What they say about the issues

Here's what Dianne McGuire and Darlene Senger have to say about key issues:

If elected to the Illinois House, what would be your top priority?

McGuire: "My top priority will be to focus on the practical, bread-and-butter issues that matter the most in the lives of Naperville and Aurora residents. Any capital spending bill I would consider must include provisions for comprehensive improvement of Route 59 and address mass transit concerns of this area. We need to be proactive and make sure our schools remain the best in the state. We need to make sure that our business climate continues to make the Naperville/Aurora are a good place to run a business and find work."

Senger: "My first priority would be to get to know my fellow representatives. My overall goal is to bring good jobs back to Illinois. In order to allow Illinois to compete globally, we need good roads, good schools and a competitive business environment. We need to get the funding to widen Route 59, and we need to complete the STAR line."

Are you comfortable with the way education is funded in Illinois? How do you feel about the proposed "tax swap?"

McGuire: "It provides a continuous stream of funding for education and capital spending, but the problem is trusting Springfield to actually come through with the dollars to hold harmless this district. I don't think there's currently any trust in the current institution for that to happen. School funding reform cannot be a Robin Hood approach; we need to maintain the excellence of our schools in this district. People do complain about the high property taxes they pay, but to be honest, I think they would prefer that. Almost to a person they're uneasy about relinquishing any control on how the dollars are spent. There's no trust that the money would be spent as intended."

Senger: "Our schools do a very good job of educating our children and do so with a lower cost per student than the average in the state. I would not want to see us lose control over how we do things.

Switching from a property tax system to an income tax system, which is what is being proposed, means giving our education dollars first to Springfield. How well do you think Springfield will listen?"

How would you ensure that revenues match expenditures in Illinois?

McGuire: "Any new program to be added to the state should be adequately funded by either eliminating programs that are no longer efficient or effective or by finding new revenue sources. It is called a pay-as-you-go system, and it's the way many Illinois families provide for their households. Just as it is very detrimental to families to rack up extreme credit card and debt payments, so it is for state government."

Senger: "No. 1, we cannot add new programs, such as health care expansion, without taking care of our current obligations. Too many of the state's proposed bills for things like transportation are filled with plugs to fix other things such as pensions. We also need to get the General Assembly more involved. This year's budget was over 3,000 pages and was handed to members barely two days before the vote. Instead, each section should be heard before its respective appropriations committee for comment prior to the General Assembly. This would at least give the rank-and-file legislators the ability to comments on each appropriation before it gets approval."

What needs to be done to ensure Illinois has clean, honest government?

McGuire: "I support the efforts that have been made ... that create a searchable database Web site with information concerning each entity that receives Illinois funding and eliminate the influence of political contributions on the awarding of state contracts. The new proposals calling for more independent and more stringent oversight of gambling within the state are steps in the right direction as well."

Senger: "The government of Illinois should first follow its own ethics rules. If you look at the state of Illinois Web site, you can access the ethics training course. Rules should be reviewed on a semi-annual basis."

In your opinion, how should the state fund a capital bill?

McGuire: "What I thought was remarkable about the (last) capital bill, there was consensus from everyone. It takes only a 20 percent match to actually capture the dollars in D.C. We could do this with $3 billion from the state: it wouldn't begin to address the needs but it wouldn't let the $9 billion evaporate ... Leasing a portion of the lottery, that's a long-term asset, a lot of people feel uneasy about that kind of giveaway, but it is money up front that could fund that bill. It offers possibilities, I'd certainly be willing to look into it."

Senger: "The best option to fund the bill is what they had before with some gambling, so the lottery piece of it fits in, in my opinion, OK. It's not the most beautiful thing to do because there's a lot of issues that go along with it, but we need to get a capital bill and it's a way to do it without raising taxes currently."

- Compiled by Paige Winfield