as the first step of making our state the best in the nation to hold a job, raise a family, or run a business."
This article originally appeared on Journal Star: Illinois gov. candidates: What pandemic help do small businesses need?
