“Wisconsin nice” is real. Maybe you’ve witnessed it.

It’s the person who will talk to anyone while expecting nothing in return. Who can feel a co-worker is having a bad day before they walk in the door. Who believes without exception in the good of their fellow man.

Danelle Hoag is Wisconsin nice. Born and bred in the Badger State, she’s practically a walking smile.

Maybe that’s because for much of her childhood, she had to be.

“My mom raised us as a single parent,” Hoag said. “She was bipolar, so there were a lot of things she couldn’t do for us or with us. It was pretty rough at times, especially since bipolar disease — and mental illness in general — is so misunderstood by most people.”

That made it all the more difficult when Hoag’s grandmother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. In 1995, at just 13 years old, Hoag became her grandmother’s primary caregiver.

Her mother, meanwhile, dealt with demons of her own. She passed away just one semester into Hoag’s college career. After fighting on behalf of the two strongest women in her life for years, both Hoag’s mother and grandmother died within a year of one another.

Hoag is still fighting.

She works as a member advocate for Network Health, a Wisconsin-based health-insurance provider. Her job is comprised of equal parts detective, attorney, counselor and caregiver.

Given her grandmother was Wisconsin’s first woman to be licensed as an insurance agent and her mother wanted her to work in health care, the role is a perfect union of Hoag’s two biggest influences.

“It’s almost like they wrote the job description just for me,” she said. “Given my own life experiences, I relate on so many levels. I can empathize with our members.”

In essence, Hoag is the voice of those Network Health members.

She’s also one of the voices making up a bold new campaign from Network Health — one that puts the company’s brand in the hands of employees like her.

The noise

A lot of health care advertising looks the same. Blue and white logo. Smiling old people. Babies. Doctors. Machines.

So how could Network Health break through the noise? They enlisted the help of AE Marketing Group, a brand cocreation and customer experience company.

“When AE presented this concept to us, it was a ‘you had me at hello moment’ for me,” said Network Health Chief Administrative Officer Penny Ransom. “Not only is it something new for our industry, but it also suits our brand perfectly.”

“We only went in with one concept,” said AE Marketing Group CEO Brian Walker.

Walker’s plan? Make the employees the focus of the brand.

“I was confident this was the right idea. Everyone talks about humanizing a brand, everyone talks about employee advocacy, but they forget you cannot force it. Employees, like consumers, don’t want to be told how to behave.”

AE Marketing Group was getting at what was most unique about Network Health. It has deep Wisconsin roots, founded there in 1982. And most people who work at Network Health have deep Wisconsin roots themselves. The average employee’s tenure is six years, and 16 percent have worked there for more than 15 years.

Another unique aspect of Network Health is the company’s award-winning movement, CoCreate Wisconsin. Since 2013 this movement, also led by AE Marketing Group, has given customers and non-customers a seat at the design table to create better products, services and experiences together with the health-insurance company. Last year, the cocreation movement was recognized for its ground-breaking approach to consumer engagement in health by the Insight Innovation Exchange.

So just like Network Health tapped into their community to help improve experience, they could tap into the stories of their own employees to better showcase what’s so exceptional about their company.

What they found was something special.

Who’s behind the curtain?

After just a couple weeks of open casting calls, patterns started to emerge among Network Health employees. One major theme is exemplified by Hoag’s story: their backgrounds informed why they went to work everyday.

“We were already building a brand around simplicity,” said Marketing Director Melanie Draheim. “So it was great that we could bring in the emotional part of our work. These are real people who are part of communities all over Wisconsin, and they love what they do.”

“I was struck by the raw emotions and vulnerability demonstrated by their employees,” said Walker. “I was adamant that nothing be scripted. We didn’t try to back into select demographics or customer personas like everyone else does. We just asked questions and listened.”

Jeremy Kroll answered those questions. He collects rare books.

“What I love about books is when I’m exploring a different person through books, you’re learning about somebody,” he said. “And we do the same thing at work. We’re concerned about taking good care of each person.” When he’s not trying to train a 130-pound English Mastiff puppy, he also trains Network Health employees on how to best serve customers.

Jackie Rosen’s father taught her the meaning of a good work ethic. Born and raised in Milwaukee, she regularly meets her dad in Fond Du Lac for a round of golf. They’re learning together. Loser buys lunch.

Rosen works as a recruiter.

“What I look for is that team player. That they’re willing to go that extra mile, not only for their coworkers but for our members,” she said. “Because at the end of the day our members are what we’re here for.”

Yvonne Marrow is an oncology nurse, case manager and single mom. She found running as a way to help cope emotionally with being a support system for some of Network Health’s most vulnerable members. She recently completed her first ultramarathon.

“I was recently leading a CoCreation Lab at Network Health and a cancer patient mentioned Yvonne as critical to his recovery process,” said Walker. “I had just seen her that very same day. From the minute I met Yvonne, I knew she was special.”

AE Marketing Group shot documentary film and photography over nineteen days with Network Health employees in Milwaukee, Fond Du Lac, Oshkosh and Appleton. And they didn’t script a thing.

They just asked questions: not about work, but about life.

Why it matters

When telling the stories of Network Health employees, viewers will notice there’s no phone number. There’s no call to action. No kitschy slogan. It’s just the story.

“And that’s all you need,” Walker says.

“We are using these personal stories as a way to say ‘this is the type of company I want to do business with,’” he said. “We let that speak for itself.”

And it has. The initial reaction among Network Health employees confirmed as much. Content Marketing Coordinator Cassie Ashman has sat near Hoag for years, but never knew about her background.

“She’s just a ray of sunshine,” Ashman said. “When I read her story I cried. I had no idea that was her personal experience. She’s so good with the members and so great as a mom.”

She sees the difference Hoag makes every day.

“She comes into contact with members when they’re at their most critical point in their lives,” she said. “Our customer service treats our members like a community and our members internalize that.”

In an industry known for being opaque, cold and uncaring, sharing stories like Hoag’s can show members and nonmembers alike how Network Health sets itself apart from giants like Humana or United Healthcare.

Ashman wasn’t the only staff member who cried in seeing the first documentary videos. Ransom planned ahead and brought a box of tissues.

“Half the room was crying. In fact, we shot on location for nineteen days and I can’t recall day, when either a Network Health associate or crew member didn’t choke up,” said Walker.

Ransom summarized it best: “We set out to humanize health insurance by lifting the curtain and showcasing our employees sharing very personal stories and how their personal beliefs fold into their work lives. I’d say we more than succeeded. We have a campaign that will boost our brand’s position and has the added bonus of reminding all 440 employees of the great experiences they create every day.”

How One Brand Lets Employees Be Real was originally published in BrandLabSeries™ on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

No matter the name changes, Chicago’s real Sears Tower was never downtown.

