* Click here, here or here to watch the governor’s budget address. Click here to read the address in full. Click here for the budget briefing issued by the governor’s office this morning. Some excerpts…

Closing the FY2022 Projected Deficit

FY2021 and FY2022 General Funds Revenues Summary

✓ Base General Funds revenues are estimated to total $41.7 billion, a $226 million, or 0.5%, increase from FY21 revised base estimates.
✓ Total General Funds revenues for FY22 reflect a $1,772 billion, or 4.1% decrease from FY21 due to the one- time nature of the $1,998 million in MLF borrowing.
✓ Individual income taxes are forecasted to be below FY21 due to the extension of the April 2020 tax filing deadline to July 2020 – in FY21.
✓ Revenues from adult-use cannabis are expected to generate $69 million for transfer to the General Funds in FY22.
✓ Federal revenue forecast equals $3,971 million, a reduction from FY21 due to only a half year of enhanced Medicaid match.
✓ FY22 revenue forecast benefits from proposed closure of several tax loopholes.

FY2021 and FY2022 General Funds Expenditures Summary

✓Proposed FY22 General Funds operating expenditures total $30.0 billion, a $4.2 million decrease from FY21.
✓The proposed budget reflects full payment of the certified FY22 pension contribution.
✓Total FY22 General Funds expenditures are $41.6 billion, a $1.8 billion (4.2%) decrease from FY21.
✓ Estimated FY22 budgetary surplus of $120 million.

Closing Corporate Loopholes – “Off the Top” Expenditures of State Tax Dollars

Efficient and Effective Government

✓State Employee and Retiree Health Care Savings – the administration has negotiated over $900 million in health care cost savings.
✓ Estimated $650 million in collectively- bargained cost savings with employees through FY23.
✓ An additional $260 million in savings achieved through negotiated insurance rates and contract terms with providers.
✓Agency Efficiency Savings –
✓ Electronic and web-based alternatives to save postage and paper.
✓ Merging anti-fraud program at Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission with anti-fraud unit at Department of Insurance.
✓ $10 million in reductions to contractual and commodities appropriations at the Department of Corrections.
✓ Optimizing the State Workforce – Since 2002, the state’s workforce is down >22%. ✓ Agencies carefully manage on-board headcount.
✓ Approximately 5,000 current vacancies.

Higher Education
Provides Stability to Our Colleges and Universities
Supports college affordability and focuses on closing equity gaps in Illinois education.

✓ Increases Monetary Award Program (MAP) funding to protect awards for current students – $28 million
✓ Maintains general funds state support for ✓ Universities – $1.157 billion
✓ Community Colleges – $249.5 million
✓ Adds first annual payment to stabilize College Illinois – $20 million
✓ Funds the Common Application Partnership Program – $1 million
✓ Provides funding to help implement the new equity-driven strategic plan for higher education institutions – $250,000
✓ Federal assistance through Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF) will go directly to higher education institutions.

Investing in Economic Development – Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity:

✓ Includes funding from the Federal Emergency Rental Assistance Program to execute rental and housing assistance programs through IHDA and DHS – $570 million
✓ Continues funding to support entrepreneurs and communities harmed by the decades-long war on drugs with the Cannabis Social Equity Loan Program – $18 million
✓ Invests in broadband deployment to maximize all opportunities for federal funding – $25 million
✓ Supports the administration of the Illinois Works Jobs Program Act- $2 million
✓ Reappropriates capital funding to provide competitive matching grants that expand access to high-speed broadband internet across the state – $375 million
✓ Continues competitive grant funding to provide infrastructure improvements, such as street, highway, bridge, park district and recreation improvements to benefit local communities – $202 million
✓ Reappropriates Minority-Owned Small Business Capital Grant funding to allow DCEO to continue equipping small, minority- owned businesses and community organizations with the resources to create jobs, build capacity, increase revenues and expand regionally – $25 million
✓ Includes a reappropriation for competitive capital grant funding to fund economic development opportunities including the Shovel Ready Sites Program, opportunity zone investments, development of wet lab space and targeted investments in economically depressed areas – $303 million

*** UPDATE 1 *** The FY22 budget book is here.

Also, from the acknowledgements…

Historical research for Governor Pritzker’s remarks came by way of a broad coalition of libraries and archives from around the state. The story of Hallie Staley Kinter was documented in a 1977 oral history interview available from the Oral History Collection of the University of Illinois at Springfield. In no particular order, the Governor’s Office offers its gratitude to:

• Hallie Staley Kinter Memoir, Oral History Collection, Archives/Special Collections, Norris L Brookens Library, University of Illinois Springfield
• Chicago Public Library Archives and Special Collections
• Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum
• STORIED, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Office of the Vice Chancellor for Institutional Advancement
• Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library
• Curtis Mann and the Sangamon Valley Collection at Lincoln Library
• McLean County Museum of History
• Illinois State Library
• Illinois Digital Archives
• Illinois Department of Agriculture
• Illinois Department of Public Health
• The Mahomet Daily
• Mauricio Peña/Block Club Chicago
• Frank O. Lowden Papers, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library
• Chicago Magazine
• Chicago History Museum
• The Midway Village Museum via the Rockford Register Star
• The Kankakee County Museum Photo Archive via the Daily Journal

*** UPDATE 2 *** Tribune story is up…

In his prepared remarks, Pritzker blistered Republicans nationally and locally for seeking to block further federal assistance to states, saying, “In essence, they eliminated the fire department, burned down the house and poured gas on the flames — and now they’re asking why we’re not doing more to prevent fires.”

“In a normal year, I might have more patience for their hypocrisy. But this is not a normal year,” he said. Of Republicans refusing to offer up proposed budget cuts, Pritzker said, “Apparently their idea of bipartisanship ends when hard choices must be made.”

The third spending plan offered by Pritzker in his term in office, along with his view of the state of the state, comes at a critical time for the Democratic governor, setting the stage for an expected 2022 reelection campaign in which his pandemic restrictions are expected to become a central theme. The governor has faced an increasingly restless audience of voters and lawmakers despite a state COVID-19 death toll of more than 20,000.

Please. He should be so lucky if his restrictions become a central theme. They’re popular. It’s the mistakes and blunders that will likely be a problem, including the veterans’ home mass die-off.