The Economy & Job Creation
Our Values
Many of us have been taught that America is the land of opportunity, where if you work hard you will succeed. The American Dream is a promise of economic mobility, that no matter where you start, you can access the resources you need, resources like education and job opportunities. This mobility is the essence of the freedom we associate with being Americans. The ideal of the American Dream is freedom, and this freedom is realized through economic justice.

The notion of freedom has been critical to the Kennedy family’s political philosophy for more than a century, from championing civil rights to casting off colonialism throughout the world.Freedom and economic justice have never been distributed equally, and in Illinois it is only getting worse. This attack on the American Dream has been going on for decades, and under Governor Rauner we have reached a breaking point. It does not have to be this way. That is why Ra Joy and I are putting forward our plan to rebuild Illinois’ economy and restore the promise of the American Dream to everyone in our state.

Our Vision
A comprehensive economic strategy for Illinois must be bold, inclusive and equitable. Illinois must move away from a status quo that has left our economy stagnant and the middle class with fewer and fewer options because a small group of insiders and billionaire families have combined to support candidates who in turn, as elected officials, give them government contracts, lower taxes, or looser regulation.

Bold new ideas can inject optimism, confidence and enthusiasm for Illinois’ economic future. The State’s economic plan will remove barriers to participation in the economy and create access and opportunity for all Illinois citizens. An equitable growth strategy includes three major prongs: A robust workforce plan that guarantees Illinois has the highest quality workforce in the country, a business environment that is welcoming to businesses and operations, and a commitment to innovation.

A Kennedy/Joy administration will stand firmly with workers, and will look for innovative ways to grow the middle class. Labor is the backbone of our state. Organized labor has a long history of protecting works, whether it be through child labor laws, fighting for safe work spaces, or advocating for the 40 hour work week. Organized labor has protected us, which is why we have to protect them in return. This is why we will fight for a $15 minimum wage and never allow Illinois to become a so-called “Right to Work” state. Our economic plan will protect workers, increase opportunity, and restore equity to our state. Illinois workers should not be asked to work full-time and still live in poverty.

Constructing a Strategic Plan for Illinois' Economy Growth
Rebuilding Illinois’ economy will take more than political will and fiscal stability, it will require vision and drive within our own state government to forge a new and prosperous path for Illinois’ economic future. A Kennedy/Joy administration will forge that path by first creating an infrastructure within our state government that allows for continual evaluation, statewide information gathering, and proactive, strategic planning for every region – rural areas, towns, and urban centers.

The Illinois State Grants Office
Overview
Illinois is a donor state. We rank 48th out of 50 in terms of the tax dollars we send to Washington D.C. as compared to the funds the Federal Government spends in Illinois. Chris Kennedy will create a State Grants Office to ensure that the state of Illinois and its employers, research facilities, and taxpayers are getting their fair share from the Federal Government.

Kennedy Connection
As Chairman of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees, Chris Kennedy created a grant office for the University System. The office supported the efforts to obtain over $1 billion in grant money and beat back strong challenges for resources from competing states. Chris helped secure the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute (DMDII) on Goose Island for Chicago and for Illinois. Not only did this bring federal resources to Illinois, but it created a hub for innovation and job creation in advanced manufacturing for years to come.

In-Depth Look
Identifying resources to spur economic growth requires proactive advocacy to recruit maximum resources from philanthropy, private industry, and the federal government. Notably, Illinois ranks 48th in the nation for per capita federal fiscal spending. If Illinois raises our per capita allotment to the national average, we could raise the amount of federal support we receive from $105 billion to $128 billion. We cannot afford to keep leaving billions of dollars on the table from the federal government and philanthropic organizations.

A Kennedy/Joy administration would establish a State Grants Office to identify, recruit, secure and effectively distribute private, philanthropic, and federal funding in Illinois. Similar to the Grants Office established in Maryland in the early 2000s, the Illinois State Grants Office would host an annual grant training conference, with attendees representing every region of the state, as well as representatives of non-profit organizations and various state employees. The Office will work to secure additional federal grant funding while also building partnerships with foundations across Illinois to better link state agencies and agency partners with grants available across the state.

Strategic Planning for Illinois
Overview
Illinois is missing a strategic economic plan for how we move forward as an entire state. The Chicagoland area has a number of community planning councils and commissions dedicated to improving the area through strategic planning and stewardship. A Kennedy/Joy administration will create regional and sector-based planning commissions to provide each part of Illinois with the support it needs to grow its economy and flourish as a part of a comprehensive plan for growth.

Kennedy Connection
Chris Kennedy saw first-hand the importance of long-term economic planning while he was the finance committee chairman at the Chicago Community Trust, which established Metropolis Strategies as a supporting organization to initiate a strategic agenda to grow the regional economy, promote sustainable development and create safer communities throughout the Chicago region.As Chairman of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees, Chris Kennedy conceived of the Food and Agriculture Roadmap for Illinois (FARM Illinois), a comprehensive agricultural coalition that developed a strategic plan for advancing agriculture in Illinois through market cooperation and legislative advocacy.

In-Depth Look
Modeled after FARM Illinois, a Kennedy/Joy administration will create a Strategic Roadmap for the state’s economy that will be region-specific and developed alongside regional stakeholders to create opportunities for industry leaders to come together to rebuild Illinois’ economy across the state.

As part of Illinois’ economic roadmap, we will hold regional Blue-Ribbon Economic Development Summits that will bring together experts from every region working to identify the best strategies to accelerate development in Southern and Western Illinois where there is little to no assistance in large-scale community development and metropolitan planning.

During the first six months in office, the Kennedy/Joy administration will convene regional blue-ribbon economic development summits with representation from the labor, business, education, workforce, economic, health care, and community development sectors. These convenings will operate as a four-part series starting with a listening and learning tour, followed by high-level planning workshops, proposal development and submission, and finally a formal submission of regional development vision plans for consideration in budget and economic planning. A Kennedy/Joy administration will follow this process in order to identify plans and priorities that are reflective of community needs across our state.

A Kennedy/Joy Administration will create a Council of Economic Advisers to advise the state on tax and fiscal policy, with a special focus on revamping the corporate tax code by looking at the full range of policy, including credits and exemptions. The R&D credit is almost universally recognized as one of the highest returns for future economic growth through commercialization of new technologies and increased productivity through advanced manufacturing processes. Even when Illinois did have a state credit, it lagged behind what many other states offered. A Kennedy/Joy administration will recommit Illinois to financial investments that will spur economic growth, including restoring our education and revitalizing research to spawn new ideas, programs and businesses that will put people to work and enhance public funding.

The Chicagoland area is home to quality public-private collaborations like the Civic Consulting Alliance, that bring private sector consultants together with government to help solve the big issues facing local governments. A Kennedy/Joy administration would expand these strategies and invest in Strategic Consulting Aid for All of Illinois to cover the entire state and provide local governments the support they need to overcome their largest obstacles and challenges.Overcomes challenges like regional access to clean water, transportation issues, sewage and runoff problems, how we power our new businesses.

An Innovation Pipeline for Illinois
University-Led Economic Development
Overview
Our universities can play a significant role in job growth, creating new companies, and spawning entirely new industries, which can contribute to the economic rebirth of our state and region.

Universities are often home to critical research operations. Places like Boston, Silicon Valley, and the Research Triangle in North Carolina, among other locations, have research universities that feed into the local economy.

These institutions invest in basic research that is developed into applied research, which spurs new ideas and products that attract additional investment. Those new ideas and products can then turn into companies or organizations that employ people who pay taxes, which help fund our schools–all of which fuels a virtuous economic cycle.

The alumni of MIT alone have founded over 30,000 companies. We have great universities. There’s no reason we can’t create this same robust system here through our public institutions.

As Governor, Chris Kennedy will create this cycle of opportunity in Illinois by bringing together political, business, and academic leaders to work in concert with one another to operate robust research operations and attract local investments.

Kennedy Connection
Chris Kennedy challenged his colleagues on the University of Illinois Board of Trustees to invest in their own university system. The result was a community dedicated to innovation that would lead to entrepreneurship from the ground up. Today, the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign Research Park is a leading technology hub for startup companies and corporate research and development operations, and a key partner to the Chicago-based digital manufacturing hub, UI Labs.

The research park has partnered with companies like Yahoo, Sony, Illinois-based Abbott Labs, and the Federal Government to put Illinoisans to work.

In-Depth Look
There is a special role that public research universities play in the economy of our state—as a perpetual job creator through politically and economically integrated research operations. The program will operate through the Illinois State Grants Office through a process that starts with the State assisting our universities in securing and tracking grant funding among our higher education institutions, which then use the grants to conduct basic research. This basic research leads to applied research. Alumni and other business leaders invest in the ideas or products to create companies that employ people who pay taxes and help fund local government services like public education or hospitals. This perpetual chain of economic stimulation—this innovation pipeline—leads to constant rebirth. It is a model that has taken hold in places like Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Research Triangle, North Carolina; and Austin, Texas; in Silicon Valley, California, and in Boston, Massachusetts

Revitalizing Our Community Colleges
Overview
Since 1989, the only workers in America generally, and Illinois specifically, who have seen their incomes grow at a rate greater than inflation and growth in purchasing power are those with a college degree. There is also a statistically significant correlation between educational attainment and unemployment— as educational attainment increases, unemployment rate decreases. States with the greatest increases in productivity also have the largest share of adults with a college degree.

A Kennedy/Joy administration will ensure that our education system drives Illinois’ economic growth by reversing the trend of disinvesting in higher education institutions and rebuilding our vast network of community colleges via a Promise Program that will make college accessible to all residents of the state.

Kennedy Connection
While chairman of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees, Chris advocated for the expansion of articulation agreements, which allow students to transfer class credits from community colleges to the U of I. This ultimately made attaining a college degree more affordable for thousands of students.

The U of I has since built on that program and has articulation agreements with community colleges throughout the state.

In-Depth Look
We will create the Illinois Promise Program (IPP) that will cover two years of tuition and fees for low and middle-income Illinois high school students who are eligible to attain a degree or credential at an Illinois community college or trade school, after accounting for federal and state aid. The IPP will also eliminate the barriers to transferring community college credits to a four year state university, thereby reducing barriers to educational access and harnessing the power of Illinois’ robust community college system as a major economic growth tool to create the highest quality workforce in the country. Modeled off the states with the most established Promise Programs in the country, such as Tennessee, Oregon and Minnesota, the IPP will also connect Illinois residents to education and apprenticeship opportunities across the State.

Organize Non-Tenure Track Faculty
Overview
Our teaching faculty across the state is one of the greatest assets to our university and community college systems as well as to our students, but Illinois has to do our part to make this the greatest state to work in for higher education professionals. Currently, non-tenure track faculty are getting the short end of the stick: they work long hours, oftentimes for multiple colleges or universities, and they earn low wages relative to their skill sets and do not receive benefits.

Kennedy Connection
Under Chris’s leadership as the board chairman at U of I, about 700 faculty members unionized and completed contract negotiations, providing them with living wages, health benefits and job security.

In-Depth Look
Recognizing that Illinois has seen a growth in non-tenure track faculty–a highly skilled workforce that provides subject matter expertise to students across the state–a Kennedy/Joy administration will encourage non-tenure track faculty to unionize in order to negotiate for the benefits they are sorely lacking. Modeled after the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA), the state of Illinois will charge our public universities and community colleges to work with a non-tenure track faculty union to share in the costs of paying for their benefits. Through this cost-sharing plan, non-tenure track faculty will receive benefits partially paid for by each of their employers.

Courses to Careers
Overview
A Kennedy/Joy administration will reinvest in career training to revitalize employment and across our state. The lifetime earnings potential of four-year college graduates far outpaces those who are not able to advance their education beyond a high school diploma or GED. In Illinois, we have to streamline access to community colleges while also offering pathways to success for students who choose to go to trade schools and technical colleges.

A four-year degree can be cost prohibitive, too demanding and inflexible for individuals who need to work in order to support their families. A career education, made up of integrated offerings that include fundamental career courses such as communication and conflict resolution, career-tailored courses, and apprenticeships, can serve as the bridge between a post-secondary education and securing a good job.

Kennedy Connection
Chris knows the impact of workforce development and has helped empower and, ultimately,, foster economic freedom in students and adults. While at the Chicago Food Depository, Chris helped maintain funding for the organization’s workforce training program, which prepares unemployed adults for productive careers in food service.

In-Depth Look
To revitalize our economy, Illinois needs businesses, job training programs, higher education institutions, and the state to work together harmoniously. Through a joint partnership between the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Development (DCEO) and the Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES), a Kennedy/Joy administration will create a Career Training and Workforce Revitalization Initiative. This initiative will work with Illinois-based companies and industries to assist our community colleges and workforce training programs to model their academic offering into career pathway programs for in-demand and growing industries. DCEO and IDES will assist our community colleges and career training programs by operating a centralized online system for career planning and by administering a marketing campaign to promote career pathway programs throughout Illinois.

Students to Stewards
Overview
A Kennedy/Joy Administration will create a pipeline between high schools, community colleges and technical schools and building trades unions to give all students an opportunity to join the workforce as full union participants.

Kennedy Connection
On Chris’s development projects, plans are in place to help provide students with hands-on experience in concrete masonry, construction carpentry, and electricity work.

In-Depth Look
Many students graduate high school, community colleges, or trade schools but still meet barriers to entry to the building trades unions that remain one of the largest contributors to middle class employment in the United States. Across Illinois, trade unions are looking for new members to meet the high demand for skilled labor. A Kennedy/Joy administration will create programs linking public high schools, community colleges, and technical institutes to trade unions and developers so that graduating students become full members of trade unions in Illinois.