The original Sears Tower has been watching over North Lawndale on Chicago’s West Side for a century, serving as a reminder of when Sears, Roebuck and Co. brought peace and prosperity to a community now lacking both.

Beginning in the early 1900s, tens of thousands of workers poured into Sears’ 40-acre complex in North Lawndale each day. It had its own power plant, its own fire department and a YMCA facility. It was home to the world’s largest business building, from which flowed millions of catalogues that blanketed the nation’s kitchen tables.

Richard W. Sears dubbed it “a city within a city.”

But for North Lawndale residents, Sears was more than just bricks and mortar. It was community. It was pride. It was a ladder up to the middle class for generations of black families.

And then it was gone.

In 1968, riots in the wake of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination ravaged North Lawndale. The neighborhood was ablaze. Livelihoods were destroyed. A mass exodus of businesses followed. Sears, too, would soon leave North Lawndale behind, moving its international headquarters downtown in 1973. It wouldn’t be long before the waves of workers coming into the campus slowed to a trickle, eventually going dry.

Things were never the same.

West Grenshaw, a street that once ran along the southern border of the Sears campus, became a heroin haven. One harrowing image shows dozens of customers lining up to purchase the drug on a summer day in 2015.

The massive brick warehouses came tumbling down. Up went an infamous police facility that made international headlines for “disappearing” more than 7,000 residents.

Home values tanked, population levels plummeted and violence increased.

But where many saw hopelessness, UCAN saw opportunity.

With a bold vision, millions of dollars in investment, and a sparkling new campus atop the land on which Sears’ printing presses once whirred, UCAN is changing the narrative.

Inception

UCAN began with a promise. In 1860, at the onset of the Civil War, a North Side Chicago church promised to care for the orphans of fallen soldiers. This promise would later become Uhlich Children’s Home, which changed its name to Uhlich Children’s Advantage Network, or UCAN, in 2002. The group now provides a litany of services to traumatized and at-risk youth across the city, ranging from anti-violence programming, to job training, to housing assistance.

For Claude Robinson, Executive Vice President of External Affairs and Diversity at UCAN, the opportunity to build on the site of a fallen icon was too good to pass up.

First, it made business sense. Leaving its longtime home on the northwest side of Chicago, it would be tough for UCAN to find two entire blocks for much cheaper in the Windy City. But more importantly, UCAN wanted to take a larger role in the communities it had served for decades.

“We wanted to be in a community,” Robinson said.

“Moving to North Lawndale gave us an opportunity to become an actual community partner, and a true stakeholder.”

But it wouldn’t be easy.

Sunrise

UCAN held its first town hall meeting on Sept. 1, 2011, at Sunrise Baptist Church, in the shadow of the original Sears tower.

It didn’t go as planned.

“I call it a rude awakening,” Robinson said.

While Robinson and his team had secured a great deal of local political support for the project, they had a long way to go to convince a vocal minority of community members.

Some attendees were worried that UCAN would bring more “bad kids” into an already troubled neighborhood, since they planned to build housing and treatment facilities for troubled youth on the campus.

Others were concerned that the project wouldn’t provide enough badly needed jobs to the area. A few grappled with the optics of what they perceived as a white organization coming in to “save” a black community.

“The community had many issues and were skeptical of us. And I believe that skepticism was warranted,” Robinson said. “There have been promises made over the years to that community that haven’t been fulfilled. People were sick and tired of being lied to. Sick and tired of not being involved. They’ve been disrespected and belittled for a long time.”

Pastor James Storey of Sunrise Baptist Church, now UCAN’s neighbor, remembers the meeting well.

“It was packed,” Storey said. “And lots of the people came on the notion that somebody bad was coming into the community.”

He has witnessed firsthand the persistence of broken promises in North Lawndale.

“Lots of businesses talk about what they’re going to do,” Storey said, “but as soon as they get in they don’t fulfill their promise.”

Charles Rice, coach of North Lawndale Eagles football team, echoed Storey’s concerns. Born and raised in North Lawndale, Rice remembers attending programs for local families at Sears, where his aunt worked. In adulthood, he’s experienced the pressure of some organizations trying to use his influence in the community to push their own agenda.

“People would want to be engaged with a person like me,” he said. “But I don’t like being used as a veil. Once they get what they want, that might be the last you hear from them.”

Both Storey and Rice were staunch supporters of the project from the outset, as were all of UCAN’s neighbors, and even most community members. But a motivated few threatened to derail the project.

UCAN was determined to work with the community to create something they could all value and support.

“Did I expect opposition? Yes,” Robsinon said. “But that just meant we had to deliver on what we knew we were capable of doing.”

Digging deep

Robinson and his team started working aggressively to tweak their community strategy: “engage, educate and empower.” Dozens of community meetings followed, each one a chance to speak honestly and transparently about UCAN’s intentions and core principles, including their organization’s unrivaled diversity.

Robinson and his team presented community members with a promise to provide real value for North Lawndale, ensuring the use of local vendors and working with subcontractors to hire local labor.

They began to change hearts and minds. And UCAN’s most ardent supporters became better informed as well.

“The loudmouths were quieted,” said Storey. “Once those people understood what type of kids [UCAN] would be housing and saw the hiring plan, the community jumped on board.”

“They were on point,” Rice said. “They were engaged. They were willing to listen. And they were able to build trust before they even started groundbreaking.”

North Lawndale residents had been duped before. But UCAN wasn’t making empty promises.

Delivering

In 2015 alone, UCAN spent nearly $600,000 on services from local vendors in North Lawndale.

And at every turn, leadership sought out the diversity that UCAN expects of its own organization. Sixty percent of subcontractors working on the North Lawndale campus development were minority- or women-owned businesses. And after extensive negotiations, UCAN was able to secure 45 new hires among its subcontractors for the project. All were local workers.

Major North Lawndale institutions began taking note.

“I could not be prouder of the job that UCAN did on diversity in hiring and vendor relationships,” said Kevin Sutton.

Sutton is the Vice President of the Foundation for Homan Square, a nonprofit organization founded to oversee the redevelopment of former Sears properties in the area. It has transformed the original Sears Tower, now called Nichols Tower, into a hub for job training, arts education and leadership development.

“That makes a huge difference. That’s how you change the story. That’s how you make an impact.”

If community-focused hiring and spending changed the story, buildings transformed the tone. UCAN broke ground on its new campus in 2013. The weeds and tall grass of a vacant lot were replaced with bustling activity as the lot started to transform.

“When I saw the first renderings of the buildings from UCAN I was just thrilled,” Sutton said. “I believe when you build beautiful things it changes people’s entire perception. It’s gorgeous. And it’s so thoughtfully designed.”

