Illinois’s Vulnerability

The editors of the Chicago Tribuen caution Illinois’s legislators about the distinctively vulnerable position Illinois has placed itself in:

We aren’t here to argue that Illinois should be the 29th right-to-work state. We’re here instead to warn that while Illinois lawmakers deadlock on policy reforms that would attract more jobs here, including reforms struggling to get support in the Senate, the six surrounding states have positioned themselves to attract more jobs there, there, there, there, there and there.

When will Illinois lawmakers recognize that the house is on fire? When will they make job creation, job retention, their do-or-die priority?

With Democrats controlling the House and Senate, and even Republican lawmakers in the General Assembly preferring to duck the issue, Illinois won’t be a right-to-work state any time soon. One community that tried on its own, Lincolnshire, had its right-to-work ordinance struck down by a federal judge.

But right-to-work laws in every border state are all the more reason for Illinois to make itself attractive to employers. We agree with Illinois Chamber of Commerce President Todd Maisch that if lawmakers won’t even debate right-to-work legislation, they have to get behind other pro-growth policies — tougher workers’ compensation laws, tax credits to encourage businesses to locate or expand here, fewer nanny-state regulations and schools that better prepare students for the workforce.

“Right-to-work” laws are laws which under the Wagner Act can only be enacted at the state level, not the local level, which ban the “closed shop”—employers for whom membership in a union is a condition of employment. They are widely seen as anti-union. All of the states adjoining Illinois—Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Iowa, and Wisconsin—now have right-to-work laws.

That isn’t Illinois’s only competitive disadvantage. Illinois has more pervasive regulations on business, higher taxes, worse political corruption, and, as I have previously pointed out, a higher minimum wage than any other state. Its state government is obviously dysfunctional. It was the third worst return on tax dollars sent to the federal government of any state.

Even when the President of the United States was notionally at least an Illinoisan and one of its senators was Assistant Senate Minority Leader it couldn’t attract more federal spending to Illinois. “Bringing home the bacon” simply doesn’t apply to Illinois.

Illinois population centers tend to be located on its borders with other states which means that in some place you only need to walk across the street to be in another state.

Illinois will need to exert some pretty strenuous efforts to attract businesses to the state. Attracting a few big, showy businesses to Illinois is nice but it doesn’t make up for the thousand of smaller businesses that are leaving. And our feckless legislators can’t even enact a budget.