Will County Gazette

Rep. Mark Batinick (R-Plainfield) thinks a new agenda is sorely needed in Springfield.

“We need to get our fiscal house in order by prioritizing what the state truly needs, and not by trying to spend our way out of everything,” Batinick told the Will County Gazette. “Something like a balanced budget will go a long way in fixing those things.”

Batinick’s undivided attention was recently retrained on those issues in the wake of a new Chief Executive’s 2018 “Best and Worst States for Business” report that found that for the fourth straight year Illinois ranked No. 48 of 50 states, ahead of only New York and California.

Rep. Mark Batinick (R-Plainfield)

At the other end of the spectrum, Texas ranked at the top, followed by Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina. Closer to home, Indiana ranked No. 5 and Michigan, up nine spots over last year, ranked No. 27.

“It’s not really a huge surprise as much as it is another blow,” said Batinick, running for re-election in the 97th District in November’s general election. “The rising property taxes, the out-of-control workmen’s compensation, and all the regulatory reforms make this a tough place for doing business.”

Batinick is already on record with his belief that small business owners have essentially become a dying breed here in Illinois, largely through no fault of their own.

“Small-business owners are kind of the forgotten person down in Springfield,” he previously told the Will County Gazette. “Most of the time all they want is for us to get out of the way and allow them to operate. Property tax relief, workers’ compensation reform, those are some of the things that are needed. A big part of the things I try to focus on is stopping other bills that might hurt the interest of small business owners even more,”

The 97th District includes all or parts of Oswego, Plainfield and Shorewood.