Across the street from the project, Pastor Storey was amazed.

“It used to be that I came to church some mornings and I would shake my head,” he said. “It was nothing but weeds and trees.”

“Now it’s beautiful.”

Not only is it beautiful. It is functional. Each detail, from the parking lot, to the way in which youth housing is offset from the main street, to the material of the walls in the residences, is purposeful.

“They’ve put forward a significant investment, not just in buildings, but in people,” Sutton said. “That’s the turning point: When you see the value of the people who don’t even work for you.”

UCAN CEO Tom Vanden Berk is proud of what his team has been able to accomplish thus far.

“Our new campus is the culmination of years of commitment by many dedicated people,” he said. “UCAN now is well positioned for many years to come to build strong youth and families through compassionate healing, education and empowerment.”

It is with that empathy and quality of work that UCAN honors the ground on which it now stands.

Where one pillar of the community has fallen, another has finally risen.

“He says he wants to go to [Cristo Rey] St. Martin because the boys who go there get good jobs,” says Deborah Valderas of her 9-year-old son, Daniel.

Cristo Rey St. Martin College Prep is the only private school that serves high schoolers in Waukegan, Illinois, a northern Chicago suburb home to some of the lowest-performing public schools in the state.

Daniel is a fourth-grader at Most Blessed Trinity Academy, a private elementary school in the city of 90,000. Deborah pays for his education through her earnings as a hotel maid. She makes $8.67 an hour.

“I get my tax return, put it aside for his tuition, pay my bills and make up the rest selling flan,” she says.

“I was born poor and I will die poor. The best inheritance I can give to my children is an education.”

Deborah’s son dreams of finding a good job — the kind that used to come from people like Gerry Witter, owner of Waukegan’s Electrical Contacts Plus, a high-tech manufacturer producing electrical relays used in cars that has severely downsized its production in the U.S over the last few years.

Back in 2005, when Gerry began hiring in Waukegan, he noticed something strange. Workers coming into his shop were struggling with automated equipment, so he developed a 10-question math test for everyone who applied for a job. The results were extreme.

“A few people at the very top, many people at the very bottom and no one in between,” he says.

“That’s when I knew something was wrong with the school system. Many of these people lacked [basic] skills, and companies can’t afford to teach those skills.”

He went searching for answers.

“I went down to the unemployment office and asked, ‘How many skilled people do you have?’ They said ‘Hardly any, most of the people that come in can’t even fill out the forms.’”

That’s when Gerry decided to take matters into his own hands.

He now runs a tutoring program teaching basic math to 15 of Waukegan’s fourth and fifth graders every Monday using Kahn Academy, an online learning platform. As their children receive tutoring, Waukegan mothers attend classes on family health.

“The kids are smart, but they need motivation to think they’re smart. It’s not just a problem of them learning. It’s a problem of believing in themselves,” Gerry says.

“They need unique teaching methods that the schools aren’t giving them. I want the schools here to start using those methods.”

Gerry isn’t the only one who wants to see the school district improve and innovate. Nearly 70 percent of Waukegan respondents to a We Ask America poll gave their schools a grade of C or below. And 2 out of every 3 Waukeganites reached in canvassing efforts supported school choice.

But little has changed.

STATE OF THE STATE

New research from the Illinois Policy Institute shows largely Hispanic communities such as Waukegan, which is home to a 75 percent Hispanic student population, are struggling to provide quality schooling. Across the state, the educational outcomes of a booming Hispanic student body are far worse than that of their white peers.

While the state’s black and white student populations have shrunk by 16 percent and 12 percent, respectively, since 2000, the Hispanic population has grown by more than 70 percent. But their needs are not being met.

Learning gaps start early. If children can’t read at grade level by the third grade, the likelihood they’ll drop out by high school rises dramatically. In Illinois, fewer than 4 in 10 Hispanic third-graders can distinguish between the main idea and the supporting details of a story — the third-grade reading standard established in the Illinois Standardized Achievement Test, or ISAT. But nearly 7 in 10 white third-graders in Illinois can do this.

That gap persists into later grades, as revealed in ACT test results from high-school juniors across the state. Fewer than 30 percent of Illinois’ Hispanic high-school juniors earn a composite score of 21 or higher — indicating college- and career-readiness — compared with a state average of 46 percent and a white average of over 60 percent.

Lack of a quality education put minority workers at a huge disadvantageduring the last recession. The employment rate for Latino men in Illinois dropped by more than double the rate of all workers ages 25–54 from 2006–2013, according to data from the Illinois Department of Employment Security.

Blame for the opportunity gap falls indiscriminately on parents, students and circumstance. Children are scolded for poor effort or deficient language skills; parents for lack of preparedness and engagement. Many blame poverty.

But some Waukegan parents say the problem isn’t poverty; it’s power.

IMBALANCE

“Just because someone lives in a certain place doesn’t mean they don’t deserve access to a quality education,” says Diana Baerga, a single mother in Waukegan. Her 8-year-old son Ian has autism. Her frustration with the school district is evident.

“We as parents are seen as troublemakers, as a nuisance. If we bring up concerns we are brushed aside,” she says. “When you say something they make you feel like a diva.”

After years of struggling with administrators at local public schools, Diana finally entered her son in a lottery for a spot in a brand-new charter school in Waukegan for the upcoming school year. But Ian’s name wasn’t picked. He sits at No. 30 on the waiting list.

“My first reaction was that we weren’t good enough,” says Diana. “That’s when I learned the difference between charter and choice. School choice puts the ball back in the parents’ court.”

As is the case statewide, these results come with severe consequences later in life. Children are put at an enormous disadvantage in later grades, as is evident when comparing Waukegan High School to other high schools in Lake County, home of some of the most affluent communities — and best-performing school districts — in the state.

Diana has made her preferences clear. “I would like to see more structure in our schools. More structure and more accountability,” she says.

Many Waukegan parents share her demands. But only a select few are able to act on them.

ESCAPE HATCH

Deborah’s son Daniel wasn’t wrong about Cristo Rey St. Martin leading to better job prospects.

Baltazar Pizano Sr., a Waukegan father of four, may know this better than anyone. Each of his children has graduated or is currently attending Cristo Rey, where 100 percent of graduates from the class of 2015 will attend college (more than 80 percent will attend a four-year college) and an overwhelming majority of students are Hispanic. Cristo Rey students are enrolled in a rigorous work-study program, which helps pay off part of their tuition. Almost every student receives additional financial assistance from the school.

