“In his address, Gov. Pritzker highlighted that the budget includes the ‘full required pension payments,’ which amounts to $9.3 billion. These payments are based upon a pension funding scheme so outrageous that an SEC official called it a ‘balloon payment on steroids.'”

“Restaurants that have liquor licenses that ultimately couldn’t use those liquor licenses because they were closed, shouldn’t be charged the full fee for the year because if you can’t use a license, you shouldn’t be charged for it,” said Mike Whatley, of the National Restaurant Association.

“They spent your future. And voters approved by voting them in again and again. So, blaming Madigan alone lets all of us off the hook. Politics now in Illinois is about herding the people, using their emotions as the shepherd’s goad.”

“If they’re able to make appointments, that’s great and we welcome them,” Sangamon County Public Health Director Gail O’Neill said. She said of the 10,000 appointments booked this week, the majority are from Sangamon County. But of those, 413 are people from Cook County, 209 from DuPage.

“As a person whose career is marked by a passion to be guided by science, I marvel at the speed of this timeline. But as the director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, I’ve long since put such sentiment behind me to focus on the task at hand: steering our great state through the many months between today and August as we wait for the national vaccine supply to match demand.”

In a letter released Friday by the White House, the mayors and groups representing nearly 1,300 municipalities warned that “without local recovery, there is no national economic recovery.”

Gov. JB Pritzker said that a wide supply of vaccine doses and widespread inoculation is crucial to entering Phase 5 of the state’s reopening plan.

“Illinois is one of only six states that imposes a sales tax on all motor fuels, so that already makes us very uncompetitive when it comes to the motor fuel market,” said Josh Sharp, CEO of the Illinois Fuel and Retail Association.

Said Catholic Conference of Illinois’ Zach Wichmann, “It’s allowed individuals to donate to a program, the only state program that’s serving low-income and working-class families’ kids, to allow them to choose whatever school they want, whatever school is best for them, and in the middle of this pandemic, honestly, the schools that have been in five days a week, everyday since August for in-person learning. It’s an important program that should be expanded, not restricted.”

“Part of the basis of his power has always been him raising money and then distributing it in terms of supporting candidates,” said Kent Redfield, longtime politics observer.

The weak recovery Illinois is currently grappling with was anticipated. That is because COVID-19 and state-mandated mitigation measures disproportionately affected those who couldn’t work from home and struggle most to find steady employment: workers with fewer years of schooling along with women and minorities who already tend to earn less than other workers and are less likely to have strong labor market attachment.

Because of a pension sweetener for politicians that Madigan helped create, the former speaker’s pension will spike more than $66,000 the year after his first full year of retirement, then grow 3% each year thereafter.

Job growth in Illinois during the Madigan era was nearly half the growth rate experienced by the nation as a whole. In contrast, the Illinois state income tax rate has risen by 98%, thanks to multiple tax hikes shepherded to enactment over the years by Madigan, to 4.95% today.

Theresa Gilbert, a Professor of Composition and Literature for Rock Valley College, says this could spark more diverse conversations at home with parents. “They can open your eyes, they can broaden your perspective, they can give you an opportunity to really think about yourself, about others and the world in which you live.”

“What Wednesday’s speech attempted to do was define his eventual Republican opponent as the boogeyman of state government who, like Bruce Rauner, is to blame for all of the state’s ills.”

More than 600 district superintendents across the state also signed onto the waiver application. “We believe that bringing students back in-person only to immediately begin state assessments will have a very harmful effect on their social-emotional wellbeing, mental health, and more importantly their re-connection with the school community,” said State Superintendent Carmen Ayala.

“There are words, and there are deeds. And historically, Illinois citizens and taxpayers have been misled by years and years of claims to “balanced budgets,” even as Illinois accumulated massive many-billions-of-dollars-worth of unfunded debt obligations.”

“Truly, until schools are back in a new normal type of setting, and children are seeing doctors again and dentists, and they’re getting out and returning to sports and other places where they have contact with adults other than their parents — until that new normal comes, it’s going to be very difficult to know exactly what the impact of COVID was,” DCFS Chief of Staff Jassen Strokosch said.

Truth in Accounting is leading an effort to adopt stronger standards; It wants the board to adopt what it calls FACT-based accounting – Full Accrual Calculations and Techniques. Using this method “would mean that the financial statements used for budgeting must show expenses as they are incurred, especially when a government makes a promise to pay in the future.”

Despite that staggering cost, Illinois is farther behind than ever, with total unfunded liability in the state’s pension funds of $141 billion, up $3.8 billion, or 2.8 percent, since last year. The reason why is that the state still isn’t contributing what is actuarially required just to tread water. In fact, it continues to sweeten some benefits, that on top of the 3 percent compounded cost of living hike that most workers get annually.

Acting Director of IDES, Kristin Richards said, “We’re working with federal partners to develop a process for how those individuals may request a waiver. The federal law does require us to adjudicate all of those matters on a case-by-case basis.”