Eliminating immigrant spending, boosting education funding top Senate Republican budget priorities

SPRINGFIELD – A day ahead of Gov. JB Pritzker’s annual budget address Wednesday, Senate Republicans said they want budget negotiations to include cuts to noncitizen spending while bringing in “transparent accounting.”

The Governor’s Office of Management and Budget predicts the state would face a $3.2 billion deficit in fiscal 2026 if no changes were made to revenue or spending. Federal pandemic aid is no longer flowing, and tax revenue projections are static.

The new fiscal year will begin July 1.

Senate Republicans want the Pritzker administration to provide more details about how the state has spent money on programs for asylum seekers and undocumented residents. They argue the state has made it difficult to see exactly where resources have been spent.

“We’re unable to do that because of all the workarounds by this administration through executive orders and the state of emergency declarations that are constantly issued,” Senate Minority Leader John Curran, R-Downers Grove, said Tuesday at a Capitol news conference.

Curran was referencing Pritzker’s 30 separate, but altogether similarly worded, emergency declarations made since September 2022 in response to the asylum seekers transported from Texas and southern states to cities around Northern Illinois.

The declarations allow Pritzker to allocate funding for emergency services to cities like Chicago and its suburbs to support asylum seekers. The governor’s most recent declaration related to asylum seekers was filed Jan. 31.

State Sen. Sue Rezin, R-Morris, claimed the declarations were a way for Pritzker to “move money in the shadows,” as lawmakers aren’t sure how much money has been allocated from the budget for disaster declarations.

However, the comptroller’s office has a database showing specific state expenditures on payments processed by the comptroller’s office for asylum seekers beginning in November 2023. Data shows the state has spent $158.7 million on asylum seekers since then.

Senate Republicans said they don’t want taxes raised to fix the shortfall; instead, they want the emergency declarations to stop.

“We’re calling on Gov. Pritzker to not increase taxes on Illinois families and businesses and present a transparent plan of how he intends to address the budget hole,” Rezin said.

Pritzker said in January that increasing taxes to raise revenue would be a “last resort.”

Curran also criticized the Illinois State Board of Education for not releasing $50 million from this year’s budget to fund after school programs.

ISBE said it was waiting on direction about how to release that $50 million, and Democratic lawmakers said they were frustrated by ISBE. In early February, state Rep. Will Guzzardi, D-Chicago, said lawmakers would explore giving ISBE more guidance to ensure the money is released.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.