Baltazar Sr.’s eldest daughter, Mariana, graduated from Loyola University Chicago and now works at an Illinois law firm. Baltazar Jr. graduated from Loyola’s business honors program in 2015 and begins work at Ernst & Young as an accountant in the fall. Eloy is studying at the Milwaukee School of Engineering. Baltazar’s youngest son, Jose, is enrolled at Cristo Rey.

Baltazar Sr. left Guanajuato, Mexico, nearly 20 years ago for Waukegan, and became a U.S. citizen to provide better opportunities for his children. But upon arrival, he was caught off guard. “Down the street on the corner there were kids selling drugs every day and no one ever did anything about it,” he says.

“That’s when I decided I needed to put my kids in a private school. They needed structure and discipline.”

Cristo Rey’s work-study model and sky-high expectations have allowed students like Mariana, Baltazar Jr., Eloy and Jose to access opportunities their father never could have imagined in Guanajuato.

And among those who have left Waukegan for college campuses full of students from more privileged backgrounds, hope in the city remains strong. Young, educated Waukeganites know the city is struggling and want to be part of the solution.

“A lot of my friends who graduated plan to come back and do something for the community,” says Baltazar Jr.

“[Waukegan] is not in good shape, and when you leave, that’s brain drain. People are cognizant of that. You realize you can have some positive influence if you come back.

“Our parents gave up a lot to put us through school. So it’s your responsibility to give back,” he says.

MEEK TO MIGHTY

Community revival takes a combination of flourishing schools and employers eager to hire skilled labor. Waukegan and many other Illinois communities have neither. This creates a vicious cycle.

Hoards of students are graduating high school without basic skills, rendering them unhirable. Those fortunate enough to beat the system and attend college are forced to take work elsewhere. And the odds of winning outside investment to spur development are slim to none without a skilled workforce.

But one tool to begin chipping away at this problem — more school choice — has been deployed less than 10 miles north of Waukegan in Wisconsin. In 2013, the Badger State enacted a statewide voucher program where low-income parents are given state money to send their children to a school of their choosing. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a one-hour drive from Waukegan, is home to the largest and oldest local school-choice program in the nation. More than 25,000 Milwaukee students use vouchers to attend a school of their choosing, and data from Milwaukee’s choice program has been used to show how competition can drive better outcomes for public-school students.

Like governments in New Orleans, Nevada and North Carolina, political leaders in Wisconsin have empowered parents to make the best educational choices for their children. Tying public dollars to parent demands can open the door for growth in options and opportunities, forging a future where the unique needs of every child are met. Deborah’s son, a shy kid dreaming of a steady career, can attend a smaller school focused on math and science. Diana’s son, who needs specialized services to set him up for a life of independence, can attend a school focused on children with special needs.

In Waukegan and across the state, rebirth requires rethinking the status quo.

“Everything happens for a reason, and when you feel defeated something better comes along … a better tomorrow is looking like choice to me,” says Diana.

Will those in power grant that choice?

Illinois families are waiting for the answer.

Future

Jesse Huerta may be the shortest man in the building, but he walks tall across the factory floor at Tri-State Industries Inc. in Hammond, Indiana. Tri-State manufactures robotics, among other fabricated metal products. Huerta is the assistant plant manager.

“Every day I see people from Chicago moving out here,” he said. “It’s not because we’re a poor city, it’s not because the government doesn’t have our back, it’s because they know there’s work out here. They know you can still have a future out here.”

“And really that’s what everybody’s looking for, is a future.”

Huerta knows this better than most. He was born and raised in Chicago, but his two daughters will grow up as Hoosiers. His life at Tri-State is a far cry from what he left behind on the other side of the state border.

Before Huerta moved to Indiana, his South Side Chicago employer went belly-up. Chains bound the double doors Huerta walked through for three years to his factory job. He joined the ranks of the unemployed.

“The union stewards never told us a thing,” he said. “You pay your dues all those years … I was infuriated.”

He moved to Indiana for seasonal work in construction but left that job to find stable income on which to raise his family. The morning Huerta walked out on construction, he walked into Tri-State, which offered him an entry-level job making shipping blocks.

Huerta quickly moved his way up the ranks.

“For me personally [this job] is life-changing,” Huerta said. “The skills that I’ve learned here I didn’t come with.”

Middle-class manufacturing opportunities like Huerta’s are growing fast in Indiana. In fact, contrary to the narrative of Midwestern industry being crushed by cheap labor in China and Mexico, federal jobs data indicate Great Lakes states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana and Ohio are experiencing a manufacturing renaissance.

But that’s not what’s happening in Illinois, the state Huerta left behind for a better future.

Fallout

From Elgin to Effingham, Peoria to Pontiac, Galena to Granite City, Illinois was once a manufacturing titan.

But now, when it comes to forging middle-class jobs through a strong manufacturing sector, it is a laggard state. Illinois is the only Great Lakes manufacturing state to lose factory jobs over the last three years.

Illinois is also home to a devastatingly weak manufacturing recovery in the wake of the Great Recession. Since Illinois’ recession bottom, manufacturing jobs have grown by a mere 2.7 percent, the lowest rate by far among surrounding states.

The Illinois manufacturers that can afford to keep workers on the job are cutting costs on salaries. Production workers in Illinois take home the lowest pay in the Midwest.

Meanwhile, Michigan passed Illinois in late 2014 for total manufacturing jobs with a workforce less than three-quarters the size of Illinois’. And Indiana is on its way to passing Illinois for manufacturing jobs with a workforce half the size. According to the BBC, the Hoosier State is “the nation’s leader in manufacturing.”

The Rust Belt is rising again. But Illinois is floundering. Neighbors are flush with well-paying manufacturing jobs, while the Land of Lincoln shrugs.

The family-owned businesses that create those jobs know why this is the case, but as of yet, their cries for help have not been met with action in Springfield.

Failure

Steel from the Selvaggios built the governor’s mansion. Now, Mark Selvaggio says his family-owned fabricating business in Springfield, Illinois, is lucky Indiana industry is seeing success. Across the state border, firms just like his send extra work Selvaggio’s way.

“There’s nothing being built here anymore,” Selvaggio said. “Illinois work is completely flat or down compared to all of the surrounding states, and it’s crushing us.”

“Everybody asks if I want an incentive to hire someone to come in. I don’t need their $5,000. I need work.”

One major expense Selvaggio says is killing work in his industry? Workers’ compensation costs. Compared to Indiana, Illinois manufacturers often pay triple the cost for insurance to pay injured workers.

Some may think these expensive insurance premiums mean Illinois workers are safer. Far from it, according to Jesse Huerta.

“No. That’s not how it works,” he said. In addition to serving as the assistant plant manger, Huerta is head of safety for Tri-State.

