Candidate profile
Kimberly J. Walz
Running for: State Representative of the 12th District
Political/civic background: I have spent over 20 years actively engaged in public service and my community.
I spent 10 years working for Mike Quigley. During that time I served as his Director of Policy Analysis and Chief of Staff while he was Cook County Commissioner and later served as his Deputy Chief of Staff/District Director in his Congressional office.
I also served as a gubernatorial appointee under the Quinn administration. I was appointed as a Commissioner on the bi-national Great Lakes Commission.
After that time I served as Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications for Evergreen Health Co-Op, a non-profit health insurance model created under the Affordable Care Act. In this role I was able to lead all open enrollment efforts for the non-profit, assisting thousands of residents who had previously never been insured.
In 2016 I left my job to join the Hillary campaign on a pro-bono basis and developed Illinois Women for Hillary. During that time I was responsible for women’s outreach for the campaign and engaged over 4,000 women in volunteering, hosting events, and traveling to neighboring states. For the 2020 election I built upon this group of engaged women and partnered with two other organizations to create Illinois Women Vote. We have been hosting meet and greets with the presidential candidates and debate watch parties. Our goal is to change the traditional model of donor access to candidates and allow the average voter to connect with the campaigns and the candidate directly without having to attend a fundraiser.
In addition I have been an active member of my community and serve on several non-profit boards and volunteer in my neighborhood.
Occupation:Regional Director, Walgreens
Education: Master Degree in Public Policy, Georgetown University; Bachelor of Arts Degree, Beloit College
Campaign website: kimwalz.com
Facebook: @kimwalzforstaterep
Instagram: @kimwalzforstaterep
The Chicago Sun-Times Editorial Board sent candidates for the Illinois House of Representatives a list of questions to find out their views on a range of important issues facing the state of Illinois and their districts. Kimberly J. Walz submitted the following responses:
Please tell us about your civic work in the last two years, whether it’s legislation you have sponsored or work you have done in other ways to improve your community.
Helping others was always a part of my upbringing. When I lost my mom, my best friend, in 2016, I sought to find ways to help others to honor her life. I began a tradition of hosting a Mother’s Day party and lunch for the women and their children living in the House of Good Shepherd, a domestic violence shelter in Lakeview. I later expanded my relationship with the shelter to include creating stockings for every child living in the shelter and their mother at Christmas time. In early December I coordinated gifts for 80 stockings for the shelter.
In addition, I have been a part of the triathlon team, T2,for the AIDS Foundation of Chicago for three races and raised funds for their initiatives.
I currently serve on the boards of ChildServ and Smart Policy Works and I am on the leadership circles for the Haymarket Center and the Illinois Democratic County Chairs Association.
Please list three concerns that are specific to your district, such as a project that should be undertaken or a state policy related to an important local issue that should be revised.
Health Care. Despite significant improvement under the Affordable Care Act, many people still can not access quality and affordable health care. High deductibles and co-pays are keeping people from utilizing their benefits - leading to higher long term costs for our health care systems and long term costs for our health. In addition, the state’s eligibility system for those on managed care often lead to interrupted care and delayed and reduced reimbursement rates for Medicaid providers leads to care shortages. If you are sick you should have access to care whether or not you are on Medicaid or private insurance. I would work to level the playing field for health services in Illinois.
Affordability. Like many communities across the State of Illinois, the 12th District is facing the continued loss of residents due to the devastating impact of skyrocketing property taxes. Our small businesses are also closing shop as they can longer afford to keep operating. Keeping our neighborhoods affordable is a top priority for me in Springfield.
Climate change. Climate change is bringing significant water level changes to Lake Michigan and also increasing flooding in our communities. The state must work to protect our lakefront from erosion and work to invest in our stormwater management system.
What are your other top legislative priorities?
For the past 25 years my family has struggled to find mental health services for our brother who suffers from mental illness and is chronically homeless. We have been told by the State of Illinois that families need to accept that sometimes individuals choose to be homeless - this is not an acceptable policy position to me. There are not enough treatment facilities across our state and the Cook County Department of Corrections has become the defacto largest mental health facility in Illinois. And mental health services at the Illinois Department of Corrections is so bad that there are court orders on improving staffing and services. I would fight for the individuals and the families who are in crisis from the inaction on mental health across our state.
Secondly, for the past 4 years my sister and I worked to navigate state resources for health care and housing for our late parents. Our systems that are in place for our aging population ignore the long term economic and health costs of not allowing individuals to age in place. Cuts to state caregiving services and cuts to senior day care are creating a situation where families often have no choice but to put their parents in senior housing. Often times that housing is so prohibitively expensive that the choice is to empty out your savings so Medicaid can assist with the costs. We should not be forcing our families to lose a lifetime of savings to live a healthy and safe life in their older years.
