* From Chris Kennedy’s press conference today…
REPORTER: Can you speak specifically to legislation you would support to reinvest in communities and decrease violence in Chicago and across the state?
KENNEDY: Sure, there’s all sorts of programs that have been proven both in Chicago and around the country. We can duplicate ideas that have been successful elsewhere. And we can refund, reinvest in the programs that have worked in Chicago. Chicago pioneered the notion of interrupting the spread of violence once it begins, with programs like Ceasefire. The work that was done here was perfected in other communities like Boston. We could take the best of that thinking and bring it to Chicago and have an incredible impact. We don’t have this problem in other cities. We don’t, and we can solve it here. We just need the will to do so.
REPORTER: But in terms of legislation and education, or um, supporting business. Any ideas there that you would support as Governor?
KENNEDY: Well, I’d say the most important thing is to ban elected officials from having outside jobs that are adverse to the interests of the body they were elected to serve. We need to ban elected officials from being property tax appeals lawyers. Until we do that, until we get the dirty money out of politics, we’ll never get the dirty politicians out of government. They will prevent us from moving to a different system of funding our schools. If we don’t move to a different system of funding our schools we’ll never provide our kids great education. If we don’t provide them great education we’ll never provide them great opportunities. Without great opportunities, they’ll be doomed to spending their lives committing crimes of survival and that is not right, not in America.
Tracker video is here.
I would really like to see the legal and constitutional defense of this ban on doing property tax appeals while serving in the General Assembly.
* I asked Ann Lousin about Kennedy’s idea a while ago. Lousin, as you likely know, is one of our top state constitutional scholars. She didn’t think Kennedy could legally ban that particular outside work, but didn’t totally rule it out without first seeing how he worded it. Even so, she called it the “usual garbage” from a campaign. So, Kennedy’s “most important” issue could turn out to be a fairy tale.
