THE ILLINOIZE: Thursday Free for All
February 3, 2022
Good morning. I hope you’re dry, warm, and haven’t had to leave the house since the snow started falling. If you have had to or do have to be out and about, please be safe.
It wasn’t bad for everyone. Our friends at Shaw Media captured Shelby Johnson, and her son Will, 6, from Sycamore, sledding down the hill with their dog Millie in hot pursuit Wednesday in DeKalb County.
That doggo is living her best life.
We hope you’re enjoying the content you get from The Illinoize so far. If you aren’t yet a paid subscriber, I’d like to invite you to join us. It’s just $75 per year or $7.99 per month. You’ll receive two additional subscriber only newsletters each week, breaking news alerts, and previews of big stories. Yesterday, subscribers got the first taste of a potentially big story in the House Republican caucus. We’re reliant on your support to make this work!
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Let’s get to it.
YOUR THURSDAY FREE FOR ALL
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Pritzker Budget Boosts DCFS, Schools; Provides One Year Tax Breaks on Gas, Groceries (The Illinoize)
To be fair, I kind of mashed together stories and reaction in this post. Like John O’Connor’s great AP story.
With inflation soaring and snow falling, Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Wednesday offered tax relief on groceries, gasoline and property as part of a $45.4 billion budget unveiled in a speech that also served as a warmup for this fall’s gubernatorial election.
In the fiscal outline combined with the annual State of the State address, Pritzker proposed a spending plan for the year beginning July 1 that represents a 3.4% decrease from the current year.
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.
“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,” Pritzker said.
Pritzker’s office countered that the $8 billion in federal aid — the current budget uses $1.5 billion and there’s $535 million in the proposed plan — has been used for pandemic-related expenses, not ongoing programs, and that they’ve adjusted for a federal funding dropoff.
There’s no question the plan shows substantial investments in debt long haunting the state. Pritzker intends to eliminate this year the $898 million in past-due bills for the employee health insurance program. 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, putting it on a 21-day payment schedule. There’s even $900 million socked away in a rainy day fund for unanticipated emergencies.
There is additional program spending as well. The Department of Children and Family Services would get $200 million, in part to hire 360 more employees to deal with increasing caseloads of troubled children, a problem given extra attention by the stabbing death of a caseworker in the field last month.
You can find reaction from legislative leaders there, too.
Just a reminder, a Governor’s budget speech is a proposal. The legislature crafts the document.
Related: New state budget aims to address the health care worker shortage (Crain’s Chicago Business)
What’s in Pritzker’s proposed budget? (Capitol News Illinois)
Comptroller says proposed budget could lead state to another credit upgrade (Capitol News Illinois)
Gov. Candidate Richard Irvin Discusses Pritzker Budget, Handling of Pandemic (NBC 5 Chicago)
In one of his first one-on-one interviews since launching his campaign, Republican gubernatorial candidate Richard Irvin sat down with NBC 5’s Mary Ann Ahern and discussed Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s budget, his handling of the pandemic, and more.
Hey, look who came out to play.
There’s not a ton of substance to the piece, unless it’s substantive how little he’s willing to answer. I’ll ask the campaign again today if I can get a sit down next week.
Related: 'Nobody's pushover': Governor candidate Richard Irvin on COVID-19, crime and his GOP record (Daily Herald)
School districts under fire for staying open amid snowstorm (Daily Herald)
As the Western and Southern suburbs continued to dig out from under Wednesday's snowstorm, several school districts came under fire from parents and students for remaining open.
Two of the area's larger districts hit hardest by the snow -- Naperville Unit District 203 and Indian Prairie Unit District 204 -- remained open, as did Elgin Area School District U-46, Wheaton Warrenville Unit District 200 and Lisle Unit District 202.
When District 203 Superintendent Dan Bridges tweeted early Wednesday morning that Naperville schools would be open, the responses were swift and angry. Even a fake Twitter account attached to Bridges was created.
District 204 tweeted a message early Wednesday morning, advising student drivers to be safe during their commute, that was met by hundreds of responses, many including a #firetalley hashtag to show disapproval for Superintendent Adrian Talley's decision.
District 203 parent Stephanie Raquel, who has a second grader, an eighth grader and a junior at Naperville North High School, chose to put her two younger children on the bus but kept her older daughter at home because she didn't want the inexperienced driver on the road under the wintry conditions.
As a kid who grew up on a farm with six foot drifts blocking the driveway, y’all suburbanites are s-a-w-f-t.
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