What is your position on Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s proposed graduated income tax? Please explain.
I am in favor of the proposed graduated income tax. Illinois has a revenue problem, as your next question clearly points out. But I strongly believe we cannot continue to ask our already overburdened middle class to shoulder more taxes. A graduated income tax, based off the federal tax system will help us meet our obligations while making sure our tax collections are fairly spread out, asking more from those who can afford to pay it, like Governor Pritzker.
Illinois continues to struggle financially, with a backlog of unpaid bills that tops $6 billion. In addition to a progressive state income tax — or in lieu of such a tax — what should the state do to pay its bills, meet its pension obligations and fund core services such as higher education?
The state instituted other new revenue streams this past legislative session rather than agreeing to put a progressive income tax on the ballot. I am interested to see what new revenues such as legalized marijuana bring to help us fill our budget deficits. Additionally, I believe we need to look for more ways to save money.
While working for Mike Quigley, I authored or co-authored seven reports on how to restructure and reinvent Cook County Government. We need to take a similar approach with the state - take a closer look at what services we are providing, how are we providing them, and can they be done in a more efficient way. I supported Governor Pritzker’s efforts to consolidate downstate pension funds, and think that as our state’s population changes we need to look at what other government services we can consolidate to reduce redundancy and save the state money. One example would be the need for an analysis of any redundancies between the Comptroller and the State Treasurer.
As it relates to revenue, the simple fact is that the best way for Illinois to grow its revenue is to focus on growing our population and incentivising job growth here. Between our public and private universities, we have some of the best schools in America, we can do more to encourage our graduates to stay and start new businesses. Once we can create a cycle of graduates staying and creating new businesses, all of which will provide new tax revenue, we can then fill the jobs at those businesses with new graduates from the companies that were founded. We don’t have to limit this cycle of success to Chicago, it can be spread out to Quincy, Peoria, Carbondale, Champaign and so on, resurrecting an Illinois as the economic engine of the Midwest for the 21st century. Investing in clean jobs and clean job training should be an important part of this initiative.
Should Illinois consider taxing the retirement incomes of its very wealthiest residents, as most states do? And your argument is?
My father was a high school teacher and my mom was a part-time nurse. They earned a modest retirement income from their years of public service that allowed them to stay in their home until they passed. I heard of their struggles as they sought to age in place at the home they purchased before my birth and their struggles to balance the ever increasing costs of healthcare. Taxing their modest income would have had a detrimental effect on their ability to live out their remaining years at home. I don’t believe Illinois should consider taxing retirement. People work and plan for years to retire, and if we implement a tax that they have not been planning for, we could ruin thousands of people’s retirement plans. Rather we need to grow our tax base through our universities as I suggested earlier.
What can Illinois do to improve its elementary and high schools?
Growing up, my father was a high school teacher and was his regional representative and a member of the state board of the Illinois Education Association. From an early age I learned the importance of a strong public school system. However, I also quickly learned that the level of resources available to your school district is dependent on where you live.
We we need to look at how we fund schools across Illinois. While the 2017 law that fixed the funding formula helped schools across Illinois, it didn’t address the larger problem of funding our schools through local property taxes. If we are ever going to make sure that our kids success in life is not determined by what zip code they are born into, we need to make sure that the zip code they are born in, doesn’t determine the quality of their school.
In addition we must allow Chicago to have an elected school board and the state can help CPS out by assuming their share of the pension payments, like it does for every other school district in Illinois.
Mass shootings and gun violence plague America. What can or should the Legislature do, if anything, to address this problem in Illinois?
In the absence of Federal action, Illinois has a strong record on passing laws that limit access to dangerous firearms. One of the most recent examples is the new Red Flag law, which allows a family member to alert the police of a potential threat, and allows the police to confiscate the firearms of that person. That said, our laws are only as strong as that of our neighbors. According to the 2017 Gun Trace Report issued by the City of Chicago and the Chicago Police Department, more than 60% of the firearms used in a crime in Chicago comes from out of state, with Indiana being the biggest supplier. As a State representative I would propose we create a commission with Indiana, Wisconsin, and our other neighbors to see if we can find any common ground. I am not blind to the fact that Indiana’s politics are different from Illinois’, but working together I hope we could find some solutions. Afterall, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll from September of 2019, Americans of both parties support background checks at 89% and red flag laws at 83%. Absent compromise with our neighbors, I have heard it suggested that we should sue Indiana and Wisconsin for their lax gun laws, and if they refuse to work with us, I would draft a resolution calling on the Attorney General to sue them.
