SPRINGFIELD, IL…In response to House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch’s announcement temporarily permitting remote voting, State Rep. Steve Reick (R-Woodstock) has issued the following statement:
“Intraparty strife among Democrats has resulted in their inability to come to terms on an energy bill that they’ve been negotiating amongst themselves for months, having never taken Republican and downstate members’ concerns into account. Yet we’ve still been called back to Springfield under the pretense of voting on a so-called ‘climate bill’.
But we have another reason for being in Springfield today. The 3,088-page, $42.3 billion dollar budget that the supermajority Democrats shoved down the throats of hardworking Illinoisans minutes before the midnight deadline on May 31 was so full of drafting errors that the state cannot legally spend the money it appropriates until almost a year from now. Consequently, Gov. Pritzker issued an amendatory veto of the budget yesterday and sent it back to us for approval.
The problem is that there won’t be enough Democrats on hand in the House today to approve his veto and fix the mistakes they themselves made.
But fear not, the Speaker is temporarily amending the House rules to permit remote ‘participation’ in today’s House session. Remote legislating was not permitted in the House chamber throughout the entirety of the COVID-19 pandemic, yet now that the state is fully reopened, the Speaker is allowing its use to cover for rank incompetence.
I’m sure my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who are unable to join us in Springfield today have valid reasons for their absence. After all, this session was scheduled with only one week’s notice. But if you can’t be here, you shouldn’t be able to cast a vote. Any lawmaker not physically under the dome today who chooses to vote remotely is not only committing a dereliction of his or her elected duty but is perpetuating the Speaker’s affront to the legislative process.”
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