Mark Brown: “Even with the paltry six-month limit (on lobbying), Illinois legislators gave themselves a gaping loophole. The six-month ban doesn’t extend into the next legislative session. Which means lawmakers can leave office at the end of their term and start work as lobbyists the next day, when the new two-year session starts. It makes you wonder why they set a limit at all, except for the obvious reason: They wanted the public to think they did something.”

“Why should this be incredibly important to my democratic friends on the other side of the aisle? You are constantly proposing spending programs, social programs, healthcare programs,” state Rep. Martin McLaughlin said.

“(W)e were happy to see the new budget includes the commitment of another $350 million to shift the state’s education funding model away from property taxes. For an area like ours, where there is such an imbalance in the property tax burden between Iowa and Illinois, this is no small thing.”

Illinois Chamber of Commerce President Todd Maisch also criticized the lack of money for the unemployment trust fund and decreased tax credits. But, he did praise lawmakers’ decision to include paying down debt in the budget. “And that is a good idea, we have to go ahead and reinforce that,” Maisch said. “Wherever you are on the political spectrum, paying down debt is a really important concept.”

“But there’s one problem that bailout and extra revenue could not hide. An estimated 30 percent of the budget is intended for the state’s five public pension funds — teachers, judges, state employees, university employees and legislators…This, of course, is not sustainable because spending on pensions is crowding out money needed for core state programs, like education, law enforcement and social services. Unfortunately, legislators have proven over the years that the pensions problem is easily ignorable, and ignore it again they did this year.”

Jim Dey: “Illinois Auditor General Frank Mautino — whose job it is to act as a watchdog over state spending — is pretty much off the hook when it comes to explaining over $500,000 in campaign spending. Are there no records to check? They were conveniently destroyed.”

The money will go to the Illinois Council of Convention and Visitors Bureaus. It’s part of the CARES Act Recovery Assistance Grant.

In Illinois, 13.8% of the workforce are employed by the government — either at the state, local, or federal level — the ninth lowest share of all states.

Much of this controversy could have been avoided had the Illinois Constitution been amended to take redistricting out of the hands of lawmakers and put in the hands of an independent redistricting commission. Fifteen states have already established such commissions for legislative redistricting, some with positive results.