Days into her new position as state representative for the 18th District of Illinois, Robyn Gabel says the appointment will let her start enacting her campaign ideas earlier than expected.
Gabel, who is the Democratic candidate for the seat when a new term starts this fall, was sworn in Sunday to serve the rest of former State Rep. Julie Hamos’ term. The district’s Democratic committee elected Gabel unanimously to replace Hamos, who is leaving the position early to accept a role as the director of the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services.
Gabel said she will focus on health care, tax and food policy reform as she serves out the term.
Of the three, Gabel said health care reform is one of the most important issues she faces as a state representative.
“I want to help implement national health care reform here in Illinois,” she said. “A lot of things can be implemented at the state level, so I plan on playing a role in making sure we have coverage here and making sure that we can contain costs.”
Before the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in March, college students could only stay on their parents’ health coverage plan until they turned 22, said Joshua Kilroy, a former campaign manager for Gabel. Now students can stay on the plan until they turn 26, which Kilroy said is a major benefit to Northwestern students. Gabel will try to implement this policy change over the next few months, Kilroy said.
“For NU students, one of the things that happens to college students is they graduate from college and they no longer have health care insurance if they don’t immediately get a job,” Kilroy said. “So that’s something that Robyn will be working on with the Department of Health and Family Services to ensure the benefit for the people of NU.”
Libertarian Steve Funk, Gabel’s competitor in the general election race, said he believes government-provided health care will only lead to more problems.
“We need to minimize the involvement of the state in health care and all the important personal needs we have,” Funk said. “The dependency on the state does not benefit the population-it drains our wealth and creates a spiral of dependency.”
As a state representative, Gabel will also grapple with the district’s budget deficit. Gabel said she is in favor of a graduated income tax and giving a tax credit to families with children.
“We have many Fortune 100 companies that pay zero dollars in income taxes,” Gabel said. “We can have alternative minimum taxes on corporations, and we need to be looking at that more in order to raise the revenue.”
Funk said he opposes tax hikes and thinks Evanston has been on a “spending spree” that needs to be curbed.
“We need to focus on budgetary restraint,” Funk said. “We have a system where we’re literally on the brink of bankruptcy. We need to look at what we’re funding and make sure it’s essential and we need to make sure our funds are being spent wisely. It’s taxpayer money, after all.”
Funk said the solution to the budget crisis lies in finding what needs to be reduced and eliminated, not raising taxes.
Gabel said one of the main issues she has heard from community members concerns Evanston’s food policy.
“Groups that I’ve been working with want to use more locally grown food,” Gabel said. “So a project we could work on with Evanston would be that they could come up with a plot of land on which they could grow food, and getting cafeterias to serve more locally grown food and food from within 100 miles of Chicago.”
Elizabeth Feldman, a longtime supporter and colleague of Gabel, said Gabel will make a successful representative because of her close ties to the community.
“She’s lived in Evanston for a long time and raised her kids here, so she’s really involved with things like the cleaning of Evanston and healthy eating and the more Evanston-related issues,” Feldman said. “She’s got the big picture and she’s hard-working and eco-oriented, so she’ll get the smaller things accomplished as well.”[email protected]