“When I worked in Illinois I never went through one safety class. I never saw one safety video. When I was driving a forklift, it was, ‘You know to operate it? Know what these levers are for? Go for it.’”

In fact, high labor costs can lead to disastrous outcomes for workers, according to Huerta.

“In Illinois, those jobs … it’s value,” he said. “[Employers] are paying so much money to have [workers] in the building that [they] need workers to push and get as much stuff out to justify the cost of being open. Therefore, [they’re] going to turn a blind eye.”

“Here, I don’t care how fast you’re going. I don’t care how much more money you’re making. If you’re doing it unsafely, we’re going to stop you right there.”

Not only can these high costs impact worker safety in Illinois, they also prevent employers such as Selvaggio from growing their businesses, and can even push well-paying jobs out of the state altogether. Professor Don Haider at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management spoke to this “irritant” for Illinois employers.

He noted that too often, Illinois’ workers’ compensation system does not function to the benefit of worker interests, but rather to that of legal insiders.

“We have a number of states in this area that Illinois can easily benchmark against … [in terms of] protections to workers and to their employers that are paying this cost,” Haider said.

But workers’ compensation is far from the only “irritant” Illinois manufacturers endure, as business leaders may tell you on their way out of the state.

Flight

When Marty Flaska moved his forklift business to Illinois 17 years ago, he never compared the cost of doing business across state lines. Last year, his son showed him the numbers.

“I didn’t believe him,” Flaska said.

Now, Flaska is in the process of moving nearly 300 manufacturing jobs at Hoist Liftruck Manufacturing Inc. out of Illinois. Those jobs will be at a brand-new Hoist facility in East Chicago, Indiana, along with 200 more that Flaska plans to create. The average pay for one of those positions is $55,000.

His reason for moving was simple. “It’s all about cost,” Flaska said.

“When someone starts doing due diligence, it’s a no-brainer. We’ve been working on this for a year, and it’s a given. We’re moving.”

Chief among the costs that forced Flaska out? Uncompetitive workers’ compensation costs and sky-high, volatile property taxes. Illinois is home to the second-highest property taxes in the nation. And Cook County, where Hoist is located, is home to a notoriously corrupt property-tax assessment scheme.

“If I didn’t have the workers’ compensation issue and the extortion of assessors raising property taxes and me having to pay a third of that cost [to attorneys] to get them lowered, I probably never would have even considered moving,” he said.

“Why would I?”

Beyond the dollars and cents of tax rates and insurance premiums, Flaska also cited the difficulty of day-to-day operations in Illinois, waiting up to a year for simple permits he got in a matter of days in Indiana. Uncertainty surrounding where Illinois’ tax rates may go in the future given the state’s enormous financial problems also weighed heavily on Flaska as he considered whether to leave.

Unfortunately, Hoist’s departure for Indiana is just one of a long line of manufacturers that have made a beeline for neighboring states.

For example, Illinois-based manufacturers T&B Tube Co., American Stair Corp. Inc. and Edsal Manufacturing Co. Inc. all decided to move to or expand in Indiana in 2015.

Losing a manufacturing company is not equivalent to losing a real-estate business, a mall, a bank or a corner store. Not only are manufacturing jobs usually well paying, unlike many retail jobs, but the businesses that provide them are often closely tied to the local economy. Flaska’s “milk run” — his purchases of the materials to make Hoist forklifts — primarily happens within a 200-mile radius of his Bedford Park location.

Illinois businesses are buoyed at every step of the industrial process, and so are the lives of those who work manufacturing jobs, which can often be attained with a high-school diploma and a strong work ethic.

“[This job] changed my whole life, my whole outlook,” Huerta said. “And it changed the lives of the guys here, too. Most of the guys here come from the same walk of life I do: minimal skills, a high-school education, but no money for college.”

“… to know that companies out [in Illinois] are closing left and right, and they’re moving out because financially the state and city are making it so hard for manufacturers to keep their doors open … it’s saddening. I’m saddened because it’s not just one man losing his job, it’s a family losing their way of life.”

Fight

Gov. Bruce Rauner is the first Illinois leader in recent memory to push for a comprehensive set of changes to transform Illinois’ manufacturing climate.

To lower Illinois’ high workers’ compensation costs to levels comparable to those in neighboring states, Rauner has proposed: bringing workers’ compensation medical payments in line with those made by private insurers, tightening the definition of a traveling employee and of an injury caused by employment, and encouraging common sense in arbitrator and judicial rulings on workers’ compensation claims. Rauner has also pushed for a property-tax freeze.

These proposals will help, and still further action will be necessary, for the state’s industrial sector to regain its competitive edge.

But these reforms have not been well received among Springfield’s old guard. Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan refuses to discuss “nonbudgetary” issues with the governor while negotiating the state budget, even as companies such as Hoist make decisions to leave the state over many of these “nonbudgetary” policies.

Illinois has the potential to be a worldwide leader in combining a tech-savvy urban workforce with skilled labor and brawn. Downtown Chicago could house sales offices for a heavy machinery plant downstate. Autoworkers could build a fleet of self-driving cars in Aurora as programmers work on cutting-edge code in River North. But basic policy missteps must be corrected for manufacturers to start thinking about moving to the Land of Lincoln, or expanding within it.

“I was born and raised in Chicago. And I feel bad for the working man,” said Huerta. “All we need is our head honchos to get their act together and look at the big picture. Who are you representing? Without the people you ain’t got nothing.”

Sticker shock

Joel Schurtz lived all across the U.S. before coming to Illinois. He took promising job opportunities where he could find them, from California to Alabama. His wife, Michelle, and their three young children would follow.

“Our family always had a plan,” Joel said. “We had three- to five-year goals and a plan. But when we came to Illinois that plan went out the window.”

Before the welcoming committee even arrived at their front door, the Schurtz family’s first property-tax bill arrived in the mail. “We laughed,” Michelle said. “That’s all we could do.”

The Schurtzes paid their first full year of property taxes in 2015. The bill totaled $11,000.

When it comes to property taxes, sticker shock is typical in Illinois. From small-business owners in Chicago to suburban dwellers in middle-of-the-pack school districts, long-time Illinoisans are often bewildered as to why they pay the second-highest property taxes in the nation, at an average of more than 2 percent of a home’s value.

And the nonpartisan Tax Foundation said Chicago’s record-setting property-tax hike will likely vault Illinois to the top of the table, making the Land of Lincoln home to the highest property taxes in the U.S.

But an average only tells so much of the story.

Property taxes become a second mortgage that homeowners can never pay off, or an endless expense for a small business that grows more costly each year. The Schurtz family’s first year of property taxes came out to 4 percent of the value of their Geneva, Illinois, home. For many Illinoisans, the burden is even heavier.

