By Gov. Bruce Rauner To unleash our full potential, Illinois needs to end corruption in state government. For decades, career politicians and political insiders have abused their positions of power to line their own pockets and rig the political system in their favor. The result has been a state government that works for career politicians and their cronies to the detriment of the people. Illinois has suffered the embarrassment of watching four of our last nine governors go to prison. National headlines about my predecessors -- like Rod Blagojevich, who was caught on FBI wiretap trying to sell President Obama's senate seat to unethical insiders -- made our state a national punchline. Beyond embarrassment, the people of Illinois have also been forced to deal with the harmful consequences of corruption: state government dominated by the Chicago political machine and pay-to-play politics, out-of-control spending on sweetheart deals for special interests, and decades of destructively high taxes that stunt economic growth and ask hardworking families to continually pay more for a broken system. For too long, public service in Illinois has been treated by career politicians as a way to make money. I couldn't stand by and watch my home -- the state I love -- continue down the wrong path. I didn't run away from the problem; I ran for office. When I ran for governor four years ago, I campaigned on a bold, independent agenda to clean up state government and wrest power away from the entrenched political insiders. The people of Illinois affirmed my commitment to change the culture in state government. In my first term, our team delivered meaningful, measurable reforms that have ended some of the corrupt state government practices holding Illinois back. We strengthened ethical requirements on all executive branch employees to change the culture within state government. By requiring enhanced annual economic interest disclosures, we promoted transparency and accountability for employees of the executive branch. We closed the revolving door between public service and lobbying by banning anyone from lobbying the administration for one year after leaving the executive branch and stopped lobbyists and government contractors from unethically influencing state regulators by closing loopholes in bans on gifts and lobbyist-funded travel. And we ended the illegal patronage hiring in state government made infamous under my predecessors Blagojevich and Pat Quinn. Unfortunately, the Illinois General Assembly has failed to hold itself to these same high standards. Career politicians in the legislative branch are happy to put desperately needed ethics reforms on the back burner as long as it helps them stay in office and regardless of calls from the people of Illinois to clean up their act. That's why six times in the last six years the House has shot down legislation to put term limits on elected officials. Disturbingly, those who control the General Assembly have made no effort to stop elected officials from engaging in harmful conflicts of interest. House Speaker Mike Madigan himself makes millions enriching himself by running a property tax appeals firm in Chicago while simultaneously hiking taxes on hardworking Illinois families and businesses while in Springfield. And allegations of sexual harassment and intimidation call into question how his organization conducts business. This kind of unethical behavior has to stop. Corrupt insiders and their cronies should no longer run our government. The people of Illinois deserve better. In my first term, we've made real progress in making state government more accountable to the people it serves. But there's more work to do. I'm committed to working with reform-minded lawmakers from both parties to continue to root out the corruption holding us back and make government work for the people of Illinois again.

By Gov. Bruce Rauner The passage of Illinois' bipartisan budget plan has been greeted with applause on both sides of the aisle. This accomplishment is a testament to the power of negotiations and bipartisan compromise. However, we cannot rest on our laurels. It's the time to build on this bipartisan accomplishment to tackle job-killers like pension costs, high property taxes, unfunded mandates and the backlog of unpaid bills. To address these issues, we must understand how a balanced FY19 budget became possible. Federal tax reform and regulatory relief boosted our economy, bringing higher than expected tax receipts. Bipartisan negotiations led to modest pension reform that will save $445 million this year while reducing some of the state's long-term liability. We saved $1 billion by aggressively managing state agency spending and getting legislative Democrats to cancel nearly $500 million in new spending. To keep this budget balanced, we must break the notoriously bad budget management habits of longtime politicians who have structured our government to benefit insiders rather than the people we serve. This is where bipartisan momentum is critical. Republicans and Democrats came together this session to reduce spending, put more money toward education, pass modest pension reform, boost infrastructure and support human services. Now, we have to keep working with our partners in the legislature to manage our revenue and spending to keep the budget balanced. Educating our children is the most important thing we do as a state. It has been my top investment priority for many years. Prior to our taking office in 2015, Illinois suffered from years of cuts in education funding. Our administration led the effort to create a more fair and equitable funding system and put significantly more money into schools every year. The evidence-based formula we enacted last summer is fully funded. That's $350 million in new K-12 spending for FY19, a $1.4 billion increase in funding since 2015. Our tuition tax credit scholarship program is a historic achievement and helps needy students attend the school of their choice. We added $50 million for