More McHenry County Blog

Name: Cal Skinner

Birth Date: 6-11-42

Political Affiliation: Libertarian Party

Home: Crystal Lake, IL

Marital status: Married Spouse's name: Michele Giangrasso

Occupation: Retired state legislator

Campaign HQ Address: West Adams, Springfield, IL

Campaign Phone: 1-866-SHAKE-UP

Campaign Manager: Ted Semon Phone: 630-240-4797

Education: Economics degree from Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio (64), master's degree in public administration from the University of Michigan (class work 64-65; thesis finished and degree awarded in 1971, I believe);
Awarded Certified Illinois Assessing Officer designation in 1970.
Taught State and Local Government at Rockford and Harper Colleges

Please list civic, professional, fraternal or other types of organizations to which you belong. I am a member of the First United Church of Crystal Lake, the Northern Illinois Emmaus Community and the McHenry County Defenders. I was a charter member of the Woodstock Rotary Club and the Kiwanis Morning Breakfast Club.

Have you held elective or appointive political office or have you been employed by any branch of government?

United States Bureau of the Budget (65-66),
McHenry County Treasurer (66-70), GOP precinct committeeman (70-72, 86-00), Illinois House Appropriations Committee Staff (70-71),
State Representative, 33rd District (73-81), Unsuccessful challenger to Republican congressman (80), Transportation Consultant to Speaker George Ryan (81-83), Unsuccessful GOP nominee for State Comptroller (82),
Bureau of Benefits Manager, IL Dept. of Central Management Services (80-85), In-house management consultant and special projects for CMS including initiation of direct purchase of natural gas for state government (85-87), Advisor & research consultant to various state legislators (87-92),
State Representative, 64th District (93-01).

Please list jobs or contracts you, members of your immediate family or business partners have had with government. Please see question above. This information is listed there. Before I was married to her, my wife Michele worked for the University of Illinois Hospital as a lab technologist and taught that subject at the university.

What is your campaign budget? $300,000

Name your biggest campaign contributors and the amount they contributed:

Ted Semon, $90,000
Matt Beauchamp $26,000
Dan O'Connell, $5500
Joseph Dempsey, Jr., $1000
Bruce Green, $1000
Dave Hughes, $1000
Dave Simpson, $1000
Sue Wells, $1000

If elected, what would be your immediate priorities in office?

Besides replacing the Tollway and Gambling Boards, my first priority would be stopping the pork that is not in a specific line item that can be understood by taxpayers. I am the only candidate proposing that the 274 miles of tollways be made freeways. Tollway drivers have been double taxed since the tollway began. They pay tolls, plus state and federal motor fuel taxes. Those state motor fuel taxes paid by Tollway drivers exceed the amount needed to pay off the tollway bonds over the next 15 years. Repair and maintenance can be financed by allocating to the 274 miles of Interstate tollways the federal highway assistance attributable to them. If more money is needed, there will continue to be at least $8 million in concession revenue.

The Gambling Board must be replaced because neither it nor Jim Ryan can figure out what "open bidding" means. Here's a clue: the gamblers who invested should no more get their money back than should lottery losers, Enron or Worldcom investors. Neither should the politically-connected "minorities" in the current deal be guaranteed a "piece of the action" in the next casino deal.

What is your position on these Illinois issues:

The state's responsibility to fund public education: Would you reduce the state's reliance on property taxes to fund education? If you believe this is not a proper approach, is there an alternative?

I am the only candidate you can count on not to sign an income tax increase.
Property taxes certainly have their drawbacks, but all of the money is spent locally. That is obviously not the case with the state income tax.

The question is not reducing the state's reliance on property taxes to fund education, it is, "How can we improve educational outcomes in Illinois?"
I think the answer is clearly to allow competition with government schools. I endorse the Heartland Institute's scholarship plan. The plan freezes school operating fund property taxes and gives every parent whatever the local school district would have spent on the child in the local public school system, regardless of whether the money comes from real estate taxes, state or federal assistance. Local control is assured because the plan would have to be authorized by local referendum. The plan would be phased in over a seven year period and require no new taxes. If the General Assembly wished to provide more money for education, it could. No restriction is put upon what a private school could charge for tuition, but any amount less than the amount spent by the student's public school system would be earmarked for college tuition for the child. This program is well thought out and, in my opinion, would work to bring better education to all Illinois students, whether their parents decided to send them to public or private school.

The best way to expand health insurance for uninsured families:
Private enterprise is the answer. Jewel provides checkers working as little as twelve hours a week with health benefits.

