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CRIME
The 1st Legislative District has experienced an unacceptable level of violent crime. In the last three years, for instance, there have been 63 homicides in the district. Sadly, many of these deaths are gang related and involve the youth in our community. The tide of violent crime will not stem until our legislators realize that there is no silver-bullet solution. Adolfo Mondragón will take a comprehensive approach to the problem that includes not only putting more police on our streets, but also includes addressing mental health and substance abuse problems among our youth and passing laws that impose swift and certain (but less severe) punishment for juvenile offenders.
ENVIRONMENT AND HEALTH
The city’s two coal-fired power plants surround the 1st Legislative District like bookends. The Fisk plant towers over the Pilsen neighborhood on the east side of the district and the Crawford plant looms in the Little Village neighborhood on the west side of the district. Community activists and environmental groups have desperately tried for years to clean up or close the Fisk and Crawford plants because both plants emit heat-trapping carbon dioxide, toxic mercury, and other pollutants that create lung-damaging soot and smog at levels that surpass federal regulations. In 2001, a Harvard School of Public Health study estimated that the Fisk and Crawford plants alone are responsible for 2,800 asthma attacks, 550 emergency room visits, and 41 early deaths every year. That very same year, however, Tony Muñoz accepted a $1,000 contribution from the owner of the two plants, Midwest Generation. To date, Muñoz has accepted $10,000 in political contributions from Midwest Generation. Adolfo Mondragón will never compromise the lives of our families and will fight to clean up or close the Fisk and Crawford plants.
HOUSING
The financial meltdown ravaged Chicago, leaving the city with a record amount of foreclosures. Some of the low- and moderate-income neighborhoods in the 1st Legislative District, such as the Back of the Yards neighborhood, were hit especially hard. Adolfo Mondragón will fight to preserve sustainable homeownership, to reclaim foreclosed housing stock as neighborhood assets, and to combat scams that seeks to exploit vulnerable families facing foreclosures.
GOVERNMENT REFORM
The people of Illinois are in dire need of new leadership. From the Governor’s Office to City Hall, a political culture of graft and corruption has touched every level of government. Sadly, Tony Muñoz was the political patron of a convicted Hired Truck kingpin, Angelo Torres, and had ties to the corrupt and disgraced Hispanic Democratic Organization (HDO). Adolfo Mondragón will restore honesty and accountability to the 1st Legislative District. He will advocate vigorously for sunshine laws, tougher campaign finance regulations, for a less partisan system of re-districting, for state pension reform, for giving citizens the power to recall elected officials, and for laws making it easier to investigate and root out patronage and corruption at the municipal and state level.
THE BUDGET CRISIS
The budget crisis can only be solved by reforming the state pension system and generating new streams of revenue. First, we need to address the $73 billion unfunded pension liability by cutting pension benefits for future hires; consolidating the five pension system into a single system; eliminating late-career pension bumps; and implementing fact-based accounting to the budget process to deter pilfering of the pension fund. Second, we need to increase tax revenues. Indeed, the state government can’t generate enough revenue through its flat income tax system to cover our obligations even though Illinois is one of the lowest-spending states, per capita, when it comes to core services. Consequently, Illinois needs to raise income taxes through a progressive tax-scheme or consider replacing or supplementing the flat income tax with a value added tax on goods and services.
EDUCATION
Illinois needs to implement an equalized, state-wide property tax rate that strives to ensure both horizontal equity (per-pupil expenditures) and vertical equity (special needs). Whether Illinois adopts a “leveling up” approach with minimum expenditure requirements or a “leveling down” approach with spending caps and recapture is something that the legislature needs to investigate and debate. Fortunately, Illinois can learn much on this issue by studying reform in several states, including, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Connecticut.
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