Job Varghese, an Indian-American immigrant who left his job with the federal government to strike out as a hospitality entrepreneur, pays $220,000 per year in property taxes on his southern Cook County hotel — more than he pays on the mortgage.

And it gets worse each year. Over the last 10 years, Varghese’s annual property-tax bill has risen by $70,000.

“If I moved my hotel three miles away from here [to Indiana], that $70,000 would be my entire property tax [for one year],” Varghese said.

“Our family came to this country for opportunity, but I find myself discouraging my son from working at our business here.”

A disturbing trend

The pace and scale of property-tax growth over the last few decades in Illinois is overwhelming. Since 1990, residential property taxes have grown 3.3 times faster than the state’s median household income.

Simply put, Illinoisans’ property taxes are going up while salaries are stagnant at best.

Illinois Policy Institute research shows nearly every Illinois county has seen dramatic increases in its residents’ average property-tax burden since 1999.

Residential property taxes now eat up an average of 6.4 percent of a typical household income in Illinois. In 1990, that share was 3.6 percent. In this shift lies the pain currently felt by Illinoisans whose family budgets have been thrown into disarray.

Take Cassandra Bajak, a lifelong Illinoisan and mother of two. Bajak and her husband, an Army veteran, built their Crystal Lake home in 2002. Their children were born and raised there.

Over the last 13 years, the Bajaks’ property-tax bill has doubled. They now pay $1,500 a month in property taxes and insurance. Their mortgage payment is $1,100 a month.

“We’re being taxed out of our home,” Cassandra said.

“… [I]t’s basically like we’re renting our home from the government. [The rate] is well over 4 percent of what the house is worth. The only reason we would ever leave our home or this state is property taxes, and that’s what’s going to happen.”

Bajak said she and her husband plan to move their family to Florida within the next two years. Her reasoning is straightforward: “Taxes are less, and schools are the same,” she said.

Cassandra and her family are not alone.

In McHenry County, where the Bajaks reside, property taxes take up nearly 8 percent of the median household income. The average monthly property-tax bill stands at $499, and the typical property-tax burden in the county has ballooned by over 45 percent since 2000.

Suburban father Peter Brunk has felt the squeeze in Lake Villa, Illinois, which is located in Lake County. Brunk, too, has made plans for an Illinois exit in the near future.

Since his family moved into their home in 2010, the annual property-tax bill has risen by more than $2,300, or nearly 30 percent. Meanwhile, the value of his home actually decreased. The home’s assessed value, which is used to calculate property taxes, has dropped by 11 percent.

“I don’t really want to leave here,” Brunk said. “It’s a nice place. And it’s affordable because we’ve paid off our mortgage.”

“But I look at nine to 10 years [from now] when I retire … my property taxes will completely consume my Social Security check.”

The typical Lake County household’s property-tax burden has risen by 44 percent since 1999, with the average property-tax bill now coming in at more than $600 per month — the most expensive of any Illinois county.

Brunk’s most likely destination after his daughter graduates from high school? Florida. He said the difference in property taxes alone will more than pay for the move and a nicer home.

A closer look at government data reveals the cause behind the meteoric rise of Illinois property taxes, which forces people like Brunk out to greener pastures in other states.

Follow the money

When it comes to property taxes, four main factors drive the pinch felt in Illinois pocketbooks: government-worker pensions, government-worker health care, prevailing-wage requirements and workers’ compensation costs.

These four horsemen of fiscal ruin are all multiplied by the sheer number of taxing bodies in Illinois — at nearly 7,000 — each with its own staffing and programming costs. No U.S. state comes close to Illinois on this number.

In Wauconda, Illinois, Mayor Frank Bart sees the squeeze on middle-class residents brought by these rising costs. After accounting for inflation, Wauconda’s median household income has dropped since 2009, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates. But property-tax bills have continued to rise.

Why?

Take government-worker pension benefits, for example, which are mandated at the state level, regardless of whether local governments can afford them.

Bart expects police pensions to cost the village over $1 million annually within the next two years. The village has 25 police employees and a general fund budget of just over $9 million.

Bart uses his second-lowest paid police officer to illustrate the high personnel costs village taxpayers shoulder. The officer has been with the village for more than 10 years, and the village pays his $85,000 salary and $15,000 in benefits annually. On top of that, taxpayers contribute $25,000 to his pension each year, Bart said.

That’s not all.

Prevailing-wage laws levy another massive blow to local governments’ bottom lines. These laws can mandate six-figure salaries plus benefits for the lucky private-sector employees who work on government projects. Bart estimates this easily adds 20 percent to project costs above what would be offered in a competitive bidding process.

Finally, while Bart said effective departmental leadership has prevented workers’ compensation costs from getting out of hand in his community, this is not always the case.

Take Williamson County, for example, which has spent $2.7 million on workers’ compensation claims over the last three fiscal years, nearly four times as much as the previous three-year period.

“… [S]ome of this is frivolous,” said Chief Deputy Bob McCurdy, according to The Southern. “We need to make an example of somebody.”

County Board Chairman Jim Marlo echoed McCurdy’s concerns, describing the costs as “eating away” at the county budget.

“It is a system that[’s] easily manipulated in this state and until you get legislative action to change the way claims are handled, the way insurance handles and the way courts handle it, we are going to be faced with this problem,” Marlo said.

Turning the tables

A major effort to stop Illinois’ sky-high property tax rates from creeping even higher lies in House Bill 4224, which would freeze property taxes at current levels unless local voters approve a future property-tax increase. This legislation is part of Gov. Bruce Rauner’s Turnaround Agenda.

But a freeze alone won’t be enough. Property taxes would have to stay frozen for the next 28 years for Illinois residents’ property-tax burden to return to levels seen in 1990.

So it is important that HB 4224 also gives local governments more flexibility in controlling costs, such as allowing cash-strapped localities to narrow the scope of collective-bargaining agreements and to take less expensive bids for government work.

Another key component to easing residents’ property-tax burden will be aggressive consolidation and resource-sharing across Illinois’ thousands of local taxing bodies. DuPage County has taken the lead in this area. Other counties should follow suit.

When it comes to skyrocketing, unsustainable pension costs, Illinois’ local governments must also be empowered to take control of their fiscal futures by filing bankruptcy. Workers’ compensation reform to bring Illinois’ out-of-whack costs in line with those of surrounding states is another essential piece of the puzzle.

Local leaders in Illinois must actively avoid the ignominious title of the nation’s leader in taxing homeowners.

As average property-tax bills begin to bump up against average mortgage payments, communities will increasingly be ripped apart as people and businesses flee to areas where they need not pay twice for their property: once to the bank and once to the government.