New Collar Jobs for Illinois' Future
Overview
Illinois’ future rests on the state’s ability to produce the highest quality workforce to create and attract new businesses, spur entrepreneurship, and ensure that Illinois is a leader in economic growth. Illinois must lead in preparing our residents not just for the jobs of today, but for the jobs of tomorrow. New Collar Jobs for Illinois’ Future (NCJ4I) recognizes that Illinois is not just competing with other states to attract and retain the best workforce—it is competing globally.

Kennedy Connection
Chris Kennedy helped expand the University of Illinois’ extension program, which provides educational programming in mostly rural areas throughout the state. This program continues to give students throughout Illinois access to educational opportunities that they might night have had access to otherwise, in preparation for entering the workforce.

In-Depth Look
New Collar Jobs for Illinois’ Future (NCJ4I) will create pipelines to the largest growing industries in our economy: Health Care, Information Technology/Coding, Advanced Manufacturing, Transportation and Logistics. The NCJ4I program will deploy a Corps of skilled professionals certified to teach in these sectors to communities across the state, leveraging community-based organizations to serve as workforce training centers and provide career planning and training where unemployment rates are high or where they have risen in recent years.

No community should be left behind. We need to meet communities where they are. Within the NCJ4I, Illinois will operate a 21st Century Workforce Project (21WP), which will serve as a public/private partnership to advance digital and tech training in rural areas where such opportunities do not currently exist. The program will operate out of local schools, businesses, or community centers, to provide programming with a focus on improving skills today (through teaching and tutoring), tomorrow (through coaching and mentoring), and the future (through internship placement) with an entrepreneurial focus. Key deliverables for participants are the creation of web and mobile apps for (Google Android, iPhone, iPad etc.), accompanying business plans, accrual of college credits (for youth) and case studies on their resumes and portfolios because of hands-on tangible skills gained through internship placements. Parents and guardians would be eligible to apply for monthly trainings and events for youth.

Boost Business Incubators
Overview
A Kennedy/Joy administration will prioritize innovation and entrepreneurship across all of Illinois by investing in business incubators across the state so that all communities have access to the resources needed to start a business.

Kennedy Connection
The MART pioneered the development and growth of industry specific colocation centers to aggregate industries. The MART’s efforts helped to provide the model and infrastructure to allow 1871 to be successful. The MART team helped sort through the complexity of co-locating scores of complementary and rival tech companies to create and ecosystem in which they would all thrive.

In-Depth Look
Every region in the State of Illinois should have access to a business incubator/accelerator. These business accelerators foster economic development through shared coworking services and would serve as a beacon of resources that provide entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs with the resources to realize their business ideas. These incubators create an affordable, creative and collaborative environment so that entrepreneurs can produce their best work through workshops, seminars, technical assistance, and access to technology.

Modeled on the best practices of the Chicago-based Blue 1647, University Technology Park at IIT, Eiger Lab at Northern Illinois University, and the Small Business Incubator at Southern Illinois University, these incubators would be targeted in smaller towns and cities across the state to provide a resource to entrepreneurs statewide.

Business Access and Equity
Pathways to Participation
Overview
The makeup of Illinois’ government should reflect the makeup of our state. We need to commit to increasing minority and women’s participation in our economy and creating pathways for minority-owned businesses to get state contracts so that everyone has access to the American Dream. A Kennedy/Joy administration is committed to raising the bar for empowering minority and women-owned enterprises.

Kennedy Connection
Chris Kennedy is committed to increasing the number of minority owned contractors when he develops in urban areas. To make sure new contractors had the resources they needed to compete, Chris held events where they received assistance with the paperwork needed to bid. Through this strategy, Chris hired more than 150 small business enterprise (SBE) subcontractors, 55 of whom were first-time public contractors within the city or county. The project had a goal of 25 percent minority participation and exceeded that goal with a 31 percent minority business participation.

In-Depth Look
Currently the Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) participation rate is only 6.8% in Illinois, but this number may be inflated due the state’s poor capacity to collect all the data. Although there is a 20% statewide participation goal established by the Business Enterprises Program (BEP), that goal is not enforced, and the number of thriving minority owned firms participating in state contracting opportunities has remained far too low.

A Kennedy/Joy administration is committed to being intentional and deliberate about creating opportunity and access to state contracting opportunities, as well as to ensuring timely and complete data collection and reporting. There are several key sectors that prove to be exceedingly lucrative for contractors—IDOT, Toll Road, and Central Management Services (CMS) and segments of key sectors, such as asphalt. Under a Kennedy/Joy administration, the state will work to increase minority participation on state contracts. The administration will set a 20% Minority and Women-owned Businesses (M/WBE) state contracting mandate for Cook County and 15% for the rest of the state, following the example of the University of Illinois system, which has goals of 22% for their Chicago campus, and 15% for the Peoria, Rockford, Springfield and Urbana campuses.

To oversee and enforce our policies, the state will create a new cabinet level Office of Inclusion that will serve as a watchdog to review and monitor the fine print of all state contracts and aggressively hold firms accountable for achieving state contracting participation goals, and seek out new firms that can take advantage of such opportunities.

The Office of Inclusion will also enforce M/WBE participation goals and ensure data collection. The Office of Inclusion will ensure that companies that have been convicted of violating guidelines should be barred from bidding on other state projects, and principals convicted of fraud at the state or local level will be prohibited from state contracting opportunities, even with other firms. The Office of Inclusion would maintain a database of such companies to ensure that the state has a record of companies seeking to defraud the system while maintaining key incentives to ensure minority participation in contracting opportunities.

We will establish a Business Equity and Access Program (BAEP) that will set a goal of $1 billion worth of contracts for Minority and Women-owned Businesses (M/WBEs). The Kennedy/Joy administration will establish a statewide BAEP team by executive order that will explore ways to eliminate barriers to expand the participation of M/WBEs in State contracting. The BAEP team will make recommendations on state initiatives based on their findings. Access to state contracting opportunities is a critical mechanism to expand existing businesses and create a pipeline of new businesses that contribute to the State’s economic growth.

The Kennedy/Joy administration will create the Pipeline Gateway Program that consists of a pool of new businesses that receive intensive technical assistance and special access to contracting opportunities that position them for more lucrative contracting opportunities down the line. The pool would only be available for first-time contractors and subcontractors with the state.

The Kennedy/Joy administration recognizes that the state can play a role in creating a robust pipeline of participation in contracting opportunities that can help businesses expand their capacity and position them for more and larger contracts. However, all too often pipeline programs create one or two successful businesses but exclude the remainder of smaller businesses that can often be blocked by their more familiar and experienced counterparts.

Once businesses in the pool successfully obtain their first contract, they are moved out of the pool and into the general database of M/WBE businesses. The administration will aggressively recruit new businesses to replenish the pool. This program ensures that benefits of contracts aren’t realized exclusively by the M/WBEs that have already had significant exposure and opportunities to state contracts. It “spreads the wealth,” which results in more high quality, high performing M/WBE businesses across the state.

The Kennedy/Joy administration will create a “Bridging the Gap” loan program to invest at least $20 million to expand access to short term bridge loans for M/WBEs. We recognize that access to upfront capital remains a significant barrier to business expansion and participation in contracting opportunities – particularly for M/WBEs. The Bridging the Gap loan program will provide qualified M/WBEs with the short-term resources they need to participate in contracting opportunities with the State.

A Kennedy/Joy administration will create a “Mentoring for Success” Business Assistance Program by leveraging the massive talent of business professionals across the state. The Mentoring for Success business assistance program will be a free program that consists of a corps of volunteers and current and retired professionals (attorneys, accountants, financial, communications, information technology and other professional experts) that will be deployed to provide one-on-one technical assistance to M/WBE businesses seeking to participate in contracting opportunities with State agencies. The goal is to deploy 250 such professionals within the first two years and scale up to 500 such businesses. The Mentoring for Success program will complement existing technical assistance programs utilized by the state.

Employment and Criminal Justice
Overview
Chris Kennedy and Ra Joy know that access to real employment opportunities is one of the best ways to keep ex-offenders out of prison. One-third of the U.S. population has a criminal record, and every year over 30,000 Illinois residents are released from the Illinois Department of Corrections. These 30,000 people represent an amazing opportunity to inject our economy with new workers, but instead we relegate ex-offenders to the fringes of our society and of our economy, where all-too-often the only way they can get by is through repeating past criminal behavior. We must provide pathways to employment for ex-offenders so that they may join our economy and not risk recidivating.

Kennedy Connection
For years the Merchandise Mart, provided a pathway to employment for ex-offenders. The Mart worked with organizations to provide employment opportunities for ex-offenders. Low skill jobs with living wage and union benefits.

In-Depth Look
In 2004, then-State Senator Barack Obama passed legislation allowing felons to obtain licenses required for 27 occupations, including barbers, athletic trainers, real estate agents, roofing contractors, and nail technicians. It took until 2016 for the General Assembly to pass legislation standardizing eligibility requirements for felons to obtain these licenses. Despite these advancements, ex-offenders still face immense hurdles to receiving state licenses that lead to gainful employment. That’s why a Kennedy/Joy administration will establish a Governor’s Task Force on Employment and Recidivism to examine and streamline the licensing process for returning citizens.

Micro-Loans to Minority and Women Entrepreneurs
Overview
It is no secret that our economy is leaving people behind. A Kennedy/Joy administration believes that Illinois’ government has a responsibility to make the economy work for everyone, and in order to do so the state must be willing to embrace innovative microfinance solutions that will help harness the potential of minority and women entrepreneurs across the state and boost our economy.

Kennedy Connection
Chris supported his brother, Michael Kennedy, who was a major donor to the Women’s Opportunity Fund, one of the early microlending nonprofits to pioneer microfinancing around the world.

In-Depth Look
We will create a microloan program through the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO) as part of our economic development agenda. Microloan programs have worked around the world, as well as in the United States, and Illinois should follow the model of Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank, as New York has, to create equity, opportunity, and access through microfinancing.

Illinois’ program will be financed by capturing a portion of the revenues from business filing fees and used to issue micro loans to minority and women entrepreneurs. A microfinance strategy recognizes that pathways to traditional loans are blocked for many members of these communities, whether it be because of bad credit or no credit, redlining, or criminal convictions. These barriers can no longer be allowed to forestall Illinois’ economy and keep hard-working people in poverty.

Protecting Our Workforce
Protecting Workers from Employee Misclassification
Overview
Employee misclassification costs the state over $600 million a year and harms workers by keeping them in lower-wage jobs without benefits. This is a fixable problem that the state has not solved, but with proper oversight, we can protect our workforce and generate revenue the state is rightfully entitled to.

Kennedy Connection
As board chairman at U of I, Chris had the power to appoint two members to the University Civil Service Merit Board, the governing body of the University System that determines issues around classification of employees. Chris made sure that the appointees would be diligent in protecting workers’ rights, even as the state often attempted to misclassify employees as a way to reduce costs and avoid paying benefits.

In-Depth Look
We need to crack down on employee misclassification and prevent companies from cheating on their taxes by misclassifying their employees as independent contractors. A Kennedy/Joy administration would instruct the Illinois Department of Employment Security to conduct joint audits with the Illinois Department of Revenue and the Illinois Department of Labor to find these businesses and stop this illegal practice. Every year, the state loses out on $624 million that should go to the unemployment trust fund, $589 million in income tax revenue, and $121 million that should go to workmen’s compensation premiums. Union-run businesses are being priced out of the market by competitors who are getting an edge by cutting corners. This is fundamentally unfair to workers and to the economic welfare of our state.

Holding Government Accountable
Pension Funds Focused on Illinois
Overview
Chris Kennedy believes that workers deserve the pensions that they contracted for. As Governor, Chris will put workers ahead of politicians and fight against illegal attempts to steal workers pension under so-called pension reform.

In order for our state to thrive, we have to start holding ourselves fiscally accountable. That begins with holding our government accountable to its workers. Paying workers their constitutionally protected pensions, never taking a pension holiday, and beginning to recognize the promises Illinois made to its workers will put money back into Illinois’ economy, give retirees a better quality of life, restore faith in government, and continue to attract a highly talented workforce to government.

Kennedy Connection
While Chris led MMPI, the company that owned the Merchandise Mart in Chicago, he contracted with 10,000 companies annually. The validity of those contracts were critical to the success of the businesses and the entire economy. Chris has a history of respecting contracts, because abandoning the rule of law, whether it’s for contracts between businesses or contracts between employees and businesses, is detrimental to progress in our economy and counter to integrity in leadership.

In-Depth Look
The state’s pension funds have made a lot of money for Wall Street and cost taxpayers too much. New laws and new leadership need to:

• Make it harder for the state to skip payments into its pension systems.
• Create automatic enrollment for defined-contribution retirement systems.
• Collect all investment manager fees into one database for review and comparison by all systems on an annual basis.

Furthermore, we need to maximize the state’s role as an investor by:

• Changing statutory requirements to invest pension dollars in Illinois-based firms and funds. By amplifying the Office of the Treasurer’s Illinois Growth and Innovation Fund, an Illinois-focused $220 million venture and private equity funds, the state can create thousands of additional jobs.
• Incentivizing firms and funds owned by Minorities, Women, Veterans, and Persons with a Disability (MWVD) that bid on investment contracts so that our dollars are used to grow jobs and companies in our state, not on Wall Street.

Create an Illinois Index Fund
Overview
The state of Illinois should be investing in Illinois-based companies as a central tenet for how to grow our economy. To do so, a Kennedy/Joy administration will create an Illinois Index Fund that will be designed to mimic the performance characteristics of the S&P 500.