Expansion of O'Hare International Airport and/or a third airport in the Chicago region:

I shall not be led down the primrose path to Peotone. If a reliever airport is needed, Gary and Rockford are already built. Gary is 35 minutes from the Loop. Libertarians do not favor wasting money. While Illinois politicians and their contributors are lusting for Peotone and an expanded O'Hare, the 90% of the cost that would come from the Federal government is still tax money. It may not be state tax dollars, but we taxpayers have still paid it. Development is moving toward Rockford several miles per year. It will soon be a logical airport for northwest suburban air traffic, as Gary certainly could be for southeast Chicago passengers. Any expansion of O'Hare must not demolish Bensenville or Elk Grove Village. I will have to be convinced that new runways are being proposed as something more than a way to enrich the Richard Daley machine's coffers.

The moratorium on the death penalty:

If George Ryan decides to commute everyone's death sentence, then the subject will be moot. If he doesn't, I see no reason not to allow the wheels of justice to move again. I do propose that an advisory referendum be held-as one was in 1970 when the new constitution was voted upon-to determine what Illinois voters think about continuation of the death penalty. Personally, I favor the death penalty.

What limits, if any, should be placed on access to abortions?

I am pro-life. For better or worse, the U.S. Supreme Court has sharply circumscribed what protections may be offered to unborn babies. Babies obviously have no choice in the matter of whether they should be allowed to be born or not. My wife Michele and I shall be eternally grateful that our adopted son's mother loved him enough to give him life five years ago. I favor giving unborn children whatever protections that the U.S. Supreme Court allows state governments to provide. I am horrified that Rod Blagojevich supports allowing women to have an abortion during delivery. (That's what partial birth abortion is.) I think when people learn he favors no protections whatsoever, even going so far as to favoring allowing women to have an abortion at 8 months and 29 days into her pregnancy, they will conclude that he is the real extremist on the abortion issue.

In the face of the economic downturn, how do you intend to balance the budget? Raise fees or taxes, or make budget cuts? Please be specific about which taxes, fees?

In fact, there was no budget crisis in Springfield this year. General Revenue Fund receipts were down a mere 2%. No manager worthy of the title couldn't cut his budget 2%. I have visited with 80% of the daily newspapers in the state. I asked managers if they had ever cut their budget 2%. They answered in the affirmative. I asked if they had ever had to cut their budget 5%. Most answered, "Yes." One well-known Downstate daily offered, "How about 7%?" No business person in the state can have any empathy or sympathy with the spendoholics in Springfield, who always find it easier to raise taxes than to cut spending.

If we have continued economic problems, I'll tell you what I won't do. I won't blame it on cigarette smokers, as the Republicans and Democrats did this year. While I was campaigning all over Illinois against raising taxes this spring the two Golden Gloves boxers would not even get in the ring-just as they won't get in the debate ring with me now. They threw in the towel and allowed their Republican and Democratic colleagues in Springfield to hike taxes without objection.

As I stated earlier, I am the only candidate for Governor you can be certain will veto an income tax hike. Considering Rod Blagojevich's public employee supporters, you know he will be pressured to raise taxes. While loyal Republicans might like to believe that Republican governors will oppose tax hikes, every Republican governor for the last fifty years has raised taxes, regardless of what he said before he was elected.

As for budget cuts, I have a major proposal in the field of providing health care to state dependents. I propose bulk purchasing of medical care and commodities for those financed by state government and the administration of such health care by entities for various geographic areas throughout Illinois. Only the campaign contributions of pharmaceutical companies to Republicans can explain why state government has separate contracts to purchase prescription drugs for each separate department. Think of the purchasing power of buying the health care needs of state employees, prisoners, Medicaid, DCFS wards, retired teachers, retired state employees, etc. It is estimated that merely buying pharmaceutical drugs on one contact per company would save from $120-180 million. I have no way of estimating how much would be saved by having entities bid for the right to provide all health care for those for whom the state pays from conception to death for various geographic areas in Illinois. I do know that it will save money at the end of life, because the administrating entity will spend up to the cost of keeping someone in a nursing home ($35,000 per year average cost now) to keep someone out of a nursing home. (This has the side benefit of making a lot of seniors and disabled persons happier.) After conception, the entity will figure out how to get teens to deliver their babies as close to nine months as possible in order to avoid the cost of neonatal hospitalization. (Certainly, public health officials have had their chance to solve this problem.) The entity will similarly figure out how to keep people with doctors from using expensive emergency room care. Probably, on-site general practitioner availability will result. All will save large amounts of money. I don't believe either Blagojevich or Ryan is capable of making this happen. Both would rather "milk" the current system. Perhaps we can save enough to provide the kind of tax cut that a "welfare reform dividend" should have already provided.