Unfortunately, this is already happening. Many of Chicago’s south suburbs may have already crossed this line in the sand, and face a long, painful road to recovery. Numbers at the state level are equally concerning. Illinois has lost a greater share of its population to out-migration than any Midwestern state since 2010.

Susann D., a retired widow and longtime resident of Mount Prospect, Illinois, best describes the angst among Illinois’ middle-class residents who can no longer shoulder the tax burden placed upon them by a broken system.

“… the property-tax increase is never a kind of earth-shattering amount,” she said. “But people have to make it work by cutting their budgets. I look online for houses like mine in other states on a similar size lot, and the property taxes are $400 a year. My property taxes here are $7,000 a year.”

“I do want to leave. But this is the most difficult question in my life,” she said.

“If I knew where I was going, that ‘For Sale’ sign would be in front of my house. But I have no family or friends anywhere else. What do I do? Where do I go?”

Susann’s poignant questions should be met with loud cries for reform from Springfield and across the state.

She’s a three-time cancer survivor who has chaired her local Relay For Life fundraiser five times. The back seat of her car once held a young man dying of a heroin overdose as she drove to find help. And for more than a decade, McCabe-Sterr has shepherded hundreds of addicts through her county’s groundbreaking drug-court program.

For 18 months, drug-court participants meet weekly in a dimly lit room in the basement of the Will County State’s Attorney’s Office in Joliet, Illinois. They receive treatment, counseling and support from McCabe-Sterr and her team.

In the northwest corner of the room, McCabe-Sterr installed a floor-to-ceiling poster of a tropical view — with matching curtains — to cover a door to a safe. The building once housed a bank. The safe is now used to store police evidence.

“We needed to brighten things up a bit down here,” she said.

On graduation day, weeping mothers shower McCabe-Sterr with gifts. And drug-court graduates hug their loved ones, some for the first time in years.

Graduation can be a scary time for many in the drug-court program, McCabe-Sterr said. The responsibilities and opportunities of a life of sobriety can seem daunting.

But after a year and a half of hard work, McCabe-Sterr knows they’re ready. And she has the data to prove it.

The power of drug court

Illinois is home to a recidivism crisis.

Within three years of their release from prison, over 45 percent of offenders will return to life behind bars — each instance of recidivism costing taxpayers more than $40,000 per offender in court, arrest and prison costs, according to research by the Illinois Sentencing Policy Advisory Council.

But programs that trade prison stints for the tough love of rehabilitation have proven powerful enough to break this cycle.

Alternative sentencing efforts such as drug court — which put individuals convicted of crimes due to drug abuse on strict treatment regimens, rather than handing down prison time and saddling them with felony records — are turning out healthy members of society at a fraction of the cost of housing inmates and awaiting their likely return after release.

Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow made international headlines in 2012 for obtaining a murder conviction against former Chicago-area police officer, Drew Peterson. He’s also a champion of this type of alternative sentencing, overseeing the Will County mental health court, veterans court and drug court.

Since Glasgow lead the establishment of Will County’s drug-court program in 2000, less than 10 percent of graduates have reoffended, according to his office. The cost of putting more than 300 graduates through the program? About $3,000 each.

Meanwhile, the Illinois Department of Corrections pays nearly $22,000 in direct costs per inmate — add up employee health care, benefits, pensions and capital expenses, and the cost per inmate is nearly $40,000.

“We found a tool that works and we’re using it aggressively, ” Glasgow said.

“Because of the heroin problem the way it is, because of the fatal nature of the drug, it’s critical that these individuals get into drug court not just to avoid prison, not just to avoid a felony conviction, but to stay alive.

“And we’ve proven we can do that.”

These aren’t empty words from Glasgow. Just ask Kristin Love, a 2013 drug-court graduate.

Redemption

Growing up just outside Joliet, Love was a promising student from a well-to-do family. But at 16, when she tried heroin for the first time at a party, she knew she was hooked.

Six years later, a drug bust led to her arrest in a McDonald’s parking lot.

“My parents, my family, my significant other, nobody knew,” Love said of her addiction. “They might have had suspicions, but nobody knew until I called them from jail.”

Before her trial, Love’s family pleaded with her to opt in to drug court. Love was skeptical.

“I think for a lot of people addicted to drugs, they just want the easy way out,” Love said. “So I thought, well, maybe I could do a little time in jail and be done, then I could go back to what I was doing before.”

But Love eventually agreed to her family’s wishes and flourished in the Will County drug-court program. She received treatment, did volunteer work, returned to school, and landed a job — her first.

“I think the longer I did those things, the more I built better feelings about myself — more confidence — and drugs weren’t so important anymore,” she said.

Without a felony on her record, Love pursued legal studies after graduating from drug court, and now works as a legal secretary for the very people who prosecuted her for drug possession — in the Will County State’s Attorney’s Office.

Glasgow came to her interview.

“Finding out … I was getting the job, I think I cried,” Love said. “It was one of my favorite days.”

Renewal

Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner set a goal of reducing the state’s prison population by 25 percent come 2025. This won’t happen without major reform.

But programs such as drug court are proving that policymakers don’t have to choose between cost cutting and better outcomes when it comes to criminal justice. Moreover, that reform doesn’t need to come at the expense of public safety.

“People do life in increments in [the Department of Corrections],” McCabe-Sterr said.

“Isn’t it more important that we can continue to give them the skills and the support they need so they don’t go back and do that?”

For thousands of Illinoisans who have made poor choices in the past, preventing the destruction of their futures means expanding drug and mental health treatment programs such as those that have been successful in Will County, as well as increasing the availability of sealing and expungement of criminal records after ex-offenders have served time.

Perhaps more than anything, drug courts show the value of sealing and expunging criminal records for ex-offenders who have proven records of rehabilitation. Sealing a record means it can only be seen by law-enforcement agencies. Expungement means one’s record is wiped clean.

Currently in Illinois, only offenders convicted of nonviolent, low-level felonies may apply for record sealing. They also must endure a waiting period of three to four years before they file petitions to have their records sealed with the courts that sentenced them.

Long waiting periods during which ex-offenders bear the scarlet letter of a felony record pose a serious public-safety risk. Employment is one of the most important factors in keeping ex-offenders from re-entering the criminal-justice system.

“I was really worried about that,” Love said of the prospect of a felony record when she was arrested.

“At the time, I was in college, and I just thought, ‘If I’m going to have a felony, what’s the point?’”

In short, narrow focus on a purely punitive, rather than rehabilitative, criminal-justice system reinforces the cycle of crime that Glasgow and other law-enforcement officials have been trying for decades to halt.

He says Illinoisans simply can’t afford more of the same.

“It’s going to bankrupt us, and I think we see that,” Glasgow said.

