This is what State Sen. Patrick Joyce, D-Essex, said has been the key to leading the 40th District. Tuesday morning during the Kankakee County Chamber of Commerce’s annual Legislative Breakfast, Joyce noted the amount of polarization locally and nationally.

This, he said, can be avoided through communication, through talking to people.

“You do what’s right, you have conversations, you talk to people,” he said in front of the crowd gathered at the Quality Inn & Suites, who also heard from State Rep. Jackie Haas, R-Bourbonnais, and the offices of U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly and U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth.

He noted that, one of the main things done through the legislature, is connecting constituents with service agencies. In these connections, he hears the concerns of his district.

He said these concerns include clean and affordable drinking water throughout the district, high property taxes and funding for education.

“Illinois, I think, needs to step up to the plate in how much we put towards funding our education of our kids,” he said.

“If we do that and work with the school districts on what their referendums are — that’s where the majority of your property taxes go [toward] is education — we as a state need to step up.”

On the subject of constituent concerns, Haas said that “our job is to represent the interests of our people.”

She said the chief concern she’s hearing daily are concerns of cost of living and inflation.

“One of the other big issues that I hear regularly is taxes and government spending and, kind of, our out-of-control budget,” she said. “We need to get that handle on taxes so that we can live affordability and buy our everyday essentials.

“As a government, we need to live within our means, too. We can’t spend more than what we’re bringing in.”

Haas said structural changes, like property tax relief, are keys to making this work.

Both Haas and Joyce voted ‘no’ on the state’s budget for this fiscal year. As Haas summed it up: “Our spending continues to outpace the revenue and we can’t continue to operate like that.”

Following remarks from the legislatives and the offices of legislatives, Kankakee County Chamber of Commerce Board Member Matthew Schore lead a question-and-answer session with Haas and Joyce.

The following includes three questions from their nearly 20-minute conversation, which has been edited for space and clarity.

What are your legislative goals for this upcoming session (including how it will affect the businesses in this room and the municipalities you represent)?

PJ: This is a pretty easy one, really. Right now, I mentioned in my opening remarks, that the southland is just getting hammered with property taxes. Specifically, some areas like Park Forest and Richton Park; you’ve got property tax rates in the 40s.

Just to give you some perspective, if you go around the room and look at your percentage with the Kankakee County area, you’re probably around 11%. So, it’s not sustainable.

There’s a lot of different places like that. I’ve been meeting with Cook County Assessor’s Office and also it comes back a little bit to the legislature and how much we spend towards education. That’s something that I have already, you know, kind of sent up the food chain.

I also mentioned clean, affordable drinking water. This is an issue that I have been pounding the drum on ever since I got into office. It’s the basic right of every Illinoisan to have that.

We have challenges throughout the state and you’re going to see more and more as we go into the future; the aquifers and the quality of well water in some of these rural communities is a real challenge. It’s gonna be something that in the, I think fairly near future, we’re going to be talking billions on infrastructure.

If you have a small town that doesn’t have quality water, guess what? You don’t have a small town anymore. Also, I brought up the farming issues. There’s several ag-related legislation I was working on last year and we’re going to keep working on those issues. Ag is still the No. 1 revenue producer in the state of Illinois.

JH: I think that, much like the senator, I referenced several issues in my few minutes of talking as well. I would absolutely agree with the rising cost of living, inflation and taxes included in that.

Certainly we’ve got to do something to make the cost of living affordable for families. We’ve seen too many families leave the state for more affordable living elsewhere.

As I mentioned earlier, we’re certainly working on legislation to make this a more affordable place for people to live. This is a great place to live, raise a family and work. That’s why we’re all here, right?

All of us we’re [either] born and raised here or are raising our families here. We want people to do the same. We’re certainly going to support legislation and continue to file legislation to keep people here as well. Again, getting control over our spending.

We need to look at where we can cut excess spending and look at our budget and be a little more frugal where we can be. We need to run our state kind of like we run our households. We need to go back to our budget and see where we can make adjustments and cuts there as well.

I’m the caucus chair of our Women and Families working group and we have a package of legislation to help women and families be more successful in our state and that includes health care as well as business.

