Following Governor Pat Quinn's State of the State address, Patch asked readers what they think the top issues affecting Illinois are. What needs to be fixed? Do you agree with the governor's priorities?
Here are some of the responses we received. Some comments have been edited for length, grammar and clarity:
"TERM LIMITS. Enough said."
"[In light of Quinn's proposal to raise minimum wage to $10/hour] Yep, the politicians are certainly expert enough to tell private business how to run their operations since we all know how well the state runs it's business."
"We already have term limits - 2 terms only. One in office, one in the Federal Lockup. What we need is a governor who has a higher IQ than his shoe size. Quinn is a Space Cadet, not a Rocket Scientist."
"The #1 issue in IL is the ongoing erosion of trust between citizens and politicians. The drum beat goes on of investigations, arrests, indictments and convictions (Even with no conviction it still erodes the trust but to be fair is not the same as being found/pleading guilty). Public corruption is one of the main reasons for this situation including generations of one family in office and taking govt jobs/pensions/goodies. The other is the massive failure to be good financial stewards of public dollars and allowing $9 Billion in backlog of bills owed to IL businesses and $100 Billion in underfunded pension payments. All of this happened with the full knowledge of our State Representatives and Senators."
"There is no trust for politicians, because you give them an inch they take a mile everytime. Raise taxes, great answer. Didn't we already do that?(67%). Maybe we should pay politicians $10.00 an hour? We couldn't do any worse. $10.00 an hour = less jobs. These politicians have no clue. There just going thru the motions and lining there pockets on our lazyness. Vote them out, it's the only way to send the right message. Start with Cullerton, Madigan and Quinn."
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