Illinois budget

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker will include the $10 million ask in his budget proposal for the next fiscal year to erase $1 billion in Illinoisan's medical debt. The investment would mark the first in a multi-year plan.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said the state plan to eliminate preschool deserts had a successful first year and celebrated East Alton-based Wieland Manufacturing's $500 million investment to modernize its facility.

The five-year forecast from the Illinois governor’s budget office indicates Illinois is still facing a structural budget deficit.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker has traveled the state this week to tout the budget’s funding of his Smart Start initiative, a focal point of his 2024 budget aimed at improving access to preschool, increasing funding for child care providers and investing in early childhood facilities.

In his annual budget address, the Illinois governor cautioned against "a virulent strain of nationalism plaguing our nation."

“This budget is nothing more than a campaign tool for Pritzker and the Democratic Party,” Senate Minority Leader Dan McConchie, R-Hawthorn Woods, said.

Illinois lawmakers are considering a clean energy proposal that would force almost all coal-fired plants in the state to close by 2035. The plan has environmental groups excited, but it’s also drawing concern from the municipalities that are stakeholders of plants in downstate Illinois.

While the former Illinois House speaker liked to play gatekeeper, and keep tight control of the agenda, his successor flung those gates open this year — for better or for worse.

This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, June 20, 2010 - The late John Kenneth Galbraith, an economist and Harvard professor who served in…

When out campaigning, Governor Bruce Rauner has been making big claims about lowering taxes. But there was little follow-through in Wednesday's budget...