(upbeat music) (orchestral music) - Welcome to Meet the Candidates.

I'm Jennifer Fuller.

This time, we're talking with the GOP nominee for Illinois State Treasurer, and House GOP Leader, Tom Demmer.

Representative, thanks for coming in.

- Of course, Jennifer.

- So let's kind of get started letting people know a little bit about yourself.

Can you tell us how you came to be in the Illinois House, and what leads you to run for Treasurer?

- Sure, so I was born and raised in Dixon, I still live there today with my wife, and our five-year-old daughter, and one-and-a-half-year-old son, and I was born and raised there and have a real connection to the community, and so after I graduated college, I moved back to Dixon and got involved right away.

First ran for the Lee County board, served on that county board, and got a taste for local elected office, which sometimes is the most interesting debates and discussions happened there at the local level.

So I served on the Lee County board for three years, and then in 2012, I ran for the Illinois House for the first time.

That was a redistricting year and there was a retirement of a long time legislator, and so I was only 26-years-old, but I thought this was a great opportunity to jump in and to serve at a different level.

So I ran and had a very vibrant and contested primary, my first time through got a real taste of what it's like to run in a contested race for office.

I was fortunate enough to be successful in that race, and so I've been serving in the Illinois House of Representatives for the last 10 years.

In the House, I've really focused on two key areas, the first is the state's healthcare policy, outside of the legislature, I worked in hospital administration, at a not-for-profit hospital in my hometown of Dixon, and so I tried to bring those experiences to Springfield, and work on Medicaid issues and healthcare issues.

The second is one that for the last seven years, I've been the Chief Budget Negotiator for the House Republican Caucus, and spent a tremendous amount of time digging through the state's finances, understanding how we collect money, what are the sources, and where we spend it, and are we getting a good value for it?

Are we spending more than we bring in?

What is the impact of state finances on our lives every day?

And so that's what really led me then to run for State Treasurer, because I believe that the State Treasurer should be somebody who's going to speak up for taxpayers, be sort of a watchdog, a check and a balance in the system.

So many times we can see that when you're telling the story of the state's finances, you can kind of tell it to suit your own political aims.

And I think we need to have a vibrant back and forth talking about some of our strengths and our weaknesses, and making sure that the people of Illinois feel like their dollars are being looked at for.

- Certainly.

With your background in the legislature, can you talk a little bit about how you would intend to work with the legislature on those financial issues, and make sure that those checks and balances are in place?

- I think one of the most important things is transparency around the state's financial information, trying to illustrate or give some examples of how the short-term decisions that are being made affect our long-term fiscal health.

That's something I've fought for in the legislature to really say, ask those questions when the budgets are being put together, when we're making decisions for the state's finances, how is it that the decision we have today or in this one year is going to affect us later on down the line, too often, it's easy to discount that and put that aside.

But boy, we've learned the lesson the hard way in Illinois, that those problems can snowball, and that something that was maybe a minor issue to take care of 10 years ago, has become a major issue that we haven't dealt with still today.

So I think an educational role and advocacy role may be providing some information that's outside of today the Governor's office provides a lot of information, and whoever's in office there having another source of information or maybe a point or a counterpoint to those arguments, I think could really benefit legislators directly.

And then of course, the relationships that I've been able to make in those 10 years, serving in the House on both sides of the aisle, I think give me an opportunity to have frank discussions with those legislators, but also I give an appreciation for where they're coming from, the districts that they serve and some of the priorities and ideas that they have.

- A lot of people may not be so familiar with the way that Illinois's constitutional officers are structured, there are two fiscal officers in the state, and the Treasurer's Office is primarily involved with the state's investments, and rather than day-to-day budget issues, but how do you think you can take that information, and make sure that those ideas are sound when the legislature creates a bill, that that's something that will impact the state in a positive way?

- Yeah, so you're right.

The comptroller's office really, they cut the checks day-to-day, they're dealing with that aspect of the state's finances, but that's why I think the treasurer should be looking at the longer term, should be talking about what direction we're on, where are we headed?