Kennedy Connection
At the Chicago Community Trust, Chris developed the framework for an index fund comprised of a basket of IL public companies that would be managed to mimic the performance characteristics of the S&P 500. The index fund would allow public funds, such as SERs, to invest directly in the state and enhance capital formation for Illinois based-companies to boost our economy.

Chris is also Chairman of the Audit Committee for Ariel Mutual Funds, Chairman of the Investment Committee for the Chicago Community Trust, and he manages the Kennedy family financial investments.

In-Depth Look
We will create an Illinois Index Fund of 100 of Illinois’ best performing companies whose performance characteristics will be modeled on the broader S&P 500. Companies like Caterpillar, Illinois Tool Works, ADM, William Blair & Company, Northern Trust, Boeing, Walgreens, Horizon Pharma, and AbbVie. The Governor will direct the State Employees’ Retirement System (SERS) to invest a portion of their pension fund in the index, jumpstarting direct investment in the businesses at the forefront of our state’s economy.

Rebuilding Illinois: Job Creation Through Infrastructure Investments
A Capitol Bill for Illinois
Overview
There will now be a major priority shift by lawmakers in D.C. to pass a federal infrastructure bill in 2018, funneling somewhere around $200-$500 billion into communities and states across the country. Our government can invest in the state’s economy and yield a return that’s greater than the cost of the investment itself. That is why Illinois must stand ready to take advantage of this investment by passing a capitol bill, coordinating the federal delegation, and creating an inventory of shovel-ready programs to put Illinoisans back to work.

Kennedy Connection
Chris has managed capital projects in both the public and private sectors. He is a building developer who is currently leading the real estate development in downtown Chicago known as Wolf Point, a massive construction project backed by more than $1 billion in private financing that is bringing 2,000 construction and permanent jobs to Illinois.

The success of businesses is built on reliable and sophisticated infrastructure. Chris experienced this first-hand when he led the Merchandise Mart, which relied on O’Hare International Airport to make it easier for exhibitors and customers to visit the Merchandise Mart. Similarly, the success of the Apparel Center was derived from access to a fiber-optic cable, which attracted high-speed trading firms to the building.

In-Depth Look
Whether it’s investments to modernize our roads, highways and bridges, or whether it’s water infrastructure to improve our locks and dams that fuel the blue economy on the Mississippi River, a Kennedy/Joy team will accelerate infrastructure investments that put men and women to work making a living wage sufficient for supporting Illinois’ families and boosting the state’s economy.

A Kennedy Joy administration is committed to leveraging infrastructure investments to spur economic growth, particularly for challenged communities. A Kennedy/Joy administration will reserve funds for capital spending to target infrastructure investments in under-resourced communities along with technical assistance from the State to invest in community development projects related to infrastructure and transportation. Moreover, the State will invest in building a robust workforce program designed around infrastructure investments that will target the hard to employ, underemployed, reentry individuals, and veterans, for jobs within key sectors for capital investments, including: broadband access, open lands, transportation, and water infrastructure.

Broadband Investments to Close the Opportunity Gap
Overview
Access to affordable broadband in Illinois is an equity as well as an economic issue. From inner city neighborhoods to rural Illinois, communities need robust broadband capacity to help residents connect to needed services that improve quality of life and close the digital divide.. Business owners and entrepreneurs need access to broadband in order connect to both the local and global economy. High-speed Internet can help close the digital divide that punishes people based on their zip code.

Kennedy Connection
During my time at the MMPI, the Apparel Mart began its own renaissance as it became very attractive to the new breed of successful high-speed trading firms. Rival cable providers, such as AT&T, Above Net, Level 3 and Quest, all operated within the building because of its desirable open-technology format.

At U of I, we were able to create a critical mass of leading researchers, and the momentum began to build on itself with great research in the pipeline, a pipeline whose pump was primed by a relatively low investment in a fiber optic network.

In-Depth Look
A Kennedy/Joy administration believes closing the digital divide is crucial to creating an inclusive economy that benefits all of Illinois. Access to quality broadband also increases the ability to attract new businesses to towns and cities, particularly in key sectors like tech and healthcare.

A Kennedy/Joy administration will encourage more municipalities across the State to set up broadband as a public utility to meet the needs of residents—particularly in rural towns across the state. We will also create partnerships with franchises to arrange agreements for lower cost broadband services in towns and rural areas of need.

A Commitment to Agriculture
Overview
Chris Kennedy understands that agriculture drives job creation in communities across the state. A Kennedy/Joy Administration will double down on efforts to assist farmers across the state in getting products to new and diverse markets. We will work with the supply chain, from the millers and food processors, to the distribution centers and grocery stores to make sure high-quality, Illinois products reach across the country.

Our agriculture economy has significant interface with the environmental movement, and harmonizing these two vital interests will be top of mind for our administration.

Kennedy Connection
Thirty years ago, Chris moved from Boston to Decatur to work for Archer Daniels Midland in agriculture. He worked in Decatur, Peoria, the Metro East and throughout downstate. This experience helped Chris learn the fundamentals of food distribution in the United States. He used this foundation throughout his life to help contribute in the fight against as chairman of the Greater Chicago Food Depository and founder of Top Box Foods, a nonproft that he and his wife, Sheila, started to ensure that communities in food deserts have access to healthy, fresh, affordable food options.

In-Depth Look
Agriculture is responsible for 1 in 17 jobs in Illinois and accounts for just under 10% of the economy. Chris Kennedy knows that to plan and invest in agriculture is to create jobs across our state.

A Kennedy/Joy administration will build on the work of FARM Illinois to establish a Governor’s Council on Agriculture to create a permanent planning group to implement a strategic, long-term plan and much-needed improvements to the state’s agriculture policies. This council will commit to refreshing Illinois’ agriculture roadmap every three years.

Working with the public university system, a Kennedy/Joy administration will invest in the university system’s agriculture schools to attract and retain a labor supply that is properly trained to develop tomorrow’s great agricultural innovations.

Reducing the waste in the farm-to-fork process begins with protecting our state’s natural resources, investing in infrastructure and supporting local efforts to reduce agricultural waste. It results with food distributors investing in our state to feed the nation.

A Kennedy/Joy administration will invest in marketing for our local farms. By developing specialized marketing plans for each region of the state and our various harvests, we can market Illinois products to the world.

Welcome to Illinois: Investing in Tourism
Overview
Whether it be a skier gliding down Chestnut Mountain in Galena, a family camping in Shawnee National Forest, or conventioneers taking in downtown Chicago, Illinois has something to offer to every tourist. A Kennedy/Joy administration will invest in Illinois’ tourism industry to create jobs in every region and bring in money from other states to fuel our economy.

Kennedy Connection
As Chairman of the Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau, Chris Kennedy has firsthand experience in promoting Chicago’s assets and convention business. Chris worked to bring back trade shows that had left Illinois for cities like Orlando or Atlanta. By working with the City of Chicago, the State of Illinois, the hotel industry, and the restaurant industry, Chris helped create the thriving downtown Chicago we enjoy today, and which is host to hundreds of trade shows a year that bring out-of-state dollars into our economy.

In-Depth Look
A Kennedy/Joy administration will invest in our open spaces by expanding support for tourism funding so that the rest of the country knows about the great beauty throughout our state. A forward-thinking vision for Illinois will integrate our environment with infrastructure planning to create greater access to our open spaces, integration among them through public trails and bike paths, and also the expansion of public outdoor green space for more communities throughout our state.

To accompany such planning, a Kennedy/Joy administration will adopt a more expansive, proactive tourism promotional plan that highlights our state parks, nature preserves, and other important natural lands. Overall planning will integrate into technical assistance for local communities to explore capital investments that would create or expand green spaces and outdoor activity spaces, particularly through a set-aside fund dedicated to capital spending for under-resourced, low-income communities that often bear the brunt of toxic pollutants.

We would work to create a statewide biking network of bike paths throughout the state to connect communities where no paths exist to places like Chicago where many have been developed. Ideally, these paths would be built to provide better access to our public buildings as well as to our open spaces, such as our schools, libraries, public parks, and outdoor destinations. This effort would be integrated into plans to update existing roads, making all of our state easy and enjoyable to travel.

But Illinois’ tourism opportunities do not stop at our open spaces. A Kennedy/Joy administration will grow Illinois’ trade show industry in our urban centers by harnessing economic development strategies to expand the restaurant and hotel industries while also investing in capital upgrades and on-going marketing dollars to boost the year-round use of state and county fairgrounds to attract people to events throughout Illinois and allow commerce to occur.

Returning to Our Roots: Revitalizing Illinois as a Transportation Hub
Overview
Illinois’ geographic location makes our State a major national thoroughfare via our waterways, roads, highways, and rail lines but our outdated infrastructure creates unnecessary and costly transportation bottlenecks as well as environmental hazard. Illinois can only be a center for commerce, if it has the transportation network to support its economy.

Much of our infrastructure was built in the 1930s with an intended lifespan of 50 years—the system is long overdue for upgrades, rehabilitation, and repair. Illinois’ major waterways serve as vital connections for commercial shipping of goods or travel throughout Illinois and the rest of the country. Illinois also has over 1,750 State-regulated dams, with a number of older dams whose condition and level of risk are unknown. Many of these dams are decades old and merit funding for repair and, in some cases, replacement.

Our rails are critical to providing efficient and reliable transit in the midst of a transitioning economy. The Illinois rail network is the second largest in the country. Almost every North American railway connects in Chicago, which makes our major city arguably the most active rail hub in the country.

Kennedy Connection
During his time at ADM, Chris traded barge freight on the St. Louis Merchants Exchange, helping him understand the importance of a maintaining a navigable channel to transport barge freight along waterways.

In-Depth Look
A Kennedy/Joy infrastructure plan will prioritize upgrades to our lock and dam system to ensure we maintain a safe and navigable infrastructure of our waterways. In doing so, we will work hand-in-glove with environmental regulators to ensure that our state’s commercial interests in navigable channels is balanced with the environmental risks of invasive species. In addition, a Kennedy/Joy administration will invest in modernizing our rail lines following recommendations laid out in the CREATE program to improve intermodal transport and linkages between our rail lines.

Illinois must invest in revitalizing our transportation infrastructure to optimize efficiency and capacity. We can no longer afford to underspend compared to other American and international cities and states.

Protecting and Providing a Fresh Water Future for the Next Generation
Overview
The fresh water supply of the MidWest is one Illinois’ greatest assets, yet our water infrastructure earned the worst grades among Illinois’ multiple infrastructure elements. Many wastewater management systems in Illinois are more than 100 years old. Dangerous amounts of lead has been detected in pipes in various communities across the State, from Peoria to Springfield and in Chicago. An analysis by the Chicago Tribune identified aged pipes in the Chicago area that lead to the unnecessary loss of around 25 billion gallons of water with a substantial cost of about $44 million to taxpayers. Some 16 communities lost up to 32 percent of their water in a single year (2016).

The burden of water loss and costly lost supply was further found to be discriminatory, with the medium price for water in predominantly African American communities costing 20% more than mostly white communities for the same volume of water.

Kennedy Connection
The Merchandise Mart became the largest LEED-certified building in the world and we made sustainability an everyday commitment. Water management is extremely important to LEED certification and whenever we replaced one of the 1,500 plumbing fixtures in the building, we did so with low-flow devices.

We also replaced the fan unit that cooled the computer equipment in our corporate office because it used City of Chicago tap water to cool the air temperature, and then returned that tap water to the common sewer system and then passed it back to the water reclamation district. By modifying the fan to an air-cooled system, we save 4 to 5 million gallons of water per year.

In-Depth Look
In Illinois, we must treat our water supply as the vital, precious resource that is—economically, environmentally, and morally. Water is the new oil: around the world, water scarcity is associated with 9,000 miles of continuous warfare. Within a broader infrastructure plan, the Kennedy/Joy administration will further expand productive programs that have enhanced our water quality such as the Illinois’ Clean Water Initiative, the Public Water Supply Loan Program, and the Green Infrastructure for Clean Water Act. The state will build on the initiative that The City of Chicago Department of Water Management’s recently adopted and institute a statewide 10-year plan for replacing aged water lines.

Health Care
Our Vision
Access to quality, affordable health care is the most fundamental basis for quality of life. Chris Kennedy and Ra Joy believe that Illinois can play a major role in ensuring that every resident has access to health care and quality health care experiences at all stages of life. No individual or family should suffer for lack of access to care, and no individual or family should suffer because they cannot afford health care. Our state thrives when our residents are healthy and able to contribute fully to society. We envision a state where high-quality health care is easily accessible, affordable, and delivered with compassion.

Affordable Health Care for All
On the Path to Single-Payer: A State-Backed Public Option
A Kennedy/Joy administration will put Illinois on a path to a single-payer system. We will start by creating a state-backed public option of large-scale, Illinois-based employers and pre-existing municipal insurance pools to allow them to aggregate together as one negotiating entity to drive down costs. This will reduce our reliance on costly, profit-driven insurance companies and provide modern, accessible, and just coverage to all.

These aggregated insurance pools will emerge as an economic and political force in the state with clout, leverage, and contacts to overcome the insurance lobby. By allowing the largest employers in the state to work together to negotiate the cost of health coverage and drug prices, existing insurance companies will become nothing more than benefits managers.

Once established, with a solid foundation of committed members and employers, the employer-backed option will be made available to anyone in the state—including undocumented immigrants—which will further drive down costs for plan holders and the overall health care market in Illinois.

Keeping the Affordable Care Act Strong: A Statewide Health Insurance Mandate
A Kennedy/Joy administration believes that everyone in our state should have health insurance. A rising tide lifts all boats: when we partner together, when everyone contributes, we can cover everyone’s costs, and every member of our society is contributing to every other person’s wellbeing.

