Post Event Summary – Liberty Leaders Capitol Day
Brian Costin, Director of Outreach at the Illinois Policy Institute, shepherded 25 volunteer Liberty Leaders securing meetings with their Illinois legislators and staff.
by Brian Costin
Nancy Thorner, one of the Illinois Policy Institute’s most active Liberty Leaders, wrote a summary of our Liberty Leaders Capitol Day in Springfield on her personal blog. Here’s an excerpt and a photo…
The Illinois Policy Institute, John Tillman, CEO, held a Liberty Leaders Capitol Day on Springfield on Wednesday, May 5th. Free bus transportation was provided to and from Springfield.
Brian Costin, Director of Outreach at the Illinois Policy Institute, shepherded 25 volunteerLiberty Leaders, including the contributor (Nancy Thorner), in assisting them in securing meetings with their Illinois legislators and staff. It was an opportunity for the Liberty Leader volunteers to explain to their state legislators that it is possible to balance the state budget without tax hikes that target struggling taxpayers, hurt our state’s business climate, and hamper job creation.
Liberty Leader participants were given two handouts to assist in their one-to-one meetings with their state legislators or legislative assistants: 1) Budget Solutions 2011, published by the Illinois Policy Institute, and which offers an alternative budgeting plan that addresses the state’s immediate problems rather than kicking the can further down the road. and 2) a Senate Bill 2494 Fact Sheet
Unfortunately pleas from the twenty five volunteer Illinois Policy Institute Liberty Leaders, in regards to the pilot voucher program which would have guaranteed that 22,000 to 30,000 kids in overcrowded and failing schools would get help, was shot down in the House on May 6th in an unusually bi-partisan split of 66 – 42. It was sad to observe how so many House legislators (and shame on the Republicans members!) elected to vote “no” on the voucher program, thereby choosing union cash over the students, which encouraged legislators to vote for a pilot voucher program (the Illinois Policy Institute did much work to promote the SB 2494) to give parents in Chicago’s lowest-performing and most severely overcrowded schools educational options.
For Nancy Thorner’s full article on our Liberty Leaders Capitol Day and “Rich States, Poor States” Luncheon with John Williams of ALEC click here.
For more information on volunteering for the Illinois Policy Institute’s Liberty Leaders program click here.