But also I support combining the offices of treasure, and comptroller that requires a constitutional amendment, in my role in the House, I've introduced one, I've sponsored a bill in the House to do that, a lot of states take that approach, it's an approach that saves taxpayers money, it reduces some of the redundancies between the two offices, but most importantly, I think it gives you an even more a well-suited platform to really be an advocate for state's finances, because you have somebody who takes care of both the long-term and the short term under one roof, they could really be an independent watchdog.

- You mentioned some of your experience coming into the race that you're in now, how will that experience inform your investment strategy, and keep those investments strong and sound?

- Again, I think it's the transparency part and it's the revisiting the decisions that we've made to make sure that we're on the right path.

What are the returns that we're getting on those investments?

What are the costs, the cost basis, that we've had to hire some of the outside managers to take care of, how does that compare, how do our benchmarks stack up?

I think those things are important questions, you have to revisit those, just like anybody in their own private retirement account or an investment account, you wanna go back and check that periodically to make sure it's doing what it said it was going to do, make sure you're not, the fees haven't gone up without you really noticing those things.

That's just kind of the nose of the grindstone aspect of it that it is very very important, and over the long-term can add up to a really big difference in the financial picture.

- Certainly.

One of the things that a lot of people will say as you travel throughout the state, and I'm sure you've heard this as well, is there's a big difference between the city of Chicago, and rural or even mid-size community, Illinois.

How would you balance the needs of a large city like the city of Chicago and its surrounding areas?

What some of the more rural aspects of the state?

- Well, that's a difference that is very easy to notice as you travel around the state, the difference in where people, the density of where people live, what kind of industries happen in those areas, I mean, just look at the buildings, the high rises you don't see in a lot of parts of the state, but I think the approach you can really take that unifies people is to think of individuals, think of families, there's the similar pressures that face a family in downstate Illinois, as in the city of Chicago or in a suburban area, they're struggling to make ends meet.

They're dealing with a higher cost of energy, the higher cost of groceries, of school supplies, and the burden of taxes, the property tax burden that families face.

I think if you think of it through the lens of what's a family going through in those communities, you see that there's a lot more that they have in common than separates them.

And I think that's a healthy approach to take when you're advocating for families.

- We hear from time to time the criticism that Illinois is bad for business, what specifically would you do to turn that mantra around and make Illinois a state where businesses want to locate?

- I think when businesses are making decisions, and when families are making decisions of where are they gonna buy a house, where are you gonna start a business, you're looking forward, you're thinking about what are the prospects that I have in the future.

Do I think there's a market here?

Do I think there's a good job here?

And one of the things that strikes against Illinois so many times is our unstable fiscal situation has led people to feel like there's always a tax increase around the corner, that there are people, Governor Pritzker, Treasurer Frerichs have advocated for the graduated income tax, for example.

Voters rejected that, but it's likely that those proposals are going to come back because we haven't addressed the underlying situation of state spending and revenue being held in check.

And so I think when businesses or families are making those decisions, we wanna try to give them some stability, so they don't feel like they're forever right around the corner from a tax increase, or right around the corner from taxing retirement income, or right around the corner from a graduated rate that could do a new higher rate for every single income bracket you go to.

If we could give people confidence that the state's finances were shored up, they would feel confident making an investment here.

- Certainly.

We hear, and you've mentioned this a little bit already, we hear about people right now that are struggling with a high cost of living, with inflation, with other pressures on their own individual pocketbooks.

But how can your office, or how could this office help with those day-to-day struggles that Illinoisans face?

- I think it's really by trying to reduce some of the tax burden.

Illinois has one of the highest tax burdens of any state in the country and that's driven and exacerbated each year that we pass a budget that we're spending outpaces revenue.

The budget that we're dealing with this year, normal state spending is up by 10% over last year, revenues are down, that relationship just can't result in anything positive.

That's going to put us back in a situation of dire pressure and too often the result of that has been to simply go back to taxpayers for a higher tax.

We need to get those spending and revenue, get a relationship between the two of those to keep those in check and make sure that Illinoisans aren't gonna see another tax increase on top of all the inflation and cost of living increases that they've seen.

