John Bambenek is the Republican challenger for the 52nd district’s state senator. He is a small-business owner from Champaign, where he lives with his wife and three children. He owns Bambenek Consulting, a cyber-crime and electronic fraud prevention firm. Bambenek has a bachelor’s in physics and astronomy from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The Daily Illini: How should the Legislature begin to resolve the $83 billion in unfunded liabilities in the state of Illinois?

John Bambenek: What is necessary going forward is to make sure that as benefits are earned, the full cost is paid in real time. That’s the fundamental problem. The state took holidays, took shortcuts, did funny math (and) incurred liabilities without funding them in real time. Generally I subscribe to Rep. Mike Fortner’s pension reform plan, which uses the bond payments for the three pension bonds that were issued. When those bonds mature, instead of sending that money that would have gone to the bonds and just spending it on stuff, it would redirect it to a pension stabilization fund that will pay back that debt. That comes up with $70 billion of that debt.

DI: Are there any areas of state government that need to be cut or any taxes that need to be raised in order to balance the budget?

JB: State government has grown because people have simply thrown money at problems and at programs. We simply do not have any basic control of our state spending. We need to start from scratch and rebuild state government because we cannot use the past as a benchmark for going forward. I’ve adopted a zero-based budgeting approach that says, “How do we fund those (programs) in the most efficient and effective way possible, making the best use of limited tax dollars?” That may have a net effect of combining agencies, eliminating agencies (and) eliminating programs that don’t deliver.

DI: As a state legislator, would you take efforts to limit tuition increases at public universities and colleges?

JB: Absolutely. Education is a chief priority of the state. Because of state mismanagement of funds and problems with university governance, in-state tuition at University of Illinois is higher than out-of-state tuition at the University of Iowa and several of our neighboring states. In the past few years, because of the way the (Illinois) General Assembly makes decisions, we’ve seen Chicago State University, a third-tier institution, get double-digit increases in their state appropriations, while the University of Illinois downstate gets either the budget held at zero or gets budget cuts. We need to stop the bias towards Chicago in general assembly spending, and we need a fair deal for everybody across the state.

DI: What can we do to bring jobs to Illinois? 

JB: The first thing is to repeal that (state income) tax hike. We’ve seen businesses cite that tax hike as the reason they’ve left Illinois. And then we need to look at why the cost of doing business is so much higher than it is in our neighboring states. If you can save $100,000 a month by moving across an arbitrary line on a map, you’d be an idiot not to do it — any of us would. We’re in competition with 49 other states. We need to get the boot of government off our small to medium business so they can grow, so we can compete with the rest of the country and the rest of the world.

DI: Should gay marriage be allowed in Illinois?

JB: No. Marriage is a pre-religious, pre-political institution that I don’t believe is within the purview of state government to modify.

DI: Are you pro-life or pro-choice?

JB: Pro-life. Life begins at conception.

DI: Do you support the legalization of marijuana in Illinois?

JB: No. I’ve seen several of my family members lose their lives to drugs, and marijuana is a key component of that. Having seen the damage drug use does up-close, I can’t see any compelling reason to legalize it outright.