Dixon candidate forum: Housing, education lead topics during 74th House District debate

DIXON – An incumbent state representative and a village of Shabbona trustee were under the spotlight Tuesday night to answer community members’ questions as they campaign to represent the 74th District in the Illinois House of Representatives.

Brad Fritts, the current 74th House District representative and who was named the Republican nominee in March, squared off against David Simpson, the Democratic nominee, during a candidate forum Tuesday night at The Dixon: Historic Theatre. Both ran unopposed in the March 19 primary election.

Simpson serves as a Shabbona trustee, is chairman of Shabbona’s public affairs committee and a member of DeKalb County’s regional planning commission. Fritts, in his first term, was elected to the seat in November 2022, defeating former Dixon Mayor Li Arellano Jr. in the Republican primary that year. Fritts is known as the youngest elected member of the Illinois General Assembly. Arellano is now running unopposed, under the Republican nomination, to represent the 37th Illinois Senate District.

The 74th House District includes most of Lee County and parts of Whiteside, Ogle, DeKalb, and La Salle counties, according to ballotpedia.org. The 74th District previously was represented by Republican Daniel Swanson, who held the seat beginning in 2016. Swanson did not seek reelection in 2022.

Tuesday night’s forum, hosted by Discover Dixon and moderated by Sauk Valley Community College President Dave Hellmich, comes about a month before the Nov. 5 general election. Early voting opened Thursday.

[ General election early voting begins this week in the Sauk Valley ]

During the hourlong event, Fritts and Simpson answered rounds of questions about topics from funding for education and lowering property taxes to supporting small businesses and addressing decreasing population.

Fritts opened the forum by recalling something his parents told him when he was younger: He should grow up, get an education and get out of Illinois. During school visits as a state representative, he’s been asking students if they’ve been told the same thing and said and the majority of them say yes.

Illinois has a lot of economic advantages: the city of Chicago, fertile farmland, major railroads and the Illinois and Mississippi rivers among them, he said.

“We should have so much money. We should have so many resources. We should be busting at the seams, but we’re not,” Fritts said.

The reason for that, he said, is because of “generations and generations of leadership that’s had misguided priorities.”

Fritts grew up on a farm in Dixon. He graduated from Newman Central Catholic High School in 2018 and continued his education at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in agricultural and consumer economics in 2021. He attends St. Patrick’s Church in Dixon and is a member of the Knights of Columbus, according to repfritts.com.

Running for a second term, his top priorities are quality education, affordable housing and rural health care, Fritts said.

Simpson said his top priorities are health care, including mental health care, education, homelessness and affordable housing.

Simpson, a DeKalb County native for 55 years, is a husband and father of two. He attended Kishwaukee College in Malta, was a former lumber yard manager at RP Lumber in DeKalb and currently works at Illinois Industrial Lumber in Montgomery, according to simpson4illinois.com.

“Growing up in poverty, losing a house to a fire and losing a business to a car accident” are all experiences that “have shaped the views and concerns that I have,” Simpson said. He added that those concerns are shared by a majority of voters within the 74th District based on the conversations he’s had with them.

Education

One of the only things that both candidates agreed on was the importance of investing in early childhood education programs and schools that promote workforce development, such as community colleges and career centers.

However, how and which schools receive funding were two things the candidates had different views on.

Simpson believes public tax dollars should only be used to fund public schools and wants to equalize school funding across the state. For example, a public school in Oak Park and a public school in Amboy would receive the same amount of state funding, which would give “every student across the state an equal chance at a quality education,” he said.

Fritts said he supports funding the education of all students in Illinois whether they attend public or private schools. As an example, he said Illinois used to have a program called Invest in Kids where people could get a 75% tax credit if they donated to a private or parochial school. That program was scratched in 2024.

Fritts said he would support bringing that program back as it “gave people that came from underserved situations quality access to the same education as people who could afford it.”

As for increasing school funding provided by the state, Fritts would support it, stating “it’s back to misplaced priorities. We have a billion dollars that is being spent this year to fund the health care of noncitizens while we’re letting our youth go underfunded,” he said.

Housing

The district’s lack of affordable housing is an issue both candidates said is one of their top priorities. Hellmich asked each candidate what his plan would be to lower property taxes and reduce the cost of housing.

Simpson said that when interest rates for mortgages go down, home prices increase, but when interest rates go up prices either stay the same or go down. To tackle the issue he “would sponsor legislation to help municipalities obtain land grants for improvements and infrastructure,” Simpson said. He added that neighboring communities have been successful with Department of Housing and Urban Development projects.

Fritts said the cost of housing is high due to inflation, which is a federal issue. At the state level, “we can talk about property taxes,” he said.

Property taxes are intended to generate revenue for local government, he said.

“What’s really important here is pushing the state to hold up its end of the deal,” Fritts said.

He said the state had a local government distributive fund and 10% of that tax was intended to be distributed to local governments. However, the state was struggling and borrowed money from that fund instead of giving it to the municipalities.

Basically, if the state holds up its end of the bargain and provides a portion of funding to local governments, the municipalities can lower property taxes because they won’t need to collect as much money from residents in order to function, he said.

Simpson had a different idea and reiterated his plan for funding the state’s public schools.

“One thing that we need to do is equalize funding for education across the state,” Simpson said. “That is a very well-known theory and process that will lower property taxes.”

Economy

Job creation and economic growth are two items Simpson suggested when addressing communities’ declining populations and ways to attract new people to rural areas.

“Families move where the jobs are, it’s really that simple,” Simpson said. “Rural communities deserve the same economic development opportunities we give suburbs and cities.”

As a solution, rural communities need to have a knowledgable grant writer supplied to them who understands how the grant system works, Simpson said.

Fritts had somewhat of a different take. To attract new people to these rural areas, “we need to have basic necessities in place,” he said.

Quality education and access to child care were two that he listed, but the biggest, he said, is having access to rural health care. He used Dixon’s KSB Hospital, which is currently undergoing a merger with OSF HealthCare, as an example.

“Across the whole state of Illinois we continue to see [maternity care] deserts,” Fritts said. “People could have 50 minutes one direction with a spouse in labor.”

One way Simpson said he would support economic growth is by backing small businesses, which “are the backbone of local economies,” he said.

He added that he would support any bills proposed to increase small business growth and allow them to compete with corporations. That work could start by providing tax credits to local businesses that expand by hiring local workers, he said.

Another idea Simpson had was to start a small farmer grant system that would help small food farmers get their products into local restaurants and grocery stores.

Fritts agreed that building up small businesses is important. For him, “it’s about lowering taxes and removing unnecessary regulation that gets in the way of them being able to start up and prosper,” he said.

He added that within the past year and a half he’s shown a proven track record of fighting for small businesses and will continue to do so.

To learn more about the candidates visit their websites at repfritts.com and simpson4illinois.com.