- One of the other things that has been in the news recently is college debt.

And there are a lot of people talking about the debt being canceled or the payments being stretched out because of the economy.

The Treasurer's Office has a couple of programs that are specifically aimed at helping families afford college.

How would you boost those programs, or what changes would you make to make sure that students have access to a higher education?

- Yeah, the being able to save for a higher education is one of the strongest investments you can make, it's something that you have to think about very early on.

I mentioned, I have two young kids at home.

We have 529 accounts set up for both of them, we try to put some money away, so when they're of age, they're ready to go to school, they have some ability to pay for it, but it's a challenge.

It's a challenge for any family to be able to set aside money for that.

I think there is a good opportunity to promote those, to make sure people understand what their options are, and then from the Treasurer's Office perspective, making sure that we're getting strong rates of return on those, that we're paying low fees, it's been a tough year in the market, but several of the Bright Start accounts have underperformed the market, even those that are for students who are just about to go to college, they've seen double digit losses in those programs this year, I think you need to go back to the fund managers and say, "Hey, look, we're paying you a management fee here, "you better be producing the kinds of rates of return "that help the money that you invest grow, "because we know how hard it is for families "to set aside that money initially, "we certainly don't wanna lose ground "on any of those investments."

- When it comes to investing, you can't just do that on an island.

How would you work with counterparts across the country to really work on some investment strategies, perhaps ways to collaborate?

- I think there's good collaboration opportunities, and that's both here in the state of Illinois through education and outreach, through collaborations with employers, to make sure their employees know about these programs, through schools, to make sure that even from a young age, that you're talking about the importance of setting aside some money for this, and then looking across the country, I think that's where there's an opportunity to use an economy of scale, right?

With 529 accounts all across the country to try to drive for lower management fees for better rates of return, Illinois can sort outperform its own level of investment if we're able to team up with other people too.

- After several years of decline, we started to see increases in Illinois's credit ratings.

And a lot of people are talking about what great news that is for the state.

How would you take advantage of those increases in credit ratings when it comes to the state's investments and other treasurer priorities?

- Well, I'm a little cautious about some of the upgrades, I'm glad to see those upgrades have happened, but we also know the last couple of years, we've had one time revenue influx in the state through a lot of COVID relief money from the Federal Government through the CARES Act, the American Recovery Plan Act.

I'm concerned that our upgrades or increased financial position has been predominantly due to that, those one-time-actions from the Federal Government, so we need to make sure again that our decisions that we have over normal state expenses and normal revenues over the long run, don't put us in a position where we're gonna give back some of those gains that we've made.

But in addition to that, I think the ability to borrow money at a cheaper rate is good for taxpayers.

And so we need to make sure that we're gonna continue to improve our credit rating, we're still the lowest in the country, we need to make up ground on that and know that when we get into, as we are now getting into higher and higher cost of borrowing environments, taxpayers are gonna feel that pinch even more, the last few years, we've been fairly fortunate to have very very low cost of borrowing environment, but that will turn around quickly as it always does.

It's always cyclical.

- Certainly.

It comes up from time to time, you've talked about this a little bit already, but there's this question of whether the two constitutional offices of treasurer and controllers should be merged.

And you mentioned that you're in favor of that.

How would you advocate for it, how would you help people understand the fact that there are these two fiscal offices, and this is the reason that they ought to be merged?

- As I talk to people around the state, they're remarkably in favor of combining the offices.

If they know that two exist right now, they always ask, "Well, what's the difference between the two of them?

"Why isn't there one?"

The idea of merging the offices goes back quite a ways, and I think Judy Baar Topinka who held both offices at different times and understood the offices was one of the strongest supporters of it, and the hesitation I think has only come maybe in the legislature, and I think probably for really political reasons, more than substantive reasons, and so I think the audience that we have to convince that it's a good idea is not rank and file Illinoisans who are strongly in support of it, it's a few key power players in Springfield under the dome, and that will require maybe a little different strategy.

- Let's talk a little bit about the political strategy that what you would have, a lot of people can see the Treasurer's Office as being somewhat nonpartisan.

