Illinois General Assembly OKs $53.1B state budget, but it takes all night

SPRINGRFIELD, Ill. (AP) — The Illinois General Assembly has adopted a $53.1 billion state budget for the year that begins July 1, but it took the House until the break of dawn on Wednesday to get it done.

Constitutional requirements that legislation be read publicly over three days before a vote is held and prompted the House to convene Tuesday for a marathon session lasting into Wednesday. The all-night drama was prolonged when some Democrats, jittery about spending, joined Republicans in denying Democrats a needed majority for a time.

Speaker Pro Tempore Jehan Gordon-Booth of Peoria, the Democrats’ chief budget negotiator, said that no one was getting all they wanted in the deal.

“I truly believe that this budget puts Illinois forward,” Gordon-Booth said. “Because we aren’t going to be about the politics of pitting vulnerable people against one another, we are going to be about the business of lifting all of our people up.”

Democrats hold a 78-40 advantage in the House and managed the minimum 60 votes on a tax package after multiple votes to lock up the proposal.

Earlier in the week, Senate Republicans noted that annual spending has grown $12.8 billion, or 32%, since Pritzker took office in 2019. Pritzker said he would sign the budget into law.

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Republicans complained that Democrats are spending the state into future debt and blasted the acrimony of the final deliberations. Deputy Republican Leader Norine Hammond Macomb said budget-making in the House has become “an exercise in bullying and absolute power” by Democrats.

The plan includes a $350 million increase for elementary and secondary education, as prescribed by a 2017 school-funding overhaul, though a reduction was requested by the state education board in federally mandated school operations. The budget also assigns an additional $75 million for early childhood education, meaning 5,000 more seats, Gordon-Booth said.

The legislation also grants Pritzker’s desire to provide $182 million to fund services for tens of thousands of migrants seeking asylum in the U.S., largely bused to Chicago from Texas, where they cross the border. And it provides $440 million for health care for noncitizens.

It also pays the state’s full obligation to its woefully underfunded pension funds and chips in an additional $198 million to the so-called rainy day fund to for an economic downturn.

Gordon-Booth said the proposal is just 1.6% more than what will be spent this year.

Rep. C.D. Davidsmeyer, a Jacksonville Republican, noted Tuesday that what the Democrats called a balanced budget relied on transfers from dedicated funds, such as shoring up public transit with transfers of $150 million from the road fund and $50 million from a fund set aside for cleaning up leaking underground storage tanks.

“I have a concerns that there are gimmicks in this budget that put us on a path to a giant collision in the future,” Davidsmeyer told Gordon-Booth. “I hope I don’t have to say, ‘I told you so’ when it happens.”

The business tax hikes in particular pushed the General Assembly past its adjournment deadline as lobbyists scrambled to limit the impact. But the spending plan raises $526 million by extending a cap on tax-deductible business losses at $500,000. There’s also a cap of $1,000 per month on the amount retail stores may keep for their expenses in holding back state sale taxes. That would bring in about $101 million.

And there would be $235 million more from increased sports wagering taxes and on video gambling. Pritzker wanted the tax, paid by casino sportsbooks, to jump from 15% to 35%, but it was ultimately set on a sliding scale from 20% to 40%.

Another Pritzker victory came in eliminating the 1% tax on groceries, another of the governor’s inflation-fighting proposals. But because the tax directly benefits local communities, the budget plan would allow any municipality to create its own grocery tax of up to 1% without state oversight.

And those with home-rule authority — generally, any city or county with a population exceeding 25,000 — would be authorized to implement a sales tax up to 1% without submitting the question to voters for approval.