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On Saturday, October 21, I attended an Arlington Heights legislative candidates forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters, and heard several candidates for the state legislature from the northwest suburbs. Each was given two minutes for an opening statement, which was followed by a question and answer session where audience members asked the panel of candidates from a particular district the same question. One audience member asked each panel of candidates about Illinois’ deplorable mental health care system. All the candidates spoke in favor of improving mental health care in Illinois, but some of the candidates’ answers showed a lack of familiarity with mental health issues, or no real sense of how to pay for improvements. In the 33rd State Senate district (Des Plaines, Park Ridge and Mt. Prospect) the two candidates are Cheryl Axley (R) and Dan Kotowski (D). Both spoke of the need to improve mental health care in Illinois. Axley said she had appeared at a NAMI mental health candidates forum recently and thought the need for improvements in this area was clear. I found interesting that she had appeared at a NAMI legislative function. I was at the Arlington Heights NAMI candidates’ night, and Axley was not at that one, so she must have been at one sponsored by another NAMI chapter. It is very encouraging to know that legislators are hearing about the need for better mental health services from a variety of sources. Dan Kotowski is the director of a non-profit organization that deals with troubled teenagers, runaways, at-risk students as well as those suffering from mental illness. He had also been one of the speakers at the Arlington Heights NAMI chapter’s candidates’ forum last month. Like Axley, Kotowski sees the need for the state to make great improvements in this area. He did, however, seem to have had more first-hand experience in the mental health area than she did. In Senate District 27, (Arlington Heights, north of 14, Palatine, Buffalo Grove, western Wheeling, Inverness and Barrington) the two candidates who spoke were Peter Gutzmer (D) and Matt Murphy (R). The 27th Senate District is an open seat with the candidates vying to replace retiring Senator Wendell Jones. Gutzmer is an Elk Grove firefighter and paramedic and Murphy is an attorney. The two candidates agreed on the need to improve mental health services in Illinois, but Gutzmer, like Kotowski, has more personal experience with the problem than his opponent As a paramedic Gutzmer has been on many calls to deal with persons in mental health crises, and has had some family experience with mental illness. Both candidates agreed that eliminating pork barrel spending will help provide funding increases for mental health programs. But Murphy’s strong commitment to reduce property taxes and business fees as well as his strong opposition to any increase in any state taxes made it difficult to see where he would find the money for improving mental health care services. Gutzmer, on the other hand, made it clear that the people of Illinois have a choice; increase state revenues or cut services and programs. In House District 53, (Buffalo Grove, western Wheeling and Arlington Heights, north of 14), Michael MacDonald (D) is challenging incumbent Sidney Mathias (R). Again, both candidates agreed on the need to improve mental health care systems in Illinois, though neither said much on where the additional funding to pay for those improvements would come from. The final candidates to speak, Suzie Bassi (R) and Jeff Ketelsen (D) are from House District 54 (Palatine, Inverness, eastern Barrington and northern Hoffman Estates). Again, both candidates agreed on the need to improve mental health care in Illinois. Ketelsen said that the state should eliminate the property tax for local school districts and that the state should make up the missing education funds from the state’s general revenue fund. I would think that if such a property tax cut were to take place, the additional burdens on the state treasury would be so great that it would be difficult to find additional revenue for any improvements in mental health care. Bassi, on the other hand, was forthright about the state’s fiscal problems. She said Illinois is basically broke and has been paying its on borrowed money for the last two years. She also said that projected increases in mandatory state Medicaid funding would eat up any expected increases in state revenues, and that unless the state can get its fiscal house in order, we will be seeing cuts in social services. She was very sympathetic to the need to improve mental health services and spoke with great familiarity with the problems of mental illness, as several of her family members have suffered from mental illness and she lost a family member to depression. So whichever of these candidates are more attractive to you, do be sure to get out to vote on November 7th. We need to keep our legislators’ feet to the fire regarding Illinois broken mental health care system, and voting is the best way to begin.
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