Do you favor or oppose term limits for any elected official in Illinois? Please explain.
Most legislators in Illinois serve less than 10 years. There are of course the famous exceptions, but the average length of service is less than a decade. I am opposed to any term limit other than the will of the voters. One only need to look at the state of Michigan, where legislators move in and out of the statehouse just long enough to line up their “retirement” jobs as lobbyists. Term limits create a power vacuum in state capitals, usually filled by lobbyists and long term staff. Illinois has enough insiders pushing their personal agendas, we do not need to give them more ways in which to accumulate power.
Everybody says gerrymandering is bad, but the party in power in every state — Democrats in Illinois — resist doing anything about it. Or do we have that wrong? What should be done?
Many states allow for independent or bi-partisan commissions to handle redistricting, but I don’t disagree that there is no incentive for one party or the other to reform map drawing when they are in control. One of the problems is that both parties see themselves in an arms race, and no one seems to be interested in slowing down. Clearly, we need to take this away from the parties, stop allowing politicians to choose their voters, and allow voters to choose their representatives. I would support the creation of a bi-partisan commission to draw the maps in Illinois.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago is investigating possible official corruption by state and local officials. This prompted the Legislature to pass an ethics reform measure to amend the Lobbyist Registration Act (SB 1639). It was signed into law in December. What’s your take on this and what more should be done?
Since beginning my career over 20 years ago, I have fought for accountability and transparency in government. Most of our elected officials are good honest people, trying to represent their constituents to the best of their ability. But unfortunately, just like in every industry, there are bad actors. Illinois government has allowed these individuals to act in the shadows and this needs to stop. SB 1639 was a good start, but we need more. We should ban elected officials from having other government jobs, and we need to increase the power of the legislative inspector general.
When people use the internet and wireless devices, companies collect data about us. Oftentimes, the information is sold to other companies, which can use it to track our movements or invade our privacy in other ways. When companies share this data, we also face a greater risk of identity theft. What should the Legislature do, if anything?
Our data has become our greatest asset that we cannot control. The state of California has been a leader on this issue, and we should follow their direction. California’s new law that takes effect in January of 2020 states that we have a right to know if our data has been sold, what’s being collected about us, a right of refusal on the sale of our data, access to the data they have collected on us, requests for deletion of that data, and a protection against discrimination for protecting our data. I would like to see how the implementation of this law goes in California, and would introduce a similar bill in Illinois. The only way to force companies to respect our privacy rights, is to make sure that states with large enough populations enact similar laws, and make in untenable to operate in states with different privacy rules across the country. If we can band together with states like California, Florida, Texas, New York and others, we can force big tech to follow a standard that we set for them.
The number of Illinois public high school graduates who enroll in out-of-state universities continues to climb. What can Illinois do to make its state universities more attractive to Illinois high school students?
As I said in a previous answer I think that our universities are some of our greatest assets in the potential for Illinois to grow. We need to invest in our universities, but also in our graduates. If we have incubators at our universities growing new companies, which are growing new jobs, then students will stay, and continue that growth until we have an unstoppable cycle of students enrolling in our schools, and creating the economic engine that drives us through the next century.
What is your top legislative priority with respect to the environment?
I recognize Climate Change as the overarching legislative issue we all need to make our priority. That being said, an issue that is slightly closer to home, but falls under that umbrella, is the emergence of the hundred year storm/flood as a yearly threat. Our local governments, and homes are not built to withstand the kind of rainfall and flooding we are seeing increase every year. Chicago recently completed its Big Tunnel project, only to realize that even with the added capacity it cannot handle the storms that are becoming the norm. We need to invest in more permeable surfaces, parks, greenways and stormwater management systems. Otherwise, we will continue to spend fortunes on cleaning up floods, and our residents will sustain thousands of dollars in damage to their homes.
What historical figure from Illinois, other than Abraham Lincoln (because everybody’s big on Abe), do you most admire or draw inspiration from? Please explain.
Jane Addams was born 6 miles from my hometown of Freeport, Illinois. She was one of the original reformers and fought for immigrants, low-income individuals and for peace. Through the development of the Hull House she brought together diverse groups of people who crossed income lines and social boundaries. Her work treated each person as an individual and sought to destigmatize anti-poverty efforts. In our current divisive climate we could learn from Jane Addams and how she appreciated the dignity and worth of each person. Her anti-poverty efforts were not about building walls, but finding ways to bring us all together.
What’s your favorite TV, streaming or web-based show of all time. Why?
For nine seasons I was glued to my chair during weekly episodes of 24. The way each crisis was able to resolve itself in an orderly 24 hour time period was a welcome respite from the seemingless endless trials and tribulations of working in Cook County Government at the time.
