Lake County Gazette

Peggy Siebert didn’t see Sen. Dan McConchie (R-Hawthorn Woods) as a politician when he spoke to the Women's Republican Club of Lake Forest-Lake Bluff recently.

“He’s not a politician in the sense he tells you what he really thinks about things,” Siebert, the group's president, told the Lake County Gazette.

According to Siebert, McConchie’s address was peppered with hard truths about a state on the brink of earning the ignominious title of the country's first state to be junk-rated.

“The goal was to reinforce the bad state of affairs in Illinois, but also point out other things that can be done besides raising taxes,” she said. “No one likes all that’s happened across the state with the budget, but he was very well-received in that he was very straight-forward.”

As the only remaining GOP senator in Lake County, McConchie was invited to speak to the 76-year-old and longest continually running political organization of its kind in the state. The group's stated mission is “bringing Republican politicians to its membership.”

Even as Illinois languishes without a budget, McConchie said exuberant amounts of money are still being spent, with debt growing by at least $15 million a day. He said the budget bill recently proposed by Democrats overspends by another $7 billion.

“It’s crazy,” Siebert said. “We need to be cutting the budget, looking for ways to cut out fat and corruption.”

Without change, Siebert fears the worst.

“People are leaving the city in droves, with the excessive tax situation and all the uncertainty from having no budget are two of the biggest factors,” she said. “I have several friends who’ve moved away that all tell me the same thing.”

McConchie has led the charge against new taxes in Illinois, where property taxes already rate as the second highest in the country and the overall tax burden is the worst.

“People that have means and people that don’t have nearly as much are all leaving,” Siebert said. “The thing is, Mike Madigan is the problem, and we have to change leadership. Even Democrats are worried about where we are.”