•December 12, 2018•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

Gov.-elect J. B. Pritzker has begun the typical minuet of transition to office in January, creating committees to look, respectively, at how he can improve education, infrastructure, social services, whathaveyou.
I have been a part of three gubernatorial transitions over past decades, and headed one (and was just now, while writing this, invited to serve on a Pritzker committee, which I accepted).
Large committees of insiders and outsiders to government will sit around conference tables and offer prescriptions for saving our state. The well-meaning committee members may help educate the incoming governor, who in J. B.’s case came to his candidacy with little background in Illinois state government.
Most prescriptions will require more money, lots of it. There will be projections that much money can be saved in the future, if only we spend lots more now to address problems, e.g. prisoner recidivism, gang violence, abused children, poorly educated children and more. And they may be right.
Yet there is really only one “committee” that matters, and it is a committee of a solitary person—the incoming director of the state budget.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.