The things that person has to be in charge of really don't rely on politics, but how does your political philosophy and your party's platform inform the way that you would run that office?

- Well, I really think the office should be part of a check and balance that's built into state government.

I think there's a reason that we elect a state treasurer.

If it was simply about keeping the accounts, we could outsource that to some accounting firm, and have that taken care of.

The idea though, that the treasurer is not somebody who can be hired or fired by the Governor.

They don't have to answer to anybody else in the constitutional order, instead they're accountable just to voters, they're supposed to be somebody who listens to voters, who understands what their fiscal priorities are, and then advocates for those on a larger scale.

And so regardless of what the other political parties that are in power are, the treasurers should be independent, and should advocate for, be a check and balance advocate for some of the policies that maybe another officer would prefer be swept under the rug, or that the light be shown somewhere else.

There's strength in government when we have that back and forth, the point and counterpoint, the argument and response.

And I think the treasurer should be an active part of that, regardless of what parties are involved.

- You're an active member of your party, a leader in your chamber in the GOP, how would you take that experience, that leadership and work within your party for those priorities that you would have?

- Again, I think the areas that we're advocating for, fiscal responsibility, an end to constant tax increases, more transparency about how state dollars are spent is a unifying theme that we see from Republicans all across the state of Illinois.

But importantly, we see that from a lot of independents and Democrats as well.

So I think it is an opportunity to build a strong coalition, it's something that there's a widespread agreement on, certainly within the party and then with many others, so that's sort of where we start from, and I think can build a coalition of people who are out there talking about spreading the message of why it's important to look after taxpayer dollars, where dollars are being spent, try to rebuild some of the trust that people have or should have in their tax dollars working for them.

- Being an election year that's a political year, so I'll ask the political question, how do you support the candidates up and down the ticket on the GOP side?

- Yeah, so I'm a Republican, I'll support for Republicans up and down the ticket here in Illinois.

- Certainly, and you can work with them should the elections turn out an all GOP sweep, for example.

- Yeah, the important part is voters get a chance to weigh in, this is an important election year, they have some choices in a variety of races from local, all the way up to federal offices and whoever wins it's then our job to go forward and work together in the offices we're elected to.

- Sure.

Many times people think the government should be more forward-thinking, more prepared for things that happen.

Sometimes you obviously can't, but what things would you do if you could name three, that would be priorities you'd be looking at five to 10 years down the road that need to be prepared for?

- Well, we need to prepare for a changing economy, I think there's been a number of shifts in the way that people work, where they work, the types of jobs that we have, the mix of jobs that are playing here in Illinois, and this is not going to be the responsibility of any one elected official, but should be an ongoing part of the conversation.

And I think as a treasurer, as you're making investments and things, as you're monitoring the overall economy for the performance of various investments, there's a real role to play, to talk about, hey, here's where the national or the global economy is going, how is Illinois prepared to adopt to that?

The same with where people are working, one of our largest sources of revenue is personal income taxes, there have been some significant changes in where someone's job might be, and where they might live working from home, commuting, maybe you're splitting time between sometimes going into an office and sometimes not, that's something that the state government's gonna have to make sure they're on top of, and they understand the tax treatment of all those, that personal income, and that could continue to change, and we should be ready for that.

And then third, I think over the long-term, if we have unexpected things that happen, emergencies that happen in the future, if we have a government people feel like they can trust more, we'll be able to better respond to whatever those unexpected circumstances are.

And I think rebuilding that trust, one of the first things that happens there, transparency, ethics reform, bringing an accountability to an office, no matter what party currently holds those offices, those are very very important things that Illinois has not executed well on in recent years, and something we should work every single day to try to restore the public's trust and government through.

- Certainly.

Young people are always looking at ways to get involved in the political system, in public service, and an election year is a great way to do that.

Voting is one of the easiest things you could do, but what message do you have to young people who would like to get more involved in public service, maybe perhaps follow footsteps like yours?

- Oh, there are a wonderful number of opportunities for young people to get involved.