In addition, it obviously makes no sense to have $126 million of pork still in the budget. And, that's just what the State Journal-Register could find. I doubt items like the $133,000 gift to a Tennessee entrepreneur to build a $6 million water park on Rend Lake next to a state-subsidized failing hotel are included in the $126 million. How on earth could money be spent on such a project if Illinois really has a budget problem? Is it some legislator's pork project?

What could the Governor's office do to raise standards and improve teacher education in state run colleges and universities?

One thing I find outrageous about the current system is that state schools of education allow students to graduate before they have a teachers' certificate. Do you agree with me that this makes no sense? It ought to be part of the cost of the degree.

Should Illinois laws make it easier to confiscate and impound vehicles when a driver has his or her license suspended? Please explain your answer.

I think Illinois already has too much confiscation of property without due process.

Have you visited a state park in the past 12 months? If so, please describe any concerns:

As a matter of fact, I did drive down the county line road between Randolph and Perry Counties. The road divides the biggest state park in Illinois. It was just purchased from a coal mining company and probably is over 20,000 acres of mined out strip mine. A local newspaper publisher said the coal mine company should have been forced to pay the state to take the land. I also visited Jim Edgar State Park in Cass County and stayed at Illinois Beach State Park in Zion for a weekend. The biggest problem I see with the first two state parks is that they are inconveniently located for most citizens of Illinois. As to Zion, the hotel room we stayed in could have used a functioning lock.

What the state park system needs is more parkland in Chicagoland. I propose the state purchase 2000-3000 acres of mined-out or soon-to-be-mined out gravel pits between Crystal Lake, Lake-in-the-Hills, Algonquin and Cary for development into a unique metropolitan state park. I suggest it be named "Gravel Gertie State Park" after Chester Gould's 1950's character in the Dick Tracy cartoon. Mr. Gould told me that he got the idea of Gravel Gertie while driving past the old Crystal Lake dump, which is in the area.

This would be an untraditional state park, but surely no more untraditional than an old strip mine. Virtually any type of recreation one can imagine could take place in these old gravel pits. Consider the possibilities of the many lakes-large and small-for swimming, fishing, sail and motor boating in the summer, and ice fishing, ice boating, skiing for beginners, and ice skating in the winter. Almost any water sport except surfing would be possible. Water slides would be easy to incorporate into the sides of the gravel pits, as would toboggan runs, sledding hills, and protected lakes where one could skate on near perfect ice. Snowmobiling would not endanger the flora, if only because there is not much. I could even see a bobsled, if there were enough interest.

Imagine the recreational opportunities in late fall. Of course, hiking and bicycling and camping would be possible, but, in addition, in some lakes shaped like solar ovens, it would be warm enough to swim until very late fall.

Motorcycles, horse riders and dirt bikes could find a home in parts of the proposed park--in different areas, of course. Those who like to put their motor homes close to water would be able to find pads. (The Lake County Forest Preserve District has announced that such a site overlooking the Fox River will be closed to mobile homes.)

The one thing this park would not have much of would be trees…at least in the beginning. I am certain that Department of Natural Resources foresters could transform the esthetics of the area as time passes.

The park would be located a short bus ride from the Cary train station, as well as being easily accessible from the Northwest Tollway.

What book have you read most recently?

My most recent "summer" book was Clive Cussler's "Fire Ice." I am now reading the latest in the "Left Behind" series.

Do you have a hobby?

Now that I am retired, politics is my hobby. There certainly is enough going on that is displeasing to keep me busy in McHenry County and the state arena for the foreseeable future. After the election, whether or not I am elected, I shall be soliciting petition signatures to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot to limit the number of terms the Mike Madigans, Lee Daniels, Pate Philips and Emil Joneses of the world can serve as a caucus leader to six years (prospectively). I shall also be fighting any attempt to raise the income tax and expand the sales tax.

Do you have a handgun in your home? If so, why?

I hold a Firearm Owners' Identification Card and, whether I do or don't own a handgun, I can tell you that I am not going to put a sign in my yard saying, "No gun within." Instead, I propose the only plan to reduce violent crime by over 2% per year and rape by over 3% per year. It is based on solid social science research of similar plans in twenty other states. I call on the legislature to enact a Personal Security Act, which will allow law-abiding citizens who have taken a short-course in how to use a gun in self-defense to obtain a permit to use a gun to protect themselves. The sad fact is that the police cannot always be where you need them when you need them. Every state that has enacted such a proposal has seen a drop in violent crime. Michigan's law has been in effect almost fifteen months. From my searches of the Detroit papers, I cannot find that its enactment was an issue in either party in the recent, hotly contested primary elections.