Gov. J.B. Pritzker touts higher education funding to kick off tour promoting state budget
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Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Wednesday kicked off a statewide tour to promote the $50.6 billion budget passed by lawmakers days earlier, with a focus on increased higher education funding during a stop at the University of Illinois at Springfield campus.
Pritzker said the budget allows for “nearly every student” from a working-class family to attend community college for free and it sets aside an additional $100 million for Monetary Award Program grant funding for college scholarships.
“This is a program that already makes it possible for nearly 42% of UIS’ student body to get a college education and with this new investment, more aid will go to more students than ever before,” Pritzker said. “Getting a college or university degree shouldn’t strap you with debt for the rest of your life.”
Pritzker has yet to sign the spending plan, which was passed by the state House early Saturday in a party-line vote after being approved by the Senate two days earlier.
The legislature was scheduled to adjourn a week earlier, but differences among Democrats over spending priorities, including how to deal with a state-funded health care program for noncitizens whose costs have ballooned, sent the spring session into overtime.
Pritzker has said the final budget hewed closely to the proposal he introduced in February, when he focused on education. On Wednesday, he touted investments that include about $2.8 billion for university and community college infrastructure. He said over $686 million in capital funding was going to the University of Illinois system, including to UIS.
He thanked three Springfield-area lawmakers — two of whom voted against the budget. State Sen. Doris Turner was one of three Democrats in her chamber to vote “no” on the spending plan. Freshman Republican state Rep. Michael Coffey sided with his party in opposition.
“Even sometimes when we disagree on things, no one is disagreeable, and we come to find that there are an awful lot of things that we can get done for this great capital city of Springfield,” Pritzker said.
Speaking to reporters at the event, Coffey said he was against the 5.5% pay raises for rank-and-file lawmakers that the Democratic supermajority put in the budget, which takes effect July 1 once it is signed by Pritzker. He also noted the perennial dissatisfaction among Republicans with how the spending plan was put together. “I think a lot of the people in the House felt that they weren’t included in some of the negotiations,” he said.
Other parts of the budget previously highlighted by the governor’s office include an increase of $85 million to support homelessness prevention, affordable housing and other programs related to those efforts. The upcoming budget would also include an additional $200 million to the state’s underfunded pension plans on top of the $9.8 billion required under state law.
The more than 3,400-page budget includes a $20 million investment in a new program to expand grocery access to urban neighborhoods and rural towns, and $30 million for a fund that distributes money to police departments for body cameras and squad car dashboard camera systems.
Another $15 million would be also set aside for grants associated with a youth summer jobs program, geared toward young people in Chicago and other urban areas. There would be a roughly $112 million increase in the share of state income tax revenue distributed to local governments, partially satisfying a request from some suburban mayors, as well as new Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.
In response to another request from Johnson, the budget would provide $42.5 million to aid migrants arriving from the country’s southern border. But that money would be available to counties and towns statewide rather than only Chicago.
The upcoming budget would set aside $2.1 billion for the Illinois Department of Corrections, an increase of $221 million from the current year.
While Democratic Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias’ office requested $200 million to upgrade its information technology infrastructure, the budget allocates $25 million to start that process.