“[But] compassion is the key to turning the corner.”

Should a teenage crime of desperation shackle an ex-offender for life? This is the question facing Illinois state politicians, who, due to a law they passed in 2011, must reckon with the likes of Lisa Creason, a 42-year-old mother from Decatur, Illinois.

By all accounts, Lisa Creason is a respected member of her community. She’s mother to three children whose father was killed tragically in 2002 by a stray bullet. That spurred her to found a successful nonprofit combating youth violence, which joined with local churches and other nonprofits to form a chapter of CeaseFire in Decatur.

In 2012, Creason enrolled in nursing school with the hope of securing a better-paying job. She knew this was the key to moving her family out of her low-income neighborhood, which was plagued with gang violence.

When she graduated from nursing school, Creason called her mother in tears.

“I will never forget coming home from the school and calling my mom and telling her I passed the final. I’m done,” Creason said.

“I’m actually going to be able to buy my kids a home, [I thought]. I’m actually going to be able to afford to move my kids out of the ‘hood.”

But her optimism was short-lived. Less than a month after graduating with an associate degree in applied science in nursing from Richland Community College, Creason was denied the chance to clear the last hurdle to becoming a registered nurse: a state test granting her a license to practice.

Why? A crime she committed more than two decades ago.

A crime of survival leads to a scarlet letter

At age 19, Creason tried to steal money from a Subway cash register in Decatur because she needed to feed her daughter. At age 20, she was sentenced to three years in prison on attempted robbery and an unrelated burglary charge. She got out on work release a year later.

That conviction is now the only thing that stands between Creason and her dream.

In 2011, state lawmakers passed legislation adding “forcible felonies” to the list of crimes for which health care workers can be denied licenses to practice under the Health Care Worker Background Check Act. This crime classification includes attempted robbery, barring Creason and hundreds like her from licensure.

Creason’s situation is maddening. Though she can’t legally practice as a registered nurse, she has been working as a certified nursing assistant for a decade after obtaining a state waiver. But her earnings aren’t enough for Creason to be completely independent. She still relies on welfare programs to care for her two sons, as well as a teenage boy over whom she has custody.

“I just want to go to work as a nurse, take care of my kids and get off of government assistance,” Creason said. “That’s it.”

Her struggle was of little interest to the state.

“To be told after all we’ve been through that I wasn’t good enough … it was devastating,” she said.

“My nine-year-old didn’t have any idea of my criminal history, and I had to sit down with him and talk to him about that, because of all this. He didn’t understand.”

Fighting for a second chance

But state officials may have underestimated Creason’s determination.

A single mother of three children who founded a successful community organization, worked two jobs and attended classes part time, all in hopes of becoming a registered nurse, Creason can only be described as a force of nature.

When this unstoppable force hit the immovable object of the state, she pushed even harder.

Creason’s struggle took the form of Senate Bill 42. The bill would allow those with forcible felonies on their records (other than sexual offenses) to seek waivers from the state to obtain health care worker licenses, provided the convictions occurred more than five years prior to applying for a waiver. The Illinois Senate passed the bill on March 26.

The legislation now rests in the House Rules Committee and has 27 co-sponsors.

But nursing is just one occupation under which rehabilitated ex-offenders are severely restricted in Illinois. If an Illinoisan has a felony on her record, the state is permitted to deny her the license required to practice as an architect, athletic trainer, nail technician, barber and many other occupations. Given that nearly all of the tens of thousands of Illinoisans convicted of felonies every year will return to their communities at some point, these barriers pose a huge threat to successful reintegration.

The state must overhaul its occupational licensing rules, especially when it comes to ex-offenders in search of honest employment.

Illinois should also continue to expand the availability of record sealing. When a person’s criminal record is “sealed,” only law-enforcement agencies granting occupational licenses and parties with court orders are able to see someone’s criminal record. To get his or her record sealed, a qualifying offender must petition the court where the charges against him or her were brought and must supply that court with a variety of documents and information, including drug tests. For many ex-offenders, sealed records can mean the difference between gainful employment and reverting to bad habits.

Research shows that finding work is crucial to lowering the rate of recidivism among ex-offenders, which is important given that nearly 50 percent of ex-offenders in Illinois return to prison within three years.

Recidivism doesn’t come cheap. The Illinois Sentencing Advisory Council, or SPAC, estimates one recidivism event costs an average of nearly $120,000, which is borne by taxpayers, the victim of the crime and the state economy as a whole.

Moreover, those Illinoisans who recidivate commit a large portion of all crimes in the state — individuals with no previous arrests made up a mere 11 percent of convictions in Illinois in 2013, according to SPAC.

For budgetary reasons, as well as for public safety and the sake of struggling ex-offenders and their families, rehabilitation should be the end goal of Illinois’ criminal-justice system. That means dismantling barriers to success for Decatur moms, Chicago dads and anyone in between who has made a bad choice in his or her past, but is ready and willing to move on.

“You should never give up on trying to move forward,” Creason said. “You should never accept being in poverty because officials feel like you shouldn’t be able to move forward.”

It wasn’t because the gas was shut off in his family’s mobile home, even though that was the case. It wasn’t from frustration with the electric company that was coming to turn off the lights in a few days time.

It was because the Goodwins were watching thousands of dollars in donations roll in on the heels of the publication of their story.

Anthony and Ashley Goodwin, as well as their two children, were stuck between a rock and a hard place that is disturbingly unique to Illinois: a worst-in-the-Midwest jobs climate and budget gridlock due to politicians’ refusal to address the state’s fundamental economic problems.

Thankfully, their GoFundMe page had racked up nearly $5,000 in donations from across the globe in a matter of hours.

“We were astonished, dumbfounded,” Ashley said. “Dumbfounded is the best word to use.”

“I know it might [be a] cliché, but this has totally changed our lives,” Anthony said.

“There are so many more opportunities, and so much less worry. It might not seem like much, but in a low-income community like this it makes a huge difference.”

The money raised ensured the Goodwins can keep their lights on, reinstall their gas, buy groceries for their children, and make rent for at least the next year. One donor who wished to remain anonymous also offered to give the Goodwins a car.

“Special thanks to the car donor,” Anthony said. “I might hug the guy, and I’m not a huggy person.”

Anthony and Ashley are debating continuing to look for work in Illinois or heading south to Georgia or Florida, where Anthony says the cost of living is lower and employment is easier to come by.

Among the donors to the Goodwins’ homelessness-prevention fund were Illinois political reporter Rich Miller, state Rep. David McSweeney and an anonymous benefactor from London.

“This whole thing just shows you the power of social media when you want to get the word out about something,” Ashley said.

“This has totally changed everything for us.”