The new Republican Tax Plan has eliminated the Obamacare health care mandate, which is predicted to cause everyone’s premiums to rise and leave more people without health insurance. States around the country are working to enact statewide health care mandates, and Illinois should be no exception. A Health Care Mandate for Illinois will keep everyone insured and help control the rising cost of health care.

Medicaid Buy-In Program
Every person in our state should have access to affordable, quality health insurance. However, for a family of four in Illinois, the federal government will only subsidize the cost of monthly premiums if that family’s net income is $98,400 or less. As premiums rise due to decisions by the republicans in Washington, but income levels stay the same, there will be a gap in coverage, a so-called “donut” of people, who do not qualify for Medicaid but whose premiums are too high to be affordable.

A Kennedy/Joy administration will create a Medicaid Buy-In Program to allow those families who cannot afford a plan on the Health Care Exchange but who also don’t qualify for Medicaid to pay a less expensive premium, based on their income, in order to receive Medicaid coverage.

Mandated Transparency for Hikes in Drug Prices
Prescription drugs should be widely accessible to those who need them. Whether your medication clears up an infection, helps you manage pain, or literally saves your life, it should not be cost-prohibitive to obtain. A Kennedy/Joy administration believes it is the government’s job to protect all consumers from the profit-seeking motives of big pharma. Right now, pharmaceutical companies can raise the price of any drug, even if there are multiple other virtually identical drugs on the market, and go unchecked. Consumers often don’t know the price of their medication has gone up until they go to pay for it at their drug store.

A Kennedy/Joy administration will follow the state of California’s lead and mandate Drug Price Increase Notification Requirements. Drug companies will be required to issue a notification and justification if they plan to raise the price of a drug 60 days prior to the increase, and insurance companies will be required to report how increases in drug costs affect the cost of health care premiums and copays.

This law will create transparency for consumers so they can speak to their doctors about alternatives, and the law will provide information to regulators so that they can more effectively intervene when rates are being raised without proper justification.

Mandate Transparency for Hospital Profitability
Consumers deserve to know how much profit the hospitals in their neighborhoods, cities, and counties are earning. Illinois should mandate greater transparency around hospital profitability, especially for those hospitals with non-profit status, to ensure that they are living up to their mission to serve a diverse group of people.

Increasing Access to Health Care
Create a Prescription Drug Buy-Back Program
Illinois can transform health care access for the uninsured and underinsured across our state through a prescription drug buy-back program. Not only are drug prices on the rise, but the state of Illinois, unlike 42 other states, has done nothing to reduce the amount of pharmaceutical waste that is generated by requirements that forbid medical facilities, like hospitals, nursing homes, and long-term care facilities, from recycling medication that has been prescribed to a patient who does not take the full course of treatment and donating that medication to those in need.

Medical facilities generate millions of dollars of unused drugs that are untampered with, in sealed packages, and unexpired, but in Illinois they are required to dispose of these medications.

A Kennedy/Joy administration would create a Prescription Drug Buy-Back Program where a state-backed non-profit would act as a repository, collecting, sorting, and controlling for quality drugs that are donated by licensed medical facilities. The non-profit repository then donates the unused medication back to pharmacies across the state who distribute them to uninsured and underinsured individuals.

Not only does this increase equity by making medication available to people in the state who have the least access health care, but it reduces unnecessary waste that drives up the cost of health care for everyone.

Make Medical Care Available in Every Illinois County
Many counties in Illinois don’t have access to adequate medical care within their county, with access to specialists being especially dire in some counties. A Kennedy/Joy administration will scale up hospital and clinic operations in every county in the state, starting with communities situated farthest from a general hospital or health care center. We will work with the federal government to expand the number of Federally Qualified Health Centers to counties with the most need, and we will expand the existing loan-forgiveness program than incentivizes doctors and nurses to practice in federally designated health professional shortage areas (HPSA).

Illinois must be a nationwide leader in telemedicine, which is the new frontier of medical care. That’s why a Kennedy/Joy administration will require insurance companies and Medicaid to cover telehealth services that will increase access to care across our state. Currently 26 other states require insurance companies to cover telehealth services, while Illinois has lagged behind. Telemedicine brings much-needed care to people wherever they are and serves to lower overall health care expenses by providing preventative care, which will save taxpayers money over the long term. Illinois should embrace telemedicine.

Oppose a Medicaid "Work Requirement"
A Kennedy/Joy administration will fiercely oppose the efforts of the Trump Administration to impose a “work requirement” for Medicaid eligibility. Requiring Medicaid recipients to prove that they are working is both morally wrong and could leave as many as 400,000 Illinoisans without health care. Health care is a right, not a privilege, and Medicaid is designed to provide health care to people who cannot afford other care, whatever their reasons are for not being able to afford other coverage. Governor Rauner is reportedly considering applying for a federal waiver to get permission to make employment a condition of receiving Medicaid. For a Kennedy/Joy administration, there would be nothing to consider. This policy is an automatic and emphatic no.

Extending Eyeglasses and Contact Prescription Expiration Periods
In Illinois, prescriptions for glasses and contacts expire after one year, essentially forcing consumers to pay to see a doctor anytime they need new glasses or contacts. This is especially onerous for low- and middle-income earners. A Kennedy/Joy administration will lengthen the expiration periods of these prescriptions.

Protecting Our Workers
Health care Workforce
We will pass a $15 minimum wage bill that will be a required base minimum pay for all caregivers and health care workers. License-exempt caregivers who are caring for our children—often the children of low-income families—should not be earning less than minimum wage. Some license-exempt providers are earning as little as $16.22 per day. This is unacceptable. No one who works a full-time job should be forced to live in poverty. A Kennedy/Joy administration will ensure that health care providers and caregivers are never paid below a $15 minimum wage.

A Kennedy/Joy administration will fight attacks against home health care workers, like those that have come from the current administration. These attacks, like the plan to cap income eligibility levels for seniors and people with disabilities to receive care, or the scheme to limit the number of overtime hours home health care workers can work are wrong. Both measures would destabilize care for these populations and cause home health care workers financial hardship.

Paid Family Leave
A Kennedy/Joy administration will institute 12 weeks of paid family leave, following the model New York has recently adopted, where annual employee payroll contributions are capped at $85.56 per year to fund the program. Employees will receive a percentage of their weekly wage for 12 weeks, with their total weekly payments capped at a percentage of the Statewide Average Weekly Wage in Illinois. This will ensure that employees have job protection, health insurance, and financial support when they need to take time off from work for personal reasons.

Whether you’re a mother who has just given birth, a new father who wants to spend time with his family, caring for a loved one, or suffering from an illness yourself, Illinoisans should not incur an economic burden for needing to attend to circumstances in their personal lives. Additionally, paid leave must include adoption and foster children entering the home as qualifying reasons to take paid leave.

There are only eight countries in the entire world that do not offer paid maternity leave. Not only is the US one of those eight countries, but we are the only high-income country that doesn’t offer leave, according to the World Bank.

Illinois cannot afford to wait for the federal government to institute nationwide paid family leave. Offering paid leave is an issue of fairness as much as it is a good business practice. If Illinois is to be an attractive state for the next generation to build their careers here, we cannot afford to deny workers rights they can get in other states. In states like California that have had paid family leave in effect for over a decade, not only did the vast majority of large and small businesses alike report no noticeable effect on the profitability and performance of their businesses, but employers also report improved morale and productivity.

Treating Addiction and Mental Health
Adopt a Hub and Spoke Program to Treat Addiction
Addiction is a disease, but unlike many diseases, addiction does not have a singular cure. It is only through a comprehensive approach to addiction treatment that people with substance-use disorder can gain enough tools and support to maintain sobriety. A Kennedy/Joy administration is committed to providing that support to communities throughout Illinois.

The opioid crisis is claiming lives across our state: in big cities like Chicago, which have long suffered from government indifference to issues of addiction—particularly in predominantly minority communities—and in rural areas, where addiction to opioids has exploded in recent years. A Kennedy/Joy administration will follow Vermont’s innovative lead by adopting a Hub and Spoke model to treat addiction.

A Hub and Spoke program is a comprehensive addiction treatment plan where patients first interact with the “hub,” or nexus where they receive intensive treatment from teams of nurses, counselors, and prescribing MDs. At the hub clinic patients receive a medical assessment, care coordination, therapy, and medication-assisted treatment using anti-withdrawal medications like methadone and buprenorphine. Patients must come to the hub daily in order to receive their anti-withdrawal medication.

Over time as patients become more stable, they are transitioned to the different “spokes” for specialized treatment that varies from patient to patient. The spokes include: mental health services, pain management clinics, family services, residential services, inpatient and outpatient addiction programs, medical homes, and support services to help manage outstanding legal issues like probation or parole.

Ensuring Continuity of Care and Access for the Reentry Population
Achieving and maintaining healthy and productive lifestyles increases former inmates’ chances of finding work, successfully reintegrating into their communities, and staying out of prison.

This is particularly true for inmates who have mental health or substance-use disorders. Without health care coverage, many of them are released without the ability to get the medications they need. Before they are released from prison, inmates should be confirmed participants in Medicaid. This means that prisons must make an effort to sign inmates up early enough to have the inmate’s enrollment ready on the day of his or her release.

In addition, the state would ensure that inmates released from prison work directly with a care coordinator whose responsibility is to help them find a primary care doctor, make and confirm appointments, and learn about urgent care, health care specialists, and transportation benefits. A Kennedy/Joy administration would work to seamlessly coordinate between the Department of Corrections and the State Medicaid program.

Set Limits for Prescription Narcotics
Everyone should be able to access pain management medication when it is needed. However, we must recognize that prescription narcotics are highly addictive, and the existing incentives lead physicians to over-prescribe the number of pills in a prescription. We must fix the current reimbursement system so that doctors are rewarded for interacting with patients late at night and on the weekends to determine if there is a medical condition that requires additional narcotics. This will also decrease the possibility of leftover narcotics ending up on the black market and fueling addiction.

Illinois should also prevent pharmacy shopping by creating a state tracking system that notifies pharmacies if patients are trying to fill prescriptions for narcotics at multiple pharmacies during a short timeframe.

Expand Number of Needle Exchange Sites and Coordinate Care
Needle exchange programs prevent the spread of HIV, hepatitis, and other blood-borne diseases. They also provide an entry point for addiction treatment and other health services, like testing for STIs and HIV. There are nine needle exchange sites currently operating in Illinois: three in Chicago, two in Springfield, with others in Belleville, Champaign, Dixon, and Kankakee. A Kennedy/Joy administration would expand the number of needle exchange sites so that epicenters of addiction, whether they be in rural or urban parts of the state, have access to this simple, low-cost, and effective measure to provide care and prevent the spread of diseases.

Gun Violence Transparency Requirements
Gun violence has a ripple effect through entire communities. The bullet that kills the father wounds the child, and the trauma suffered by all those who are impacted by violence is pervasive and life-changing. A Kennedy/Joy administration will require hospitals to report the number of gun-violence victims who are treated at their facilities. This information will allow the state to gather data on gun violence to a) better target mental health and trauma care to the communities that need it most and b) make the data transparent to the public, which many cities and police departments fail to do. The disclosure of personal information will be exempt, so as not to violate HIPAA.

Fund Primary Health Clinics and Integrate Mental Health Services
The current administration’s manufactured budget crisis was devastating for our state’s mental health care providers. Lutheran Social Services, the state’s largest provider of social services, was forced to close more than 30 programs around the state when they stopped receiving funding from the state due to the lack of a state budget. Even with the budget that the state now has, the majority of shuttered programs remain closed, cutting off entire communities from care. A Kennedy/Joy administration will work with providers to reopen and expand primary health clinics and to integrate mental health services in these clinics across the state.

Caring for Seniors and People with Disabilities
Building a Strong Network of Home and Community Based Services
Seniors and people with disabilities deserve universal long-term care. A Kennedy/Joy administration will fight the republican effort to make Medicaid into a block grant program or a per capita program that would threaten Home and Community Based Services (HCBS) and Long-Term Support Services (LTSS). We will work to expand the social safety-net and commit to a budget that funds crucial programs like the Community Cares Programs, which ensures that seniors have access to home health care that allows them to maintain their independence and avoid high-cost nursing home facilities.

Training a Pipeline of Direct Care Workers
Maintaining a pipeline of qualified, well-trained, and fairly compensated direct-care workers is a long-term challenge we need to address as a state through a robust workforce development program. There is a significantly larger role that our state could play in increasing access to higher education and job training for in-demand fields, like health care and direct care. A Kennedy/Joy administration will adopt a college Promise Program in Illinois, modeled after states like Tennessee, Oregon, or Minnesota, where two years of free community college or workforce training help feed in-state apprenticeships and employment pipelines to these critically important careers.

Increase the Personal Needs Allowance
People with developmental disabilities receive a Medicaid per diem called a Personal Needs Allowance. This money is intended to pay for small-dollar items that Medicaid does not cover, like snacks, clothes, and haircuts. Currently, people living in intermediate care facilities only receive $30 a month. That is only a dollar per day. This is shameful. A Kennedy/Joy administration will increase the Personal Needs Allowance to $80 per month, which will give individuals with developmental disabilities more economic agency. Increasing the Personal Needs Allowance is also a good for the economy, since the additional money for the allowance will be spent right away, often in communities and at small businesses.

Increasing Nursing Home Staffing and Oversight
Governor Rauner centralized nursing home oversight boards and eliminated the regional governance structure that was better able to hold nursing homes accountable to the highest standards. A Kennedy/Joy administration would restore regional oversight to our state’s nursing homes.

