While Gov. J.B. Pritzker plans a budget address hoping to tout a minimum wage hike for eworkers, his administration couldn’t immediately say when the increased taxpayer costs would be calculated.

The Chicago Tribune reports the additional taxpayer cost for state government employee minimum wage hikes in the last half of Fiscal 2020, if the proposed increase from $8.25 to $9.25 kicks in next January, would be more than $80 million. The following year’s taxpayer cost would be nearly $270 million. That does not include the additional cost to taxpayers of minimum wage hikes for local government employees, or the cost

The bill is backed by education unions that will benefit from a minimum requirement for class time when they negotiate teacher contracts.

But what planet?

Welcoming 1,000 new residents a day, and explaining why they are coming (at the 5:04 mark). Maybe Pritzker will start his by saying goodbye to those who left Illinois, and enlightening us about why.

“Politicians in the scandal-ridden state of Illinois are notoriously untrustworthy. So it’s ironic that state legislators next year (November 2020) probably will propose a state constitutional amendment that asks voters, in effect, ‘How much do you trust us?’

If all goes as Gov. J.B. Pritzker plans, the query will come in the form of a proposed amendment asking voters if they wish to replace the current flat-tax mandate in the Illinois Constitution with a progressive one that allows levying ever-higher tax rates on rising levels of income.

Gov. Pritzker, remember the words of your colleague, the governor of New York: “Tax the rich. Tax the rich. Tax the rich. We did that. God forbid the rich leave.”