McHenry Times

Illinois state Rep. Dan Ugaste (R-Geneva) says no one should be surprised that the latest U.S. Census Bureau data shows the state lost population for the sixth straight year in 2019 and that no other state in the U.S. has seen a greater raw population decline over the last decade than Illinois.

“That decline is for no other reason than some of our policy decisions,” Ugaste told the Kane County Reporter. “We continue to shoot ourselves in the foot with our tax-and-spend ways.”

Nearly 169,000 people put Illinois in their rearview mirrors between 2010 and 2019, representing the largest raw decline of any state and second only to West Virginia percentage-wise. For Ugaste and many GOP colleagues, the reasons are obvious.

“I don’t know how we can think we can have politicians keep raising taxes and putting more burden on people and not think we’re going to continue to chase more people out of town,” Ugaste said. “At the end of the day, we’ve got to address our structural problems and out-of-control pensions.”

An even closer examination of the numbers concludes that if the state had simply kept pace with the nation's average growth since the start of the Great Recession in 2007, Illinois' 2019 population would be 9 percent greater than it is, with a projected state economy roughly $78 billion richer, according to the Illinois Policy Institute (IPI).

IPI further contends that it is more than mere coincidence that population declines reached record levels last year at the same time the Democratically controlled Illinois General Assembly passed the largest permanent income tax hike in state history. Again, Ugaste says that no one, including voters, should be surprised at how the troubling scenario is playing out.

“We need to start working on these critical issues like yesterday,” Ugaste said. “Part of the problem is that I still don’t think many of our policymakers have come to the honest realization of what’s happening. We’ve got to be willing to take that first step.”