In order to offer quality care, Illinois must also increase the number of mandated direct-care hours per resident per day in order to meet federal standards. Currently, Illinois mandates a minimum of 3.8 hours per resident per day while federal standards recommended that each resident receive 4.1 hours. A Kennedy/Joy administration will work to make sure that all nursing home residents receive the care they deserve.

In order to maintain quality and consistency of care, the state must pay nursing homes in a timely manner. A Kennedy/Joy administration will direct the State Comptroller to create a revolving loan fund so that the state pays nursing homes what it owes them immediately.

Standing with Women: Women-Specific Health Care
Abortion Access for All
A Kennedy/Joy administration will uphold a woman’s right to choose. We will protect and ensure the implementation of the provisions in HB 40, which directs Medicaid to cover the cost of abortions for low-income women. Abortion should not be a luxury for the rich but a true choice for every woman regardless of financial circumstance. That’s why our administration will be focused on increasing access to abortion across the state, where only 61% of women live in a county with an abortion provider. We will fully fund Planned Parenthood, and our administration will set a goal of scaling up providers so that there is at least one abortion provider in every county throughout Illinois.

Broader Access to Birth Control
A Kennedy/Joy administration will work to legalize the sale of over-the-counter (OTC) birth control pills because access to birth control is like access to abortion: it’s a fundamental part of women’s reproductive rights. This past February, Colorado became the third state in the country to allow OTC birth control, after California and Oregon. We believe Illinois should follow the lead of these states with the assisted guidance of medical professionals. Under our administration, we will set a goal for Illinois to have the lowest level of unplanned pregnancies of any state in the nation.

Standardize the State's Sex Education Curriculum to be Inclusive of Women's Needs
A Kennedy/Joy administration believes that knowledge brings power, and we need to ensure that all students are receiving science-based, medically accurate, and age-appropriate information in their sex education classes. This includes information about birth control, Plan B, abortion, sexual harassment, domestic violence, rape, and tools for survivors.

Standing with the LGBTQ+ Community: LGBTQ+ Specific Health Care
Uphold Protections for the LGBTQ+ Community
A Kennedy/Joy administration will fight to protect the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and uphold the anti-discrimination provisions in the ACA that prevent someone from being denied or given lesser health care coverage due to sexual orientation or gender identity.

Increase Access to Health Care
There are life-saving, transformative drugs on the market that everyone in the LGBTQ+ community should be able to access, regardless of socioeconomic status. These include access to hormone replacement therapy and PrEP, throughout the state as well as inside our jails and prisons.

There is only one clinic outside of Chicago where a transgender person can receive hormone replacement therapy. That means that people across our state have to travel great distances for this medically necessary treatment or go without. A Kennedy/Joy administration is committed to increasing the number of hormone replacement therapy providers throughout Illinois.

We will follow the example of Florida by working to provide PrEP at no cost for our high-risk and/or low-income population in every county in Illinois. A Kennedy/Joy administration will also fund LGBTQ+-specific mental health and counseling services at community health clinics and in grade schools, as well as in our public university system.

Standardize the State's Sex Education Curriculuim to Be Inclusive of LGBTQ+ Needs
A Kennedy/Joy administration will push for Illinois to require our public schools to teach sex education with a curriculum that is science-based, medically accurate, age-appropriate, and inclusive. Sex education is key to ensuring every student gets medically accurate information on safe sex practices. It is critical that Illinois update our sex education curriculum around the state to include mandated lessons on HIV testing and treatment that focus on de-stigmatizing an HIV-positive diagnosis. The curriculum should further emphasize the importance of taking precautions like PrEP and educating everyone about the positive, lifesaving effects of antiretroviral medication.

Cultural Competency Training for Health Care Providers
No one should be victimized or made to feel unsafe when they interact with medical professionals. A Kennedy/Joy administration will institute cultural competency training as a part of receiving a license to practice medicine or become a nurse in Illinois. While some hospitals in Illinois already offer this training, it should be mandatory. We will also work with hospitals and medical professionals to ensure that there is a reporting system for LGBTQ+ people to lodge complaints and make it known when care is not culturally competent.

Gun Violence
As two people whose families have been deeply impacted by gun violence, Chris Kennedy and Ra Joy are committed to addressing the challenge of violence in our state. Chris and Ra believe we need to combat violence in three key ways: addressing violence as a public health issue by providing trauma treatment and mental health services; curbing illegal gun access; and revitalizing schools and communities afficted by gun violence.

Chris has called for an eight-point plan to combat gun violence in Illinois. Chris will reinvest in high-risk communities and strengthen oversight of illegal gun access and unlawful gun use by licensing gun dealers, cracking down on “gun trains” and creating a gun tracing program, among other measures. He will divert at-risk youth away from violence through support for community-based diversion programs; fund and expand proven programs and techniques that reduce violence; and expand trauma and mental health care in communities and for individuals impacted by violence. He will further support a full return to community policing with a concentrated effort to recruit future candidates from the communities offcers intend to serve; and pursue criminal justice reform that supports perpetrators in becoming productive citizens.

Invest in basic economic issues like public education and jobs programs
Opportunity is the enemy of violence, and economic oppression is its partner in crime. We know that in Chicago today, there are more than 30 high schools where the average ACT score is a 14 or 15. This is not the fault of hardworking teachers or the schools themselves. This is the result of a disinvestment in public schools. We are allowing economic oppression to force too many young people into a life of crime, or force families and communities out of our city and state.

We need to re-invest in our public schools, and we need to invest in communities from top to bottom. We need to create job opportunities that are not just entry level jobs or summer jobs. We need to look at areas of pinstripe patronage for areas of opportunity – in everything from streets and sanitation to bond counsel, from lifeguards to the people who invest the state’s money.

Reduce the flow of illegal handguns and unlawful gun use by strengthening our gun laws
In the state of Illinois, you need to have a license to cut hair or paint nails but not to sell guns. That needs to end.

We need to pass a gun dealer licensing bill. Efforts stalled in Illinois’ November 2017 legislative session to advance Senate Bill 1657 in the House. As governor I will move forward with this legislation.

We need to learn from the work underway in New York and even efforts already happening in Chicago to create a state gun-tracing program. We can partner to work in cooperation with other states so we can trace the ownership of all guns that were used in a crime.

We need to close the gun show loophole where people can buy guns at traveling trade shows without having to go through the background checks that gun dealers in the state are required to perform on buyers in their stores.

We need to pass a lethal order of protection to keep guns out of the hands of those in the midst of mental crisis or whose loved ones report concern for their own safety or the safety of others around them.

We need to ban anyone on the terrorist watch list from receiving a FOID card in Illinois and call on President Trump to share the terrorist watch list with the state police immediately. If he won’t, we will demand that he explain why he refuses to do so.

We need to confront the gun train issue. It’s time to put the railroads on notice where train cars full of guns can get left overnight with little security only to be robbed. We need to make it clear to our rail lines that if they operate in a way that threatens public safety, then we will take legal action.

Provide support to at-risk youth through diversion programs
We need to target crime even before it begins.

We can do so much more to identify at-risk youth and divert them from a life of crime. We need to provide our schools with before school, after school, and summer programming to keep kids engaged in productive and developmentally supportive activities that will help them stay out of trouble.

Our ex-offenders provide us with a valuable resource and we should work with them to provide our youth with guidance and learning opportunities.

Provide support to communities through community-based violence disruption programs
Bruce Rauner jeopardized funding to support key diversion and community programs – that is unacceptable.

We need to rectify his callous politics-over-people budget cuts and invest in our most vulnerable children and communities.

We need to restore or expand programs where we have seen progress. Programs like Becoming A Man, Redeploy Illinois, and chapters within Ceasefire that have demonstrated good track records for redirecting juvenile and adult offenders. We need to create a dedicated grant program to support a continuum of violence prevention services that are indigenous to the communities where support is needed the most.

Provide necessary trauma treatment and mental, social and emotional health services to individuals impacted by violence
We cannot continue to fail to take care of the wounded, even as we fail to stop the wounding.

Just as we try to prevent violence, so too must we acknowledge that it will still occur. We need to be prepared to support victims. Not just in hospitals and with sutures but with mental and emotional health support.

The challenge of trauma is never just physical. For communities disproportionately affected by violence, we need to commit to providing required mental health screenings and counseling services to those who experience violence.

Provide proactive, community-based mental, social and emotional health services
I see an Illinois that goes from being the poster child of gun violence to a model of the modern state.

Our property tax burden keeps our school system from putting in place the staff and programming for the kind of social and emotional learning proven to reach the children who are growing up in communities surrounded by regular violence. We must make sure that there are resources for social and emotional learning in every school, along with hospital and clinical services that are readily available to their families.

Illinois should be a place where people look to, to learn how to heal their own communities. We should support the people in the communities where they are already doing the healing, and try to build on that good work.

Fully fund and support community policing with a concentrated effort to recruit police officers from within the communities that need their service
In better times, when our violent crime rate was going down instead of going up, we were investing heavily in community policing.

We need to understand that the criminal justice system that we have built is a contributor to the violence in our state.

When budgets got tight, we cut back on the number of police officers and now we don’t have a full-strength force like we did years ago. Estimates vary, but as an example, there are somewhere between 1,000 to 2,000 fewer police officers in Chicago than there were a decade ago.

Our officers have legitimate frustrations that the training designed to help them integrate into new and different communities from the ones they grew up in is insufficient. Without adequate training, we breed alienation between the police and the communities they need to help protect.

Expand and enhance restorative justice programs in our jails and for our ex-offenders
Our prisons should not simply be about punishment. They should also be about redemption and restorative justice.

We don’t do enough to prepare our incarcerated population to reenter society successfully and not recidivate. It costs $38,268 per year to imprison a single person in Illinois. If we do not address the root causes of recidivism, we’re just kicking the can down the road–dooming people to become repeat offenders, ruining lives, and accumulating greater and unnecessary costs to the state.

It makes no sense to release someone from prison, someone whose life we have controlled 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and not have given them the tools and skills they need to succeed in our communities. Every person who comes out of our prisons should know how to read, have a driver’s license, a state ID, a path to a job, housing, and a bank account.

Education
Our Vision
Public education is the first step up the ladder of economic mobility that is the American Dream. It is a promise that every child, regardless of socioeconomic class, race, religion, or sexual orientation, will receive an education whose purpose is both to prepare students to succeed in a modern-day economy and to inspire them to grasp hold of what interests them and make it a meaningful part of their lives. Public education should be the door to the future, and it should be accessible in every community across our state. Chris Kennedy and Ra Joy believe that public education should provide every student in the state a world-class, career-ready education and that a degree from every high school in Illinois should be a license to work, to command a job at a living wage, and to enjoy the American Dream.

Education is a public good, but right now high-quality public education is not accessible to everyone in Illinois. This has implications for the long-term future of our children and of our state. Today, jobs move to where the highly skilled workforce is. If we give the world a highly skilled workforce, the world will give us its jobs. The goal of public education is to make the next generation employable by providing pathways to workforce readiness and college readiness. We must provide these pathways.

According to the state’s own reporting, two-thirds of Illinois students are not graduating from high school college-ready. This has disastrous effects for students, many of whom have to take expensive remedial courses when they first enter college, putting them behind and often causing them to drop out due to financial hardship. Workforce readiness is low as well, due to a lack of investment in vocational and workforce development training. When students leave high school without learning the skills they need, it has a ripple effect, both for them and for the state’s economy, which can only thrive when we have a highly skilled workforce. We can do better and we can give our children a better life by investing in our schools.

Illinois’ education outcomes are not the fault of hardworking teachers or parents. Rather, these outcomes lay at the feet of a broken system that has inequitably funded Illinois’ public education system for decades and passed a series of unfunded mandates that amount to empty promises. A Kennedy/Joy administration will ensure equitable and adequate funding for schools, a reinvestment in public neighborhood schools, support for our teachers, smaller class sizes, better school facilities, a new focus on trauma care and social emotional learning for high-need communities, and a cradle-to-career approach that will guide students, their families, and their communities toward futures filled with opportunity and economic advancement. We will appoint a State Superintendent and staff whose vision aligns with ours and who will be the champions of education in our state. Together, we will prioritize education in the budget and ensure that there are funds to support the programs and services our children need to thrive.

School Funding
Move Away from Property Taxes to Fund our Schools
In most states, around half of the state and local funding for education comes from the state. In Illinois, the state pays closer to 25% of the cumulative funding for education that all districts receive. Critics will say that Illinois spends over $1,000 above the national average on per-pupil spending, but this doesn’t tell the entire story. Illinois school districts with the greatest number of low-income students receive 20% less funding than wealthier districts. Not only are under-resourced communities being systematically denied their fair share, they are also asked to fill the gap with local taxes despite having a lower tax base. Our reliance on the property tax system to fund schools penalizes every school district and unfairly burdens homeowners with high property taxes.

Currently, the more money that a district can raise through property taxes, the more money it can spend on education per student. This allows us to spend the greatest amount of money on the students in the wealthiest communities who need the least amount of additional services. This violates the fundamental concept of equity. School funding on the state level should be wealth-neutral so that all of Illinois’ children receive the same basic level of high-quality education, independent of how much their homes are worth or the amount of wealth in their communities. Local districts should be free to generate more revenue to supplement state funds, but no district should suffer for the inability to fund schools locally. The new state school funding formula requires an additional $5 billion to adequately fund education in Illinois. We cannot rely on an inequitable property tax system to continue funding our schools.

We need to move to a progressive income tax to fund our local schools.

