Gov. J.B. Pritzker presents annual budget plan amid winter storm

Gov. J.B. Pritzker presented an annual spending plan Wednesday not amid the usual pomp of a joint session of the General Assembly but to a mostly empty chamber during an onslaught of winter weather in Illinois.

With inflation soaring and drifting snow falling, Pritzker offered an antidote to the pocketbook pinch, suspending or offering rebates for taxes on groceries, gasoline and property. While the budget address is an official speech prescribed by law, it also serves as an unofficial opening to his campaign for a second term.

Pritzker offered a $45.4 billion general funds budget for the year that begins July 1, a 3.4% decrease from the current year. It includes billions of dollars of debt reduction, giving Pritzker leeway to try to ease the inflation pinch.

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Typically, members of both House and Senate would gather in the House chamber to receive the governor’s spending ideas, but the three-day winter storm forced legislative leaders to cancel all three scheduled session days this week.

Pritzker instead chose to speak on the same Old State Capitol stage where Abraham Lincoln worked as a representative and then gave the electrifying "House Divided" speech to begin one of the more critical campaigns of his career.

The governor wants to lift for one year the 1% sales tax on groceries, freeze the motor fuel tax that goes toward road building at 39.2 cents per gallon, and offering a rebate of up to $300 dollars equal to the property tax credit available on income taxes.

The 57-year-old Democrat believes he’s on solid ground because of a stronger economy and his administration’s attention to past debt. In November, Pritzker’s budget office reported tax revenue in the current year is $1.7 billion higher than anticipated.

Anticipating critics’ position that the state is awash in billions of dollars of federal COVID-19 relief, Pritzker defended his work to cut costs and pay debts.

"Our state budget surpluses would exist even without the money we received from the federal government," Pritzker said. "Painstaking work has been done ... over the last 3 years to diligently and meticulously reverse the irresponsible decisions of the past and ensure that responsible budgeting would become the rule, not the exception."

Moments before, a key Republican challenger to Pritzker in the fall election distributed a news release claiming that once the federal money runs out, the Democratic incumbent will impose tax increases. Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin is making sure voters remember that Pritzker asked voters to approve a change to a graduated income tax in 2020 to raise revenue.

"The Tax-Hiker-In-Chief is attempting to rewrite history today to mislead Illinois voters in an election year with gimmicks that rely on a disappearing federal bailout," Irvin, who has yet to appear publicly in his campaign, said. "We know he plans to raise billions more in taxes when the federal money runs out."

Pritzker staff members said that by June 2024, $898 million in past-due bills for the employee health insurance program will be eliminated. What in recent years has been a monstrous backlog of bills due state vendors — $7 billion on Wednesday — will be reduced to $2.7 billion, which aides say puts the balance on a 21-day payment cycle — which would not be a backlog.

And the leviathan hole in state employee pension funding, about $140 billion, will get an additional, if small, contribution. After years of underfunding, Pritzker and his two predecessors have been forced to put billions of dollars more into five retirement systems to catch up with a state law requiring substantially paid-up coverage by 2045. But even the $9.6 billion in state law required this year isn’t enough to stay on track, so Pritzker is bumping up that up by $500 million to reach what aides call a "tread water point."

There is additional program spending as well. The Department of Children and Family Services would get a 16% increase, or $200 million, in part to hire 360 more employees to fill vacancies and improve the caseloads of existing child welfare workers. Diedre Silas, a 36-year-old child protection specialist, was stabbed to death during a home visit in January, prompting calls to better protect caseworkers.

The Department of Human Services would get $95 million more to care for residents with intellectual or developmental disabilities in a continued effort to meet the demands of a federal court order and to increase reimbursements for services as recommended by a key study released two years ago.