By Seth A. Richardson
State Capitol BureauPosted Mar. 10, 2015 at 5:32 PM
Updated at 9:14 PMGov. Bruce Rauner on Tuesday told an interested audience he wants to invest heavily in Illinois' infrastructure through reforms to labor requirements and the contract-bidding process instead of finding new revenue.At an Illinois Asphalt Pavement Association luncheon in downtown Springfield, the Winnetka Republican said he'd seek to invest “billions and billions” of dollars in infrastructure.He said he wants to fund the construction via savings through municipal right-to-work legislation and moving state workers to a less-expensive pension system – something he said would save the state $2.7 billion in the first year.He also said he wants to allow local governments to remedy what he described as a “really big issue”: prevailing-wage and public-labor requirements.“Let me tell you something, Illinois is broken on this issue,” Rauner told the group. “We don’t allow true competitive bidding in our construction programs paid for by taxpayers. It’s wrong, it’s a conflict. It should be local voters – local governments should be able to decide how they handle their bidding process.”Rauner described the state's bidding process as not competitive and said it's holding back the state from investing more in infrastructure spending.“If I have to spend 25 percent more on every construction project, that’s a lot fewer construction projects we can do,” he said. “That’s a lot fewer schools we can build. That’s a lot fewer city halls and libraries. We need efficiency, transparency and true competitive bidding.”The governor did not mention any ideas for new revenue to fund the infrastructure improvements, such as raising the gas tax or instituting a sales tax on some services.He said he thought he could enact his agenda to fix the state's infrastructure with only six bills, although he did not specify if the legislation had been introduced or by whom.