Reform the Property Tax System
Until we can implement the progressive tax, we need to reform our broken property tax system. Even though we now have an equitable way to allocate funding to schools across the state, we are not providing enough revenue as a state for every school to get the amount of funding it needs.

This is because Illinois disproportionately relies on local property taxes to fund our schools, with state contributions making up a smaller portion of funding compared to other states. We do this because a handful of elected legislators have outside jobs as property tax appeals attorneys. Being a State Representative or a State Senator is not a full-time job, and some of our legislators have outside jobs that make them millions of dollars appealing people’s property tax bills. This is a clear conflict of interest. These elected officials keep our schools reliant on funding from property taxes, a system that they benefit from, as opposed to moving to a graduated progressive income tax to fund our schools.

The state’s new education funding formula gives us all a reason to care about assessed property values in every community in every county of our state. Under the new education funding formula, education dollars for local school districts are allocated based on a school district’s needs coupled with local capacity to fund schools, which is calculated based on the total assessed value of property that the school district can tax. If a local government artificially decreases their total property values, as the Cook County Assessor routinely does, there is a potential for money to flow away from communities that need it most.

In Illinois, undervaluation complaints can be filed by any unit of government with an interest in the outcome of a property’s valuation. With the changes to the state funding formula, the state of Illinois has an interest in the accurate assessment of every property across the state.

A Kennedy/Joy administration will create a task force to track property valuations across the state and file undervaluation complaints at the local level to ensure that local schools across Illinois are getting the funding they need.

Investing in Our Communities
Investing in Neighborhood Schools
Neighborhood schools have long been pillars of our communities and incubators of our democracy because they serve everyone equally—without special treatment, without enrollment lotteries or applications. They anchor the community and can offer meeting spaces for civic engagement, community and school functions like plays or art shows, classrooms for continuing education, open libraries, and access to nurses. Community schools make the surrounding neighborhoods more valuable by keeping property values strong and contributing to community pride. A Kennedy/Joy administration will invest in our neighborhood schools so that every child has a high quality neighborhood school in their community.

Right now, in Chicago only 25% of students are going to their designated neighborhood schools. This is a good measure of school quality as interpreted by families themselves. Instead, kids attend neighborhood schools in other parts of the city, private or magnet schools, or charter schools. When parents don’t feel comfortable sending their children to their designated neighborhood school, they should be free to send them elsewhere, but they should not have to face this choice. A Kennedy/Joy administration will stand with communities to make sure neighborhood schools are viable options for families.

Oppose School Closings
Successful schools lead to successful communities. When students aren’t being invested in, they know it—there’s no pulling the wool over their eyes. Neighborhoods whose schools have closed can experience higher unemployment, more violence, and home vacancies. Additionally, students who lose their neighborhood schools are at a greater risk for truancy and dropping out. Illinois needs to be investing in all of our local schools because it is what our children deserve. A Kennedy/Joy administration believes that all Illinois’ school children deserve every opportunity possible.

Neighborhood schools and access to education are the foundation of opportunity. Yet, across the state, local governments are closing schools. When a neighborhood’s school is closed, we are doing more than taking away a classroom, we are taking away a community’s social center, their libraries, their nurses, their support that working families rely upon—we are ripping out the heart of the community. When schools close, we are disrupting a child’s entire life and robbing the community of its central organizing force. A Kennedy/Joy administration will stand with communities to fight back against school closures across the state because all students deserve access to quality education in their community.

Moratorium on Charter Schools
CIt is the responsibility of our state government to provide every child in Illinois the opportunity to earn a world-class, career-ready education. Our goal should be to have a great grade school, middle school, and high school in every community. Expanding the number of charter schools we have in Illinois threatens our commitment to an equitable education for all students because for too long, charter schools have been allowed to operate under a different set of standards than our traditional schools. Charter schools were initially intended to serve as experimental labs for innovative education practices. Unfortunately, they have become a mechanism that pulls students and funding away from traditional neighborhood schools. In this way, charter schools divert more of our already under-resourced funding away from traditional public schools.

A Kennedy/Joy administration will put a moratorium on opening new charter schools in order to prioritize funding and fully supporting the schools we already have. Illinois needs to fundamentally rethink the way it funds public education so it doesn’t matter whether you live in Northbrook or on the Southside of Chicago, you can get a quality education that prepares you for the workforce.

Roll Back the Illegal Voucher Program
A Kennedy/Joy Administration opposes voucher programs that privatize public education because we believe that government should fund public schools—not rob them to fund private schools. Article X of our state Constitution makes it clear that we’re not allowed to use tax dollars to fund private education. Unfortunately, Governor Rauner held school funding reform hostage by requiring a $100 million school voucher program as a part of the bill. Now, wealthy donors to private schools can get tax credits for their donations. Under this program, public dollars are being funneled to private schools. A Kennedy/Joy Administration will roll back this unconstitutional provision and restore the funding to public schools.

Curb the State Charter Commission
The Illinois State Charter School Commission (SCSC) is a loophole for charter school organizations that want Springfield to pre-empt local control of education. If any local school districts want to reject a charter applicant or retire a charter school, the charter can appeal to the State Charter Commission, whose decision takes precedence over the local school district’s decision. This takes educational decisions out of the hands of local school boards and puts them in the hands of bureaucrats in Springfield.

Currently, there is a proposal before Governor Rauner that would limit the SCSC’s ability to overturn decisions made by local school districts. A Kennedy/Joy administration would support these efforts to return local charter control to the hands of local districts.

Supporting an Elected School Board
Elected school boards continue to be examples of the importance of local control in a democratic system. They provide transparency, accountability, and allow members of their communities to have a say in their children’s future. Elected members of a school board want to solve problems, not protect the legacy of politicians that appoint them. Chicago is the only district in Illinois that has an appointed school board, created in 1995 through special legislation.

Without an elected school board, the residents of Chicago have very little influence on the decisions made by the board. Consequences include a widening achievement gap between black and white students, school closings, an expansion of charter schools, illegal, multi-million dollar contracts, and two recent CEO’s removed from their jobs due to corruption and ethics violations.

A Kennedy/Joy administration supports local control and supports an elected school board for Chicago Public Schools.

Investing in Our Teachers
Professional Development
Teachers provide a valuable foundation for our children’s futures, and we should be investing in them as a primary agent of our children’s success in life. It is important that teachers have the opportunity for ongoing, targeted, intentional professional development throughout their careers.

A teacher in a community that experiences a lot of violence may not need the same professional development programs as a teacher in a community where a lack of transportation is a major challenge facing students. Teachers should be able to have local control of their professional development programs—education professionals on the ground are best suited to know what kinds of supports they need most. That is why we will leverage teachers’ expertise in a 360-degree effort to identify, evaluate, and direct state-funded or influenced professional development investments.

A Kennedy/Joy administration will expand professional development programs through the Illinois State Board of Education and the Regional Offices of Education and earmark funding specifically for professional development tailored to regional needs. We will create a new ISBE-facilitated teacher review committee to evaluate professional development programs. This information will then be disseminated to local school districts so they can choose which of these programs is best for local schools. This will help make sure teachers are receiving the best professional development possible for their students’ success.

Sensible Standardized Testing
We have to do more than give teachers additional training, we also need to give them additional time. Time taken away from teaching limits the creative capacity of teachers and creates a difficult learning environment for students. While standardized tests serve as a key component for identifying achievement gaps and benchmarks for learning and growth, an over-reliance on testing data means we fail to recognize other markers of academic success. Tests, evaluations, and other assessments should be designed to facilitate quality education and ensure that every student can earn a living wage after high school, whether they go to college, attend a trade school, get an associate’s degree, or join the workforce.

A Kennedy/Joy administration will de-emphasize standardized testing in favor of more time for intentional classroom instruction while also committing to evaluate and distribute state standardized test results in a timely and efficient manner so that educators can use this measure as one among many real-time benchmarks of student performance.

Diversifying the Teacher Pipeline
Students’ educational experiences are enriched when they’re in a learning environment led by diverse teachers—teachers of all faiths, ethnicities, races, genders, and sexualities. Each year since 2012, the number of diverse teachers in Illinois has declined. Meanwhile, the country is becoming more diverse. Although people of color constitute more than one-third of the U.S. labor force, less than 20% of teachers are people of color. Illinois has one of the largest gaps in the country between students of color and non-white teachers. The share of nonwhite students in Illinois reached 51% while the share of nonwhite teachers is 17%.

A Kennedy/Joy administration will invest in recruiting a diverse pipeline of teachers from the communities where they will serve. This includes supporting colleges and universities that serve a high proportion of students of color, like Chicago State University, and other Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Hispanic Serving Institutions. We will also look to replicate programs that focus on recruiting male educators of color, recognizing that these educators are vital members of any instructional community.

Financial supports are crucial to widening the pipeline into the teaching profession—particularly for people of color. A Kennedy/Joy administration will work with our in-state universities to remove barriers to entry for low-income students and students of color who want to become teachers.

No Limits Based on Native Language: Supporting English Language Learners
The goal of education is to provide students with the tools and knowledge that they need to succeed in a diverse, global environment. Students who do not speak English as their first language are at a greater risk of falling behind their peers, missing out on enriched coursework, becoming disengaged, and/or dropping out of school simply because they do not possess the language skills to understand course content. English as a second language, transitional bilingual, and dual language classes should be available across the state for English Language Learners (ELL). And yet, Illinois has reported a teacher shortage of ELL teachers for much of the last 25 years, and ELL students’ graduation rates are 14% lower than non-ELL students.

A Kennedy/Joy administration will tackle the teacher shortage problem for ELL teachers in addition to making sure school materials are available in translation and that after school tutoring and supports are offered in the appropriate language for non-native speakers.

Investing in Leaders
The quality of school leadership—principals and administrators—is one of the strongest predictors for school success. Great principals can be transformative for schools and for entire communities. On average, a principal is accountable for a full 25% of a school’s impact on a student’s achievement. Likewise, an above-average principal compared to an average principal can impact a student’s achievement by as much as 20%.

The State of Illinois has been a leader in principal training as one of the first states to legislatively require a total redesign of our principal preparation program in 2010. The results have been very positive, but we need to build on them by growing the pipeline of principals who are prepared to undergo the intensive training the state requires. A Kennedy/Joy administration will invest the funding needed recruit, develop, and train high-quality principals across our state.

Early Childhood Education
All Day Kindergarten
Early childhood programs are the foundation of student learning and provide the greatest return on taxpayer investment. Expanding early childhood education programs in Illinois would help narrow the achievement gap, raise lifetime earnings, improve health and social emotional development, lower involvement in the criminal justice system, and reduce the need for remedial education. Indeed, research shows that every $1 invested in high-quality early education saves taxpayers as much as $13 in the long-term.

And yet, kindergarten, much less all day kindergarten, is not required in the State of Illinois. A Kennedy/Joy administration supports all day kindergarten for all children and will help local school districts implement it statewide.

Preschool
Illinois dramatically under invests in state funded preschool programs. Not only does this hurt our children’s futures, but it hurts their parents as well, many of whom are working parents who need relief and the reassurance of knowing they are leaving their child in a safe, enriching environment.

We spend $1,600 less than the national per pupil average of $4,976, and $13,438 less per pupil than the nation’s leader in preschool spending, the District of Columbia. Even worse, Illinois spent over $850 less per pupil in 2016 than it did ten years ago in 2006. The result is that only 20% of three-year olds and 26% of four-year olds are enrolled in preschool in Illinois. Moreover, preschool teachers are underpaid and not incentivized to enter the profession. The state must do more to fund both its Preschool for All program and build a strong teacher pipeline of well trained, well paid professionals.

A Kennedy/Joy administration will be committed to expanding quality preschool programs statewide by establishing an Early Childhood Education State Agency. This new agency will centralize funding for early childhood education across the state’s mixed delivery system of childcare providers and early childhood education classrooms and make the state better equipped to decide how to increase access to quality programs equitably.

A Kennedy/Joy administration will commit to funding the expansion of early childhood education as a priority for the state. This includes a commitment to paying our share and increasing our contribution to the Preschool Development Grant, a federally matched subsidy, while also increasing funding to the state’s Preschool for All program through the Early Education Block Grant with an emphasis on increasing the number of seats available to high-need, low income children first as we build towards truly being able to offer free preschool to every child in Illinois.

Childcare
Parents across Illinois have had to confront the high cost of childcare in our state. For a four year old, the average annual cost of childcare is over $9,000, and for younger children it is even more expensive. For many parents, especially low-income parents, the cost of childcare is a hardship that often forces one parent to leave his or her job in order to take care of their child themselves. Not only is this hard on families, where the parent who becomes a caretaker will see their future earning potential reduced, but it’s also bad for our economy to push people out of the workforce.

A Kennedy/Joy administration will increase state investment in childcare subsidies to high quality child care providers who provide early childhood education to thousands of kids across Illinois. We will also expand eligibility for more children and families to receive childcare so that more parents can afford quality childcare and continue working to support their families.

Investing in Our Schools
Class Size, Overcrowding, and Outdated School Facilities
Adequately funding education across our state will allow us to truly invest in our kids. We know that students learn better when they have more individualized attention, and they perform better in the classroom and are more likely to be college or career ready when they attend schools with smaller class sizes. While the average class size across the state is 20 students per class, there are many classrooms with far too many children and too few teachers, teacher’s assistants, and social workers.

Overcrowding is also a problem facing schools across Illinois. Peoria, Champaign, Naperville, and Chicago all have schools that are suffering from overcrowding. Brookdale Elementary in Naperville is projected to have 70 more students than they can support over the next five years. One in five CPS students started the 2016-2017 school year in overcrowded classrooms, some of which exceeded 30, even 40 students per class, and many of which were concentrated in black and brown communities on the South and West sides of the city.