I look forward to being able to continue to work with that working group and push forward the package of legislation we have to increase access to education, make a stronger health care package for women, have more access to education, day care, things of that nature.

[Regarding spending, budgets, inflation] Could you name some of the areas you could put priorities on?

JH: I think we need to prioritize spending and make sure that essential services are still delivered. Education, public safety and caring for our most vulnerable citizens are all things we need to continue to make sure we continue to deliver for.

My priority is to make sure that citizens are safe through funding for law enforcement and all of our first responders. We need to ensure that key health care services are available for all of our citizens, especially our children, seniors and our veterans.

After that, I think that we also need to make sure that our education system allows for our citizens and our youth to be able to compete on a global basis. We need to make sure we’re investing in our education system and making sure that’s a safe system for our kids to learn in.

PJ: I’m going to echo the education aspect of that. We had a $53 billion budget; the largest budget in Illinois history.

There were some challenges that I had with the budget this year and part of it was: we’ve got to put an emphasis on how much we spend on education and reel that in because property taxes, again, are something that’s hitting up.

I heard a lot from the 40th District on the amount of money we’re spending on asylum seeks and on Medicaid for illegal aliens. When you’re elected to this job, you have to listen when people are talking to you.

I was one of the few democrats in the Senate that did not vote for the budget, I voted ‘no.’ And I heard it from my constituents on the Democratic side of the aisle. That’s when the communication has to come in; you have to explain what the nine different things that amounted to $2 or $3 billion on the budget – when you’re voting ‘no’ on the budget, you’re voting ‘no’ to a lot of good stuff; it’s difficult.

But you have to draw a line in the sand at times on how do you [hold] your priorities if you’re just going to say, ‘Well, we didn’t get it done this time so I’ll just go along.’ I’m not going to do that. I’m going to fight for the people I represent.

Believe me, I hear it on both sides. It’s one of those districts. I’ve had many people reach out and say, ‘Hey, explain it to me.’ You have a 15-minute conversation, it’s amazing. They say, ‘well, I didn’t know that.’ It’s hard when you have a budget as big as that to find where you take a stand and how you communicate that. We work through those issues, but I think education is a high, high priority that really checks a lot of boxes on Illinois moving forward.

Again, the next generation — we have to take care of them through early childhood development all the way through college. That is a big, big priority.

Communication is key to growing our state, our community, as well as being able to have some disagreements once in a while. What is the best and most effective way for us as your constituents to communicate with you so we can have our voices heard?

PJ: I think I said it in my opening remarks, if you don’t have communication skills when you represent a district like the 40th, you’re in trouble. You have to have that skillset to talk to people. This is my type of face-to-face, even smaller groups.

Social media…you have to let people know when you’re having events, you have to be able to communicate in that manner. So it’s something you have to be very well attuned to.

My district staff is very, very good at getting out in the community and having connections to make sure that you all know what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. You have to have those conversations on a daily basis. Making sure that you show up to events; talking with your municipalities, I mean, you work through the trustees and the mayors and that can get you what a community is feeling but you have to get down to the voter and the people on the streets.

You get to really know what’s going on by having those interactions. Events like this are very important for us. … This is important [to get] with everyone as often as you can.

JH: I would absolutely agree with that 100%. Communication with us directly — I think we’re pretty transparent and open. I always say ‘what you see is what you get’ with me.

I’m the same as a politician as I’ve been as a person to anyone who’s known me for as long as they’ve known me. I think I’m an open book. Come and communicate with me and my staff if anyone has questions. We’re out in the community, we’re always there.

I think it’s the relationships that I’ve built over my 30-plus years as a professional and working in a business in the community for the past 30-plus years, I’m the same person now as I was then.

I think the reputation and character that folks have gotten to know [of] me over the last 35 years, I think I’m the same then as I am now, and I think that speaks to the character that I am as a state representative. I come from a family of public servants many of the folks, as I look around the room, know my family of origin and that speaks well for what my foundation is. My door is always open. My staff are fabulous with constituent services. Please come talk to us if you need anything [and] ask questions.

This is the time of year you’re going to hear all kinds of things about us as people and politicians, so, I’m a very firm believer that we can agree to disagree and still be friends and maintain civility and respect in business and politics and our personal and professional lives.