Braidwood police Sgt. Adam Beaty is mounting his second challenge to Democratic Rep. Anthony DeLuca, who has represented District 80 in the state House of Representatives for 17 years.
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DeLuca was appointed to represent District 80 in 2009, after six years as mayor of Chicago Heights.
Beaty ran against DeLuca in 2024, garnering just 40.8% of the vote. He said he wanted to run in part because the seat has sometimes been unopposed.
“I thought it was very important for people to have a choice in a race,” Beaty said. “If not me, then who else?”
The district, in Cook and Will counties, includes all or parts of Chicago Heights, South Chicago Heights, Steger, Park Forest, Crete, New Lenox, Frankfort and Manhattan.
Taxes
DeLuca said property tax relief is his top priority for the next legislative session.
“Property taxes has been something that I’ve been at the forefront of for many years, and have a long track record of working on the issue,” DeLuca said.
DeLuca has been a member of a property tax working group for two years, he said, although he’s been frustrated by a lack of legislative progress.
“There doesn’t seem to be a strong enough willingness at this point to make some of the big changes that we need,” DeLuca said.
One option, he said, is to impose a 3% earnings tax on those earning more than $1 million, with that money going to fund education, which is mostly funded by property taxes.
“That’s a component that could possibly be considered, but not without some type of reform to the infrastructure. We can’t just throw money at the existing system,” DeLuca said. “There might be some immediate relief, but down the road we’ll find ourselves in the exact same situation.”
Beaty said his primary concern was how expensive it is to live in Illinois, and said he supports freezing and cutting taxes to reduce cost of living.
“A lot of people just feel you can’t, you can’t live in Illinois. You technically survive it,” Beaty said. “If you’re making it in the state, a lot of people are barely making it.”
Beaty said he wants to suspend the gas tax and freeze property taxes for residents on fixed incomes.
He acknowledged taxes are necessary to fund public services, and said in the long term he wants to work to attract development to improve the tax base.
“Bringing those permanent structures here, especially in blighted areas, helps these municipalities get a new tax base,” Beaty said. “That way they don’t have to go hat in hand to the residents when everything’s increasing, costs included.”
Budget
DeLuca, who has chaired the Cities and Villages Committee in the House since 2013, said local government issues and funding are a primary concern.
He has pushed to increase the money local governments get from the Local Government Distributive Fund, a portion of state income tax that the state gives to municipal governments, he said.
“That was reduced back in 2011, when the income tax was increased,” DeLuca said. “It should be at 10% and right now it’s at 6.47%.”
He said he filed legislation to prevent the legislature from handing down unfunded mandates, though he did not have success moving it forward.
Beaty criticized DeLuca for voting to approve the most recent state budget, which included a 3.2% cost-of-living salary increase for legislators.
“I’m sure there’s other things within that budget bill that would garner a yes vote, but I don’t think a salary increase was one of those things that anybody else wanted to see,” Beaty said.
Beaty said he is running as a Republican because he was a fiscal conservative, but that he was “willing to work with everybody.”
Healthcare access
DeLuca said he backs a proposal to bring a Level 1 trauma center to the south suburbs, though he acknowledged it would be difficult.
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“Anytime we have a major incident here in the far south suburbs, there’s not a location out here to service,” DeLuca said. “That’s always been a concern that we’ve looked at, but I know it’s very expensive and there’s a lot that goes involved in a Level 1 trauma center.”
Beaty said while he had not done much work on the topic, he was in favor of improving healthcare if it could be done without increasing taxes.
Data centers and solar farms
Beaty said that he’s opposed to solar farms. Proposed large-scale solar projects have generated consternation among Will County residents, with the proposed 45-square-mile Earthrise farm near Manhattan seeing particularly strong opposition.
“I don’t want to see solar farms take up good agricultural land,” Beaty said. “People don’t want them.”
He said he is more open to data center construction, although he said they should be farther from densely populated municipalities and address concerns about noise and water use.
“You mention data centers and people are just, people just explode with ‘Absolutely not,'” Beaty said. “Which I get.”
DeLuca said labor and environmental concerns need to be addressed before any movement on data centers.
“Making sure that the water is recycled and that we’re not stressing out our water systems and that any energy that they would utilize would be self-generating,” DeLuca said. “Things along those lines, I think, are going to be important.”