A Kennedy/Joy administration will work towards adequately funding the new education funding formula through a progressive graduated income tax so that every school gets the resources it needs to hire enough staff to provide quality learning experiences for students.

Outdated and undersized school buildings can also contribute to a child’s struggle to learn. Too often, critical school activities like physical education classes or band lessons occur in a cafeteria. By upgrading school facilities, we give children a better and safer environment to learn. A Kennedy/Joy administration will work with local school districts to develop strategic long-term plans for capital development and invest in education infrastructure as a part of a statewide capital bill.

Classroom Innovation
Successful schools will foster an environment of risk-taking that encourages innovation and the implementation of technology to meet the complex needs of 21st century learners. We should abandon a one-size-fits-all approach to learning and embrace personalized learning with the help of new ideas and teaching pedagogies as well as through investing in new technology.

A Kennedy/Joy administration believes all schools should have the freedom and the funding to enable our educators to innovate in the classroom, whether that be through adaptive learning platforms that make use of technology in the classroom, flipped classrooms that emphasize collaboration in the classroom, or asset-based approaches that focus on encouraging students’ strengths and interests rather than emphasizing the areas where they struggle.

Preparing Students for College and Career
All students should graduate high school not only with a diploma, but also with a specialized knowledge base or skill. The 21st century economy requires skills that may or may not require a four year degree, and not all students need to go to college. Students should be given opportunities throughout their education to gain skills in vocational or specialized career tracks like advanced manufacturing, coding, information technology, and healthcare. A Kennedy/Joy administration will invest in expanding Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math (STEAM) programs throughout the state, coupled with apprenticeship and vocational opportunities to ensure that we are preparing the next generation not just for college, but for careers that allow them to plug in to the global economy.

Caring for the Whole Student
Caring for the Mind: Social Emotional Learning
Every child deserves the opportunity to succeed in school. Hunger, violence, an unstable home life, and other traumas interfere with a child’s ability to learn. It is difficult to concentrate on learning in school when a child is hungry, if she is afraid to walk home from school, or if she’s recently experienced the violent loss of a loved one.

A Kennedy/Joy administration will address traumas that plague school children across the state by investing in trauma specialists in schools and Social Emotional Learning (SEL) programs that have proven effects in reducing depression, improving emotional outlook, helping students make responsible decisions, and increasing positive social behavior with others.

Children in high-need communities cannot be expected to perform at the same levels as their peers in wealthier communities without additional wrap-around services that acknowledge and address the barriers they face outside of the classroom that directly impact their outcomes in the classroom. It is the state’s responsibility to educate all children, and it is Chris and Ra’s belief that the state does not live up to its obligation without making strategic investments in trauma and SEL wraparound services that help to even the playing field.

By investing in these trauma support services, children will get the help they need to move forward, grow, and learn the skills they need to succeed in a 21st century economy.

Caring for the Mind: Fostering an Arts Education
The arts equip students with the skills companies and business look for, empowering students to succeed in an ever-changing economy and giving Illinois a strong, innovative workforce. Seventy percent of companies rate creativity as a primary concern when hiring, yet 85% of these companies cannot find the creative workers they seek. Research also shows that arts students show greater critical thinking skills and persistence than their peers, and have improved test scores.

Supporting the arts in schools is also an issue of cultural equity. Low-income students with arts-rich experiences in high school are more than 3 times as likely to earn a B.A., and they are more likely to obtain promising employment, volunteer in their communities, and vote. Yet, underfunded schools in low-income communities are far more likely to lack the financial support to fund the arts in their public schools.

Our state as a whole continues to make only a minimal investment in arts education. The weak to non-existent funding for the Illinois State Board of Education’s Arts & Foreign Language budget line item is just one example. A Kennedy/Joy administration will commit to equitably funding the arts in public schools throughout our state.

Caring for the Body: Ensuring Physical Health
Going to a school with a full-time nurse and a regular physical education program should not be the exception, it should be the norm. When schools are underfunded, the programs and supports that serve students’ physical health are often the first to go. This is especially damaging for communities where access to the resources that go into building a healthy lifestyle are scarce: resources like high-quality produce, pharmacies, and healthcare providers.

When a student is hurt or sick in school, she should be able to see a nurse. In the absence of care, a student’s physical pain or discomfort can escalate into a serious medical event, which is a danger to the student. Perhaps more often, the student is distracted by something going on with them physically that prevents them from concentrating and learning in school. A Kennedy/Joy administration will address funding inequities and make sure that every school has the resources it needs to hire a nursing staff to meet the health needs of every student.

For so many children, physical education classes (PE) is the first introduction to the habits that go into building a healthy lifestyle. Physical activity has also been shown to make students more alert and successful academically. In fact, Illinois was the first state in the nation to require five days of PE classes per week. However, nearly 40% of the schools in Illinois—nearly 1,200 schools, cannot provide five days of PE due to lack of funding and proper facilities.

As part of the new school funding bill that passed over the summer, Governor Rauner limited Illinois’ historic physical education mandate, allowing districts to reduce the number of days from five to three instead of adequately funding these important programs. That’s not leadership, that’s an abdication of responsibility to our children. A Kennedy/Joy administration will adequately fund schools so that no district or principal needs to compromise students’ physical health in order to continue teaching them English, Math, Social Studies, and Science.

Caring for Students with Disabilities
Students with disabilities deserve the same access to high quality education as any other student in our state. In order to fulfill the promise of high quality education for all, the state must provide and fund crucial services for students with disabilities and diverse learners like transportation. Additionally, we must fund ADA compliant schools, social workers, paraprofessionals, certified aids, and teaching instruction that is adapted to a student’s needs through Individualized Education Plans.

A Kennedy/Joy administration would encourage schools to hire special education classroom assistants for classrooms of special needs students as well as invest in the counseling services these children and their families need to navigate the educational process. Parents of children with special needs often need an individualized, one-on-one approach to make sure that their child is getting the highest possible education. A Kennedy/Joy administration will work with disability rights advocates and local school districts to make sure that schools are adequately funded, meeting state standards, and working to give every child a quality education.

A Kennedy/Joy administration knows that Illinois’ school districts must comply with federal IDEA laws that guarantee a free appropriate public education to eligible children with disabilities and ensures special education and related services for those children. In far too many districts across the state, budget cuts force schools to choose between the needs of general education students and special education students. Protecting the legal rights of children with disabilities will be a top priority for a Kennedy/Joy administration.

One of the biggest challenges for students with disabilities is the transition from school to the workforce. The majority of adults with disabilities are unemployed or underemployed. This is unacceptable. Illinois is the birthplace of the Special Olympics, which was founded by Eunice Kennedy, and under a Kennedy/Joy administration, Illinois will be a leader in workforce development training for people with disabilities. Our administration will work with the largest employers in the state, as well as the state’s supply chain, to create on-the-job training programs and internships that prepare students with disabilities for the workforce and ease the transition out of school.

Supporting Parents, Supporting Communities
Parent Mentorship
Illinois is home to the nationally recognized Parent Mentor Program, which serves 72 schools around the state, from Chicago, to Aurora and Zion, to the Quad Cities. The program partners with community organizations and schools to train parents to work in a classroom for an entire year as hands-on mentors. Everyone benefits: teachers get additional assistance in the classroom, students get more one-on-one attention from someone in their community who they can look up to as a role model, and parents are given the opportunity to join the school community, gain first-hand knowledge of what their children are learning and the challenges they presented with at school.

The program provides a sense of community for parents: they grow invested in their school as the place that their community calls home, and over time, parents become activated as advocates for their children, their school, and the broader issues in their community like violence, heath, immigration issues, and housing affordability. The Parent Mentorship Program model helps parents become mentors, grows mentors into leaders, and together they make change in their communities.

A Kennedy/Joy administration will support children, their parents, and communities across the state by investing in the expansion of the Parent Mentorship Program.

Ending the Racket
Our Vision
The property tax system in Illinois is broken—the wealthiest commercial property owners are required to pay less in property taxes than they should, and ultimately their share is being pushed onto homeowners. Despite paying more than they should pay in property taxes, homeowners aren’t seeing the benefits of their dollars in better schools, safer communities, and more social services. This is because, unlike most states, which rely equally on state and local taxes to fund schools, Illinois disproportionately relies on local property taxes to fund our schools. We do this because a handful of elected officials have outside jobs as property tax appeals attorneys and make money off of the current system. These elected officials keep our schools reliant on funding from property taxes as opposed to moving to a graduated progressive income tax to fund our schools.

We need to end the property tax racket in Illinois and restore equality to our state. By doing so, we will put the state on a path to a graduated progressive income tax that will require the wealthy to pay their fair share and ensure greater educational fairness. Resources that were formerly tied up in the property tax racket can now be channeled into funding local law enforcement, expanding social services, and creating economic opportunity.

My administration will work to reform a broken system that benefits connected property tax attorneys—Democrats and Republicans alike—at the expense of communities across our state. By eliminating conflicts of interests, stopping corruption, and increasing transparency, we can end the property tax racket in Illinois and prevent the next generation from being forced into a life of economic servitude.

End Conflicts of Interest
Ban State Representatives and State Senators from being Property Tax Attorneys
A Kennedy/Joy administration believes in good government and that conflicts of interest undermine the very tenets of our democracy. Allowing our State Representatives and State Senators to serve as property tax appeals attorneys perpetuates the system of inequality that is hurting homeowners and taking money from our local schools. In their role as property tax appeals attorneys, these elected officials make money off of a system that requires property owners to file appeals. The money they are making in their jobs outside of the legislature creates a disincentive to reform the system. This is the definition of graft, and it must be rooted out. We have to get the dirty money out of politics so that we can get the dirty politicians out of government. Just as we do with our Congressmen and our Senators, we must prevent our legislators from having income that is adverse to the interest of the body they were elected to serve. We have to prevent our legislators from acting as property tax appeals attorneys while they are serving in Springfield.

The best way to do that is to amend the Illinois Constitution. Until that can be done, a Kennedy/Joy administration will amend the Attorney Act to limit State Representatives and State Senators from practicing as licensed property tax appeals attorneys in the counties from which they are elected. By holding legislators to the same standards we hold local sheriffs, we can get rid of the inherent conflicts of interest that prevent Illinois from fully and fairly funding our local schools through a graduated progressive income tax.

Stop Corruption
Ban Contributions from Property Tax Attorneys to Elected Officials They Lobby
A Kennedy/Joy administration will fight to end corrupt political donations. Property tax attorneys are donating large sums of money to County Assessors and Board of Review Commissioners across the state. Donations of this kind can be seen as attempts to ensure favorable outcomes for their clients, and in turn for the appeals attorneys themselves. These donations are not illegal—but they should be. A Kennedy/Joy administration will ban these ethically compromised donations between property tax attorneys and elected officials who oversee the property tax assessment process.

Increase Transparency and Modernize the System
'"Require Assessors to Disclose Their Assessing Formulas for Residential Properties
Taxpayers should have user-friendly tools to easily understand how their tax burden is being calculated. Insiders can get away with corrupting the property tax system because no one actually knows how the homes in their jurisdictions are valued. A Kennedy/Joy Administration will require assessors across the state to publish their formulas and guidelines so that homeowners know just how their homes are being valuated.

In addition to requiring disclosure, a Kennedy/Joy Administration will instruct the Department of Revenue to backtest these formulas and disclose the findings so that residents from across the state will know how their local assessors are performing.

Require Local Assessing Agencies to Show Work Product in Their Decisions
The property assessment process should be transparent for homeowners. In the last year in Cook County alone, over 208,000 property owners appealed their property assessments. Between 2011 and 2015, more than 70% of commercial and industrial properties received assessment reductions from the Cook County Assessor. Their tax savings meant that homeowners had to pay more to compensate for commercial owners paying less. If homeowners are going to pay more, they deserve to understand why. Unlike the Cook County Assessor, the Cook County Board of Review has developed a system where taxpayers know the status of their appeal and can see the evidence used in the Board’s decision. This is the type of transparency taxpayers deserve. Under a Kennedy/Joy administration, local assessing agencies will be required to show their work product for taxpayer appeals.

In addition, it is crucial that homeowners are able to trust that their local assessor is qualified to perform what are often very complicated assessments. We will call for standardized training and licensing of assessors across the state.

Mark-to-Market Assessing
A Kennedy/Joy administration will ensure that commercial properties are fairly and accurately valuated so that wealthy property owners pay their fair share. In February of 2017, a downtown Chicago office building sold for $360 million. The Cook County Assessor valued the building at $41,368,204. Homeowners across the state picked up the tab on the $318,631,796 of untaxed value, preventing communities from having their basic needs met like schools and local law enforcement. The property tax system is made overly complicated so that connected insiders can take advantage of it. A Kennedy/Joy administration will simplify the system by passing legislation requiring local assessors to enact mark-to-market assessing so that commercial real estate buildings will have their assessments changed following the sale of the property — a logical reform that will save taxpayers money and keep our schools funded.

A Real Income Approach to Commercial Valuation
The Property Tax Racket was designed for insiders to take advantage of a broken system of property valuation. The current approach is complicated and allows insider property tax attorneys to submit evidence that can be suspect yet result in massive property tax reductions. A Kennedy/Joy administration will simplify and legitimize the system by requiring appellants to provide certified financial statements, federal tax returns, and all appraisals taken on the property within the last three years upon appeal and simplify the valuation formula so that commercial property owners are paying a percentage of their gross revenue—their fair share.

