“But what more can we learn from what the senators and representatives themselves said about the bills? Their comments are quite instructive, as, repeatedly, they deem bills ‘paid for’ solely because there exists a plan to fund them by future generations, and they congratulate themselves for their willingness to provide additional benefits to public employees.”

“All Gov. Pritzker wants to do is throw money at something that may or may not work years down the road,” state Sen. Chapin Rose said. “Republicans want to take violent criminals off the streets today.”

Illinois Manufacturers’ Association President and CEO Mark Denzler said, “The business community has called for using federal dollars for a long time now. Thirty-eight states across the county have done that. Illinois is one of only 10 states I believe that still have an unemployment insurance debt.”

Josh Sharp with the Illinois Fuel and Retail Association said the state is getting more than $2 billion in motor fuel tax revenue a year from the state’s taxes. “You could simply reduce the sales tax right now, which is 5%, or you could also do something to stop all of the other tax pyramiding that goes on top of that.”

The General Assembly passed Tier 3 plans during the fiscal year 2018 budget process. A technical error left an implementation date out of the language, and it hasn’t been corrected since. Lawmakers could fix this oversight for fiscal year 2023, which begins July 1, 2022.

House Bill 5276 would let local voters petition for a ballot referendum to dissolve a unit of government, giving citizens direct control over how many layers of government they want. Illinois is home to more than 6,000 units of local government, excluding school districts, which is ­nearly 1,000 more than Indiana, Iowa and Kentucky combined.

Darronte Reggans, 33, filed a total of 296 claims using other people’s names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and other personal information without their knowledge, prosecutors said. The fraudulent claims sought at least $3.6 million in benefits, and IDES paid out about $174,000 prosecutors said.

“In his budget address, Governor JB Pritzker suggested that people who questioned his plan and statements are carnival barkers. If that is true then carnival barkers include basic mathematicians, the state’s pension systems’ actuaries, SEC officials and those who drafted the state’s latest bond offering.”

This year, the governor plans to increase the state’s education general fund by $498.1 million — a 5.4% increase — for an overall budget of $9.7 billion. This will add $350.2 million to the formula that disperses funding through a tier system and property tax relief grants to the state’s K-12 school districts. Illinois lawmakers will make the final call on the state’s budget at the end of the session.

State Sen. Jason Barickman said “middle-class families deserve permanent tax relief…That drives both families and businesses out of state…They grow year after year. We have an opportunity to do something about that at the state level. The governor recognized this in his budget, but his solution is temporary in nature,” said Barickman.

“One of the things I like is we will be addressing healthcare disparities, ensuring economic viability by retaining and creating jobs, investing in small businesses, which is the backbone of our local economies, supporting education,” said Rep. Nick Smith.

Not surprisingly, there’s a partisan difference on that question. So I ran it by two independent fiscal watchdogs, Civic Federation President Laurence Msall, and Taxpayers’ Federation of Illinois President Carol Portman. Their verdict: though challenges remain and a few asterisks need to be explained, the budget is pretty darn good, certainly a lot better than taxpayers might have expected a year ago.

The state’s unpaid bill backlog, which climbed to $16.7 billion during the budget impasse between former Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and Democratic leaders of the General Assembly, now sits at about $2.9 billion.

Mark Konkol: “As I watched, it seemed that Pritzker rules over an imaginary version of Illinois, and wants us to believe we live there, too.”