Bruce Rauner: The first 30 days
Issuing seven new executive orders and rescinding seven others, along with delivering a State of the State address, the new governor has had a busy first month in office.
After Gov. Bruce Rauner’s electoral victory in November, pundits questioned the ability of the incoming Republican governor to be effective with a Democratic supermajority in both the Illinois House and Senate. However, Rauner responded quickly by issuing seven executive orders, conducting the State of the State address and rescinding seven of former-Gov. Pat Quinn’s last-minute executive orders, all in his first 30 days in office. Below is a detailed timeline of those 30 days.
Jan. 12, 2015
Inauguration and Executive Order 15-08: addressing the state’s fiscal crisis
Rauner was sworn is as the 42nd governor of Illinois, the first Republican elected to the office in 12 years.
On the same day, Rauner’s first order of business was addressing the state’s fiscal crisis by instituting Executive Order 15-08, which mandated a freeze on all discretionary spending, state grants and contracts. Additionally, the order halted all out-of-state travel, limited in-state travel expenses, required an extensive review of all state contracts and hiring decisions, and requested that the Department of Central Management Services identify surplus state property for auction.
Jan. 13, 2015
Executive Order 15-09: ensuring ethical and responsive government
Executive Order 15-09 created a “revolving-door ban” prohibiting executive-branch and state-agency employees from negotiating for employment with a lobbyist and restricting employees from registering as a lobbyist for one year. The order also restricts employees of the executive branch and state agencies from accepting gifts from prohibited sources.
Jan. 15, 2015
Executive Order 15-10: transparency of political hiring
Executive Order 15-10 requires the Department of Central Management Services to publish all Rutan-exempt hires on the state’s website. (Rutan-exempt hires are commonly referred to as political hires.) This order is an attempt to bring transparency to all political hiring decisions, but additionally to shed light on Quinn’s controversial hiring decisions at the Department of Transportation.
Jan. 16, 2015
Rauner rescinds Quinn’s last-minute executive orders
Rauner used Executive Order 15-11 to rescind the seven executive orders that Quinn issued in his last hours before ceding office. The executive order states that “between January 5 and January 12, 2015, in his last eight days in office, the outgoing Governor issued seven executive orders that were not wholly motivated by serving in the public interest.” The executive orders that were redacted ranged from the governor being compelled to release copies of their tax filings to increasing the minimum wage for state contractors to $10 per hour. The current administration stated that they will consider reinstating the executive orders on a case-by-case basis.
Jan. 19, 2015
Executive Order 15-12: ensuring equal work opportunities
Executive Order 15-12 requires labor groups and contractors working with the state to submit a report listing the number of minorities and veterans in their apprenticeship programs.
The executive order stated intent is to ensure that employment and business opportunities are open to all persons and business of diverse backgrounds and veterans.
Feb. 4, 2015
State of the State address
Rauner used his first State of the State address to convey his vision for how to restore fiscal stability to Illinois. His agenda included:
- Raising the minimum wage to $10 per hour over seven years
- Freezing property taxes
- Workers’ compensation reform
- Tort reform
- A constitutional amendment to cap unreasonable judgments (2018 ballot)
- Unemployment insurance changes to crack down on benefit fraud
- Implement true competitive bidding in public works projects, limit prevailing-wage requirements and eliminate project-labor agreements
- Increase state funding for pre-K education, especially for low-income families
- Expand access to high-quality early-childhood education
- Give local school boards the ability to modify overly burdensome unfunded mandates
- Lift the arbitrary cap on public charter schools, reduce funding disparities for public charters and provide more high-quality educational options to students through tax credit scholarships
- Reform teacher tenure and incentivize local school districts to reward high-performing administrators and educators
Feb. 9,, 2015
Rauner removes state-employee ‘fair share’ dues
In his most aggressive move to date, Rauner issued Executive Order 15-13, which removed the requirement that unionized state employees pay their “fair share” union dues if they have opted out of the union. Using the landmark Supreme Court case of Harris v. Quinn as his basis, Rauner made the argument that forcing state employees to pay “fair share” union dues was a violation of their First Amendment rights.
Feb. 11, 2015
Executive Order 15-14: established commission on criminal-justice reform
In the last day of his first month in office, Rauner established a commission via Executive Order 15-14 to review the criminal-justice system in Illinois and make recommendations on sentencing reforms. The goal of the commission is to improve public-safety outcomes and reduce Illinois’ prison population by 25 percent by 2025.
Summary
Rauner immediately established his role as the head of the executive department, using his first month to lay out his agenda – and reform the state – unilaterally though his executive power. In the coming months, if Rauner is going to be successful with the agenda he laid out in his State of the State address, he will need to find a way to work with lawmakers in a bipartisan manner to start Illinois’ comeback story.