Protect Taxpayers
State Led Undervaluation Complaints
The state’s new education funding formula gives us all a reason to care about assessed property values in every community in every county of our state. Under the new education funding formula, education dollars for local school districts are allocated based on a school district’s needs coupled with local capacity to fund schools, which is calculated based on the total assessed value of property that the school district can tax.

If commercial properties are undervalued in a community—causing homeowners’ properties to be artificially over-assessed—this community will look like it is wealthier than it is since its property appears more valuable on paper than it actually is in reality. The disastrous result will be that the state’s funding formula will allocate this community fewer education dollars, under the assumption that the community doesn’t need greater funding because it has enough local resources to fund its schools.

In Illinois, undervaluation complaints can be filed by any unit of government with an interest in the outcome of a property’s valuation. In 2005, the City of Chicago filed undervaluation complaints against eleven high rise commercial buildings in downtown Chicago to protect over $30 million in taxes from being pushed onto homeowners. Across the state, commercial properties are escaping their tax burdens at the expense of homeowners. With the changes to the state funding formula, the state of Illinois has an interest in property across the state. A Kennedy/Joy administration will track property valuations across the state and file undervaluation complaints at the local level to ensure that local schools across Illinois are getting the funding they need.

TIF Reform
Tax Increment Financing (TIF) districts can be a powerful tool for economic development. TIF districts, which are created in so-called “blighted areas,” collect all incremental increases in property taxes above the initial assessed values of the properties in the TIF. These funds are then invested in infrastructure repairs and other community related improvements within the TIF district. However, if a valuable commercial property is in a TIF district, and this commercial property is repeatedly under assessed, the TIF gets fewer dollars towards economic development than it should.

While we may not always agree with how or where TIF districts are designated, once they are established, the economic development projects they benefit should not be shortchanged by the broken property tax system. When local taxing bodies fail to file undervaluation complaints to the assessor against these TIF-bound commercial properties, the state must step in. A Kennedy/Joy Administration will create a TIF Ombuds person to monitor and file undervaluation complaints against properties located in TIF districts.

Disability Rights
Chris Kennedy believes in equal rights and equal access for people with disabilities, whether the disability is physical, intellectual, or neurological. When it comes to care and support for people with a disability, Illinois is home to three of the world’s most important institutions: Access Living, a global thought leader in disability rights and independent living; the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, the world’s most important hospital for physical rehabilitation; and the Special Olympics, which Chris’ aunt Eunice Kennedy Shriver founded right here in Illinois in 1968.

Working to better the lives of people with developmental disabilities was a call to action for the Kennedy family. Chris wants to carry on that legacy. As governor, Chris would protect and defend public programs and funds that eliminate barriers for people with disabilities, such as financial support for personal aides and paraprofessionals in our schools, programs that create workforce opportunities for the disabled, and critical healthcare funding streams like Medicaid, which provides affordable health care for people with pre-existing conditions.

Environment
Chris Kennedy recognizes that sustainability promotes economic growth. Sustainability in Illinois will not only help our environment, it will also attract more businesses to relocate here and cut costs for state government and for companies. When companies expand to Illinois or within our state, they want to know that they will find clean water and fresh air. As governor, Chris would work with public and private stakeholders to establish a long-term sustainability plan for our state.

If Illinois does not act as a leader in protecting the environment and pursuing clean energy policy, we will damage our competitiveness, and ultimately we will have to follow the lead of other states. A diverse group of stakeholders, including our coal companies, know Illinois needs to be a leader in sustainability. He will hold Illinois accountable for fulfilling the promises in the Future Energy Jobs Act, and he will work with a coalition of labor, advocates, and political leaders to upgrade our infrastructure.

Across the entire sustainability field, one of the best ways to improve our environment and the clean energy sector is to protect and invest in our research institutions. Chris believes that science, research, and the future of energy storage will offer us a direct path to fostering more robust, sustainable solutions. He will be a leader in advocating to protect federal funding for our research labs, like Argonne and Fermi, while also working to create robust research operations in our university system that can assist us in planning for a better, more sustainable future in Illinois.

Fight for $15
Chris Kennedy supports the Fight for $15. Right now, more than 40% of people in Illinois earn less than $15 an hour, with many of them earning closer to the current state minimum wage of $8.25, which has remained unchanged since 2010. These workers are mainly women, people of color, middle-aged and elderly workers.

Wages like this hinder people from covering basic needs such as housing, food, and transportation. No one who has a full-time job should have to choose between paying rent or putting food on the table. Chris believes we should provide the people of Illinois with a livable wage.

Instead of standing with the people of Illinois, Governor Rauner vetoed Senate Bill 81, which would have raised the Illinois minimum wage to $15 by 2022. By that same year, a single worker in rural Illinois will need to earn $32,178 a year to cover basic living costs. That’s a $15.47 an hour wage for a full-time worker. For higher cost areas like Chicago, single workers will need more – roughly $17.65 an hour – to afford the basics. These estimates do not even account for those who have or wish to raise a family who they will need to support. This is unacceptable. As Governor, Chris would increase the minimum wage.

Government Reform
Chris Kennedy believes that Illinois’ government is rigged. It benefits the politically connected few at the expense of the many. Illinois’ regressive tax system takes more money from the low-income and middle class pockets than almost any other state. The only way to fix our broken government is to make elected officials accountable to the people who put them in office. Chris supports automatic voter registration, setting term limits, and redistricting reform that ensures rural communities and communities of color are fairly represented.

Government reform is critical to Illinois’ future because we have one of the most regressive tax systems in the country. Our political system is not serving the best interests of everyone in the state. We have allowed the middle class to become a donor class to the wealthy. Middle class and low-income households Illinois pay more in taxes than they would if they lived in almost any other state, and they get less back in government support than they would if they lived in most other states. This is not sustainable.

Immigration
Chris Kennedy believes immigrants play a vital role in shaping every aspect of our economic sustainability and continued growth. They teach us not to be afraid of what’s new and what’s different but instead to embrace change and new ideas. As governor, Chris would ensure Illinois operates as a sanctuary state.

Chris’s grandma, Rose Kennedy, taught him at an early age lessons about prejudice in Boston and the hardships that Irish Catholics suffered. They were characterized as lazy, unteachable and a burden on society. She described the signs that were hung above the back service doors of restaurants and bars, placed there overhead by the owners that read N-I-N-A – No Irish Need Apply. She knew prejudice, and she made sure in her conversations with her children and her grandchildren, over years and over decades, that prejudice would never come from within her family.

Chris recognizes that immigration is largely a federal issue, but he believes that governors can affect the outcome of every congressional race in the state. To protect our undocumented residents here in Illinois, Chris would uphold the Trust Act and resist any effort by the federal government to pursue forceful and organized deportation. At the same time, he would use his leadership role as governor to convince the congressional delegation to support comprehensive immigration reform, and unlike Governor Rauner, Chris will support the multi-state lawsuit to protect the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) that was established under President Obama.

Labor
Chris Kennedy doesn’t just support organized labor with talk – he has made it a priority to hire union workers throughout his career. Chris worked with the AFL-CIO to build a development at Wolf Point that created hundreds of union jobs, and Chris ran an all-union shop at the Merchandise Mart that beat out non-union businesses around the country and around the world.

Chris believes that American workers should be able to organize a union and fight for better wages and working conditions that strengthen unions and benefit all working families. So-called “Right to Work” legislation is just a clever name for union busting and lowering workers’ wages.

LGBTQ+
Chris Kennedy support equal rights for our LGBTQ+ communities. He sees the equality movement as part of the civil rights movement, which has been part of his family’s legacy and his personal history.

Chris fully supports proactive efforts to advance civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ people in Illinois. He will provide full support for efforts to toughen anti-hate crime legislation, protect every person’s right to marry the partner they love, work in a safe environment free from discrimination and harassment, ensure full access to health care for themselves and their partners, adopt children, and have access to all rights afforded to heterosexual and cisgender men and women.

Marijuana
Chris Kennedy believes marijuana should be publicly available to the extent that reputable scientists and medical professionals advise. He supports expanding access to medical marijuana and decriminalizing marijuana in Illinois. He believes we should not prosecute and overcrowd our jails because of possession of a modest amount of marijuana.

Chris further believes that the issue of legalizing marijuana should be separated from the issue of using taxes as a revenue stream to fund state government. He does not believe that the economic chaos that Governor Rauner has imposed on the state should be the driving factor that leads us to new forms of revenue without understanding the impact of such decisions.

If the medical and scientific evidence supports the legalization of marijuana, then Illinois should legalize marijuana, whether it is helpful to the state budget or not. This decision should be taken on its own merit and not made in the fog of political conflict over paying for state government.

Mental Health
Chris Kennedy believes we need to remove the stigma mental health patients face that can serve as a barrier to receiving treatment. Chris knows firsthand the struggles that families face when a loved one suffers from mental illness. Mental health care is just as vital and necessary a treatment as an insulin shot or a cast for a broken bone. Those with a mental illness should not be made to feel ashamed or be silenced by fear of social or professional repercussions.

Illinois needs to demonstrate comprehensive support for mental health care, which has been gutted under Governor Rauner. Even before the budget impasse, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) reported that more than half of service providers in the state said they are unable to meet their patients’ needs and an estimated one million residents who require mental health services went without treatment.

In Illinois, we need to protect Medicaid and pursue more federal resources to fund mental health services. We need to support community-based care over costly, less effective institutional care; and we need to provide clear guidance on mental health coverage so providers don’t deny necessary and available care for mental health services. Illinois can also provide better mental health support through integrated care among our social service programs and public institutions, such as early intervention programming in schools or through collaborative programming between mental health care providers substance abuse treatment centers.

Chris recognizes that the inability of mental health providers to meet patient demand results in more people becoming homeless or landing in the prison system, which can be prevented through better care. The fact is, Cook County Jail has become Illinois’ largest mental health provider. Our state’s failure to treat mental illness arguably creates more fiscal damage in the long run because we are incarcerating more people at a high cost – estimated to be more than $33,000 per prison per year. We should not be overcrowding our prison system with people who would be better served through mental health treatment.

Pensions
Public employees never missed a payment into their pensions, but politicians in Springfield didn’t make their payments for decades. In fact, the largest share of our pension debt results from our inability to meet our payment obligations. For example, every dollar that the state cuts from the Teachers Retirement System today will require Illinois to spend $3 down the road to replace that revenue because of interest. As a result, we have added enormous debt because of past due pension bills, which has led to fewer funds for critical public services like education and safety.

We need to reassure current workers that the state will fully fund their pensions. Most of our public employees are ineligible to receive Social Security, and many rely on their pensions to live. The average pension payout is only $33,000-$50,000 per year for state employees and teachers.

As Governor, Chris Kennedy will provide a responsible budget plan every year that pays our bills on time and pays down our debt while pursuing a more progressive tax system in Illinois to move us toward a fairer tax system. Chris will not delay necessary payments into the state’s pension funds, which has historically caused severe pension shortfalls in the past and continues now under Governor Rauner.

Today, Illinois is on the brink of financial collapse and everyone is going to need to give a little to get us out of this. Chris would bargain in good faith with our public sector employees on any potential changes to our pension system for future workers and retirees.

Tax Fairness
Chris Kennedy supports a progressive income tax because he believes that the wealthy need to pay their fair share. Illinois has one of the most unfair and unequal tax systems in the country, particularly when it comes to property taxes. Our unfair tax system hits low-income and middle-class residents the hardest. Illinois continues to see cost of living rise, including a sugary drink tax recently adopted in Cook County, an increase in our flat income tax across the board, and rising property taxes that are becoming unmanageable. Property taxes are especially concerning in Cook County where our elected officials refuse to move away from a broken system that we know discriminates against the poor, minorities, and middle class residents. Similar inequities likely exist in other property tax systems across our state.

Chris will drive down local property taxes by increasing state funding for public education while also instituting a ban on elected officials being allowed to serve as property tax appeals lawyers so as to restore integrity in the relationship between our government and our property tax system. He will call for a transparent process and significant overhaul of any property tax systems in our state that proves to discriminate against certain communities.

Women's Rights
Chris Kennedy supports equal rights for women. He believes in equal pay for equal work, supports paid family and medical leave, the fight for $15, freedom from violence and sexual harassment, and full access to medical care for women, which should include everything from cancer screenings to prenatal care and a woman’s right to choose. As governor, Chris would sign HB40, which protects access to abortion in Illinois, even if the U.S. Supreme Court overthrows Roe v. Wade.

Women–especially middle-class and low-income women–have suffered because of Governor Rauner’s discriminatory, irresponsible budget cuts over the last two years. Chris vows to reverse these damaging measures that turned women away from shelters for domestic violence; cut the wages of nurses and home healthcare workers, the majority of whom are underpaid women; prevented women from receiving cervical and breast cancer screenings; and increased the number of homeless women and youth on the streets.

Chris believes that our government has a responsibility to do everything in our power to protect all citizens. For many women, that means providing services that ensure they are safe from domestic violence while treating domestic violence as a public health and public safety issue. More than half of mass shootings in the U.S. are precipitated by domestic or family violence, and the majority of female homicide victims are killed by their husbands or partners. When women are unsafe, so is our society. As governor, Chris will restore funding to social service agencies that provide support to women who are victims of domestic violence, and he will call on law enforcement to partner with social workers and together, work to devise better interventions for women who are victims of abuse as well as for their perpetrators.

Chris also understands that gaining rights and protections does not guarantee women access to the same opportunities as men. He believes that as we fight to advance women’s rights, we also must work to unwind entrenched biases that feed discriminatory practices and behavior, and allow for unjust policies to go unchallenged. As governor, Chris would adopt a similar measure to that of California, Connecticut, and Maine, which would require businesses small and large to provide 2 hours of sexual harassment training.