I mean, everybody can know about knocking on doors to support a candidate or walking in a parade to support a candidate, but there's also so many other opportunities in things that might be lower profile, but still have a big importance in your community.

I mentioned I was on the county board before, there are hundreds and hundreds of county board spots open across the state, school boards, library boards, park district boards, all kinds of things where you don't have to change your whole life and suddenly become a full-time politician in order to run for these things, I've always encouraged people to look at it more like community service.

Look at that the way that you would look at volunteering in the kids' baseball league, or things like that, there are great chances for you to be involved in your community, that only require a few hours a month or go to a handful of meetings, and working on some small area, but that has a foot in the door for people who maybe want to be civically engaged, but maybe are turned off by some of the political environment that we see, those are some great opportunities for them to get involved locally.

- Sure.

Illinois is somewhat of an outlier in the Midwest, particularly when it comes to a lot of political philosophies and priorities.

How would you see that if you were elected treasurer, and how would you bring the Midwest together with Illinois for better or for worse as a leader with a city like Chicago, Illinois is definitely a leader when it comes to the economy.

- Illinois is a leader when it comes to the economy, but I would challenge a little bit that Illinois is so politically different from other states, I think one of the things that makes it seem that Illinois is more politically polarized is we have such a gerrymandered legislative districts that are drawn where people don't have a genuine option to vote for candidates in a competitive world, I was a strong supporter of the Fair Maps initiative, people around the state were, we had an opportunity to pass Fair Maps last year, unfortunately, that was not the path that the Democrats chose to take, and we ended up with what a national publication called the worst gerrymander in America.

We need to empower individuals to have real choice in their elections, it should be done through a fair mapping process, we should amend our constitution and do that.

That would help facilitate some of this discussion, and reduce some of the political polarization and toxicity that we have.

And Illinois should be a leader in that, I know there are other states around the country where gerrymandering happens as well, Illinois should lead the way on that.

- We touched on this just briefly before, but how would you balance the needs of a big industry like agriculture, for example, with some of the other economic needs in cities like Peoria, Chicago and some of the others?

- Well, you know, you have to lean into what the strengths of a given area are.

So some parts of the state, we have a cluster around manufacturing perhaps, or agriculture, logistics, or financial services, things like that.

You have to lean into some of those strengths, but one of the other ways to try to tie people together is to understand the extent to which those various pieces of economy work together, and are dependent on each other, that, you know, you might think of it as being an economy that's totally driven by agriculture, there's a huge piece of financial services that comes in to making the whole investment in agriculture work.

There's a manufacturing world and a logistics world, and an engineering world that come together to make the kind of farm implements that you're using on the fields and vice versa.

Then a farm that's growing food, that helps support a tourist and a hotel and a hospitality industry, in a large city like Chicago, those things are so codependent on each other that I think sometimes there could be more unity in Illinois when we understood just how many things we're relying on some of our neighbors in communities that maybe don't look anything like ours, but we're relying back and forth on them for a vibrant economy.

- We're coming to the end of our time here, but I wanted to give you the last minute or two to make your case, and tell us again why you should be the next Treasurer for Illinois.

- Well, I'm running for State Treasurer, because I think that the Treasurer should look out for taxpayers.

Treasurers should speak up about the decisions that we're making today, the fiscal policies we have today, Treasurers should push back against constant tax increases.

I oppose the retirement tax.

I oppose the graduated income tax.

The treasurer should be a watchdog who's going to call out some of the games and the gimmicks that get played with the state budget, and should be an alternate and independent source of information about what's really happening with taxpayer dollars, and what's really happening with state finances.

That's what I've fought for in the state legislature, and that's what I'd fight for Illinoisans and all across the state as State Treasurer.

- Certainly.

Tom Demmer is the Republican nominee for Illinois Treasurer, thank you so much.

- Thank you, Jennifer.

- And that'll do it for this edition of Meet the Candidates here on WSIU, you can find our videos online, on our YouTube channel and at wsiu.org, and you can tune in as we continue our coverage of the Fall 2022 election through election day in November.

Thanks for joining us on Meet the Candidates, we'll see you next time.

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