On Friday night, the Illinois House of Representatives passed the first of several bills related to the Fiscal Year 2020 (FY20) budget. After the successful House vote on the operating budget bill, SB 262, Steve Reick (R-Woodstock) issued the following statement:
“There are many components of the FY20 budget I support, such as fully funding the evidence-based school funding formula and making our state’s full pension payment. But I voted against this legislation because it’s my opinion that we should not be expanding programs until our backlog of bills is paid.
“The $1.4 billion of addition revenue collected in April should have been applied to debt reduction. We have over $6 billion in unpaid bills, and every day that goes by without paying them is a breach of faith to those we serve.
“Instead, we were told that unless our appropriations committee spent its full allocation of the extra revenue, it would be spread among the other appropriation committees and not applied to the unpaid bills. By spending this extra money on programs, we established a higher baseline for next year’s spending. This is how budgets spin out of control.”
The House will convene on Saturday, June 1 to consider the revenue portion of the budget, the budget implementation bill and several capital improvement bills.
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