Gary Mandell is a Republican who marches in the Gay Pride parade but he is also one who follows the party line of putting a stop to what he calls "more of the same 'tax and spend' policies the Democratic Party has offered."
It is why the founder of the personal financial planning firm The Mandell Group wants to unseat 11th District incumbent Rep. Ann Williams ( D ) on Nov. 8.
Mandell spoke with Windy City Times about alternative solutions to the Illinois budget crisis, while offering his take on gun violence, employment and LGBTQ civil rights.
Windy City Times: The budget is high on your list of issues to be addressed but Rep. Williams says you are not very specific, for example, on line items you would eliminate. So, how would you go about balancing the budget and what line items would you address?
Gary Mandell: There are two ways to balance the budget: increase revenues and decrease spending. I believe there's a lot of wasteful spending, fraud and corruption going on so I can't really specify line items without there being an audit or a review. Last week, there was a task force put together to review Medicaid expenditures.
They found something like $230 million of expenditures that were mainly to dependents of Medicaid recipients who may or may have not been entitled to those benefits. There are hundreds if not thousands of line items in the budget. There are many areas that probably are more ripe for cost savings than others. We need to take a 10,000-foot view of it first before we get down to the minutiae. If, in four weeks, they found almost $300 million in savings, I believe there's probably plenty more in there.
WCT: Rep. Williams says it is Gov. Rauner who is holding things like social services and higher education hostage in order to advance his agenda. Do you agree or can there be a meeting in the middle?
GM: She has continually said that Governor Rauner will not discuss until his turnaround agenda is completely passed which is totally untrue. Two years ago, they carved out the education budget so that could be passed irrespective of anything else. [Speaker] Mike Madigan didn't like the fact that they passed an education budget without Mike Madigan being able to hold it hostage so, when they passed a $7 billion, out-of-whack, so-called budget, Madigan did not separate out the education part. Gov. Rauner agreed to a property tax increase with the promise that there would be negotiations on pension reform.
I'm not here to support or even promote Governor Rauner's programs but for Ann Williams to say that nothing can get done until everything [the governor] wants is passed is totally ridiculous. If that were true then the last two years of Chicago Public Schools ( CPS ) wouldn't have been funded. Mike Madigan and Ann Williams ( who votes with him 84 percent of the time ) is not willing to negotiate anything. Rauner was even willing to talk about a temporary income tax increase. Madigan didn't want to do that nor did John Cullerton in the Senate because it was an election year and it would cost them votes. So, they are clearly more interested in promoting themselves for political reasons than they are in doing what's best for the citizens of the state.
WCT: You don't like tax increases, either. Rep. Williams has said she is for a graduated income tax. Is that a fair solution?
GM: Until we can get a handle on how much wasted spending is going on in the state, we really don't have any idea how much extra revenue we need. If we tried to pass a budget like they did last year and we didn't take a look at cost savings that would be unfair to the tax payers whether it's a graduated or a flat tax. Under my program, we would be expanding the tax base by making Illinois a better place to operate a business, to employ the many unemployed people in the state, to try to bring back the million or so tax payera who have left over the last ten years and bring back the people who are diving to Illinois and Wisconsin to work and paying income taxes to those states. Are there ways to save money so we don't need to raise as much revenue? If we cut expenses that are wasteful, fraudulent or corrupt and we also make Illinois a better place to operate a business, we will have a surplus. But Ann Williams and Mike Madigan have never brought up a revenue raising proposal other than raising taxes for two years.
WCT: One of the other things Illinois suffers from is gun violence. Your solutions talk about neighborhood watches, more funding to police. Where do you stand on the issue of guns?
GM: I have been very consistent in strengthening and enforcing existing gun laws. I believe that most of the violent crimes committed with guns are with those that aren't properly registered, maybe were never registered or are in the hands of the people they weren't registered to. I don't think the majority of gun-related crimes are being committed by people who are the lawfully registered owners of guns.
We have gun laws on the books. They just need to be enforced. In New York, where they have stop-and-frisk, there's an issue about whether it violates civil rights and that needs to be discussed. It's not necessarily that the police are doing a bad job. You can't go into every house and you can't stop everybody. The problem is the in-flow of illegal or unregistered weapons.
WCT: To be clear, is stop-and-frisk something you want to see discussed as policy in Illinois?
GM: No, I'm just saying that, for the most part, we don't know until after the fact that a crime was committed by someone who had a gun he shouldn't have had. I can guess that the numbers are very high.
WCT: You've talked about high school graduates finding jobs or getting into college. Can you go into detail about employment programs for youth or college affordability in the state?
GM: Let's talk about the ninth-grader who goes to school and he's not learning a lot of skills that can be applied immediately to the job market. Even if he was, jobs aren't available. If we made Illinois a batter rate to operate a business and someone in ninth grade could get trained for these jobs when they get out of high school, they won't drop out, join a gang and be a part of a violent culture. I'm a big supporter of increasing vocational education in high schools. It will reduce violence and increase the graduation rate. If we reduce violence that will reduce the amount of policing that we need.
For the child that wants to go to college, we have to fund these MAP grants. It's terrible what's happening at Chicago State and the University of Illinois. Under my program, there's more of a surplus that will provide the money for these grants and all the other social services that the Democrats claim are being cut out of animus.
WCT: But there are problems of hiring discrimination that are faced by people of color and particularly transgender community members. It's very hard to prove it, so how do you get employers not to engage in it?
GM: As a financial planner, I've been dealing with forms of discrimination such as sexual orientation for 35 years. You could not take advantage of estate tax laws, your partners insurance or filing a joint married tax return. Fortunately, some of that has been changed. I'm not sure what you do to prove that somebody wasn't hired because of their sexual orientation or because they were transgender or due to the color of their skin. If you see a pattern from a specific employer, there are certainly civil penalties.
WCT: So it's fair to say you're for full LGBTQ equality, then.
GM: Absolutely. Always have been. The civil rights act in the United States was passed 51 years ago. Is anybody seriously going to claim that there's not racial discrimination? Of course there still is. To the extent that we can fight for equal employment opportunities and equal treatment, we absolutely have to. Society has to be based on that.
WCT: There's a lot of talk about down ballot races given the man who is at the top of your ticket. Mr. Trump has split the Republican Party. Which side did you end up on?
GM: I've never supported him. I came out with a very strong message on Facebook when the recent tapes came out. In the strongest words I could use, I disavowed any connection with him. I never supported him from the beginning and I've been very transparent about that.
For more information about Gary Mandell's campaign, visit: www.mandellforstaterep.com/index.html .