In the News

Lake County News-Sun, February 10, 2011

State Sen. Susan Garrett, D-Lake Forest, will be holding an official Illinois State Senate Commerce Committee subject matter hearing next Friday at the Thompson Center in downtown Chicago. The lofty title of this laudable public session is “Fostering more new business in Illinois: How can business, government and academia work together to improve our state’s economy?”

One way Garrett can foster more economic growth in Illinois is by talking fellow Democrats into rescinding the huge “temporary” personal and business taxes the Democratic-controlled Legislature and Gov. Pat Quinn foisted on the Land of Lincoln last month. To Garrett’s credit, she voted against the tax increases.

While state and local officials have discounted attempts by neighboring states to pluck Illinois businesses and jobs to other locales, it hasn’t stopped New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker or Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels from undertaking raiding parties. Indeed, Jimmy John Liautaud, who founded his chain of Jimmy John’s sandwich shops near the downstate campus of Eastern Illinois University, said last month he has applied for Florida residency. And, he may recommend the firm’s Champaign corporate headquarters move out-of-state — and take around 300 jobs with — as a result of the Illinois tax increases.

While some want to be proactive in making Illinois attractive to entrepreneurs and businesses, basic economics underlines that boosting the corporate tax rate is not exactly business-friendly. Just the opposite, the state should be offering tax breaks to invite firms to settle here.

We’d take this new focus on job creation at the state and national level more seriously if we weren’t about 10 months away from candidates filing for the 2012 elections. There’s even a term for this latent jobs push. It’s called reshoring, meaning bringing back jobs to American shores.

Especially sought after are those in the manufacturing sector, lost to decades of offshoring and outsourcing. Shipping jobs overseas is caused by a number of complicated factors, including the corporate tax rate. Bringing back production from factories in developing nations to say Waukegan, which once had thousands employed in its lakeshore manufacturing plants, will need increased innovation and a retooling of business strategies.

It also will need a collective rethinking of the way government operates when it comes to job growth and development. Something Illinois effectively quashed with massive tax increases without accompanying spending cuts in the state budget.

If anyone can steer state government in the right direction, it may be Garrett. We expect she will get an earful of ideas from those ready and willing to testify at her committee’s hearing on how to improve the state’s economic standing.