•July 26, 2017•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

This past week, Gov. Bruce Rauner stunned observers when he unceremoniously booted his veteran top staff out the door and turned management of state government over to an inexperienced team of policy wonks from the Illinois Policy Institute (IPI).

The IPI is a decade-old, very conservative advocacy group; nothing wrong with that, of course.

Yet it’s about time the IPI was called out for its hard-edged promotion of great sounding but wholly impracticable proposals, which is to my mind harmful to the policymaking process.

The IPI was started a decade ago by John Tillman, an entrepreneurial builder of non-profit advocacy organizations. Tillman raises $3+ million a year in funding from old money conservatives like the Koch Brothers as well as from successful Chicago business folks like Bruce Rauner.

True believer ideologue and IPI president Kristina Rasmussen is as of this past week Rauner’s new chief of staff. And top policy and management slots are also now filled with a half dozen young IPI folks. From my knowledge of several IPI staff, they are smart, lacking in government experience, and highly ideological.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.