Early Childhood Education. That's up $200 million since we came to office. There is $25 million in new money for higher education in FY19 and $25 million for our AIM HIGH merit-based scholarship program that can be matched by universities to help college students to stay in Illinois. With this budget, we made Illinois a national leader in adoption support. For the first time, Illinois now has a $5,000 tax credit for parents who are adopting, helping more children to find good homes with loving parents. We also want to thank the legislature for sharing our commitment to our veterans, budgeting $53 million for continued improvements and first-year construction costs for a new Illinois Veterans Home at Quincy. Finally, we're moving forward with the seed support for the Illinois Innovation Network and the Discovery Partners Institute for the University of Illinois. This public-private partnership between the state's great research universities, businesses and venture capital sources could make Illinois the next Silicon Valley, worth billions in new annual job-producing economic growth. Even with these important accomplishments, our fiscal future remains challenging. To keep our budgets balanced, it is essential we grow our economy at a rate faster than we increase government spending. What we did this session is a step in that direction. But there is still a long way to go. Had the legislature enacted the budget we proposed in February, including the meaningful pension reform, we could deliver a $1.5 billion surplus. This surplus would have allowed us to roll back the tax hike, pay down debt and invest in our infrastructure. These goals are no less critical today than they were last week or last year. Pension debt and unpaid bills remain yokes on our finances. To get the economy really rolling, we need to provide property tax relief, ease mandates on schools and local government, and cut the regulatory burden on job creators. We admire and applaud the work of the legislature on this budget. The bipartisan efforts are encouraging, and we hope they are founded on a real desire from all sides for change. By building on bipartisan momentum to drive reform, we can create a better future for our children and grandchildren.

By Gov. Bruce Rauner In Illinois, we're taking decisive action to make our schools and communities safer. After February's tragic murder of Chicago police Commander Paul Bauer and the horrifying school shooting in Parkland, Florida, our team went to work to find meaningful solutions that keep firearms out of the hands of dangerous individuals and bring violent criminals to justice. The result is the bold, innovative, effective public safety package we introduced last Monday. We focused on policies that actually work to prevent needless deaths, while respecting law-abiding citizens' constitutional rights. Through an amendatory veto, I laid out a responsible, bipartisan approach to public safety that proactively addresses the need to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals and keeps our schools and communities safe. The package contains serious solutions that a vast majority of Illinoisans support. We recommend enactment of a uniform 72-hour waiting period on all firearm purchases, not just for handguns as under existing law. We put a ban on the sale of bump stocks and trigger cranks, which effectively convert semi-automatic sporting rifles into fully-automatic weapons that unless registered have been banned under federal law since 1986. And we propose requiring both judges and prosecutors to publicly state why they agree to plea bargains and sentence reductions for violent criminals charged with gun crimes. Too often, law enforcement -- through warnings from family members and threatening social media posts -- have been made aware of individuals who wish to commit mass murder but lacked the ability to block their access to deadly weapons. That has to change. We recommend granting the courts the ability to disarm dangerous individuals by judicial restraining order while also respecting due process rights. We also propose new funding sources that allow schools to hire mental health professionals and school resource officers to prevent tragedies from happening in the future. We need to give our schools and communities tools to identify individuals who exhibit troubling behavior and stop them from turning to violence. Finally, in a just society, some crimes are so vicious that the guilty party deserves the toughest form of punishment possible. That's why we recommend the creation of a new homicide category called "death-penalty murder." Offenders 18 and older who are convicted beyond any doubt of killing a law enforcement officer, or two or more people in a mass shooting, will be put to death. Few crimes are more heinous than the intentional but random killing of innocent people. We don't propose the death penalty lightly, but we should show no tolerance for such atrocities in Illinois. For mass murderers and those who kill law enforcement officers -- public servants who put everything on the line to keep us safe -- a higher burden of proof is required to justify the death penalty. A jury should have to find the accused guilty "beyond all doubt" -- based on incontrovertible evidence -- rather than just "beyond a reasonable doubt." And an appeals court would have to apply the same standard while conducting their own independent review of the evidence. When we know without a doubt that someone is guilty of murdering multiple innocent people or killing an officer of the law, they deserve to face the most severe punishment. We call on the General Assembly to act quickly and approve this comprehensive package that tackles gun violence head-on, protects Second Amendment rights of law-abiding gun owners, and empowers communities to keep students safe. We can't let politics get in the way of good policy. For the safety of all Illinoisans, let's show that we're capable of working together and enact these important public safety solutions.