Reps. Fritts, McCombie address top priorities for 2025 at joint tele-town hall

DIXON — State Reps. Brad Fritts, R-Dixon, and Tony McCombie, R-Savanna, discussed their priorities for the 2025 legislative session Monday night while answering questions from their districts' constituents during a telephone-based town hall.

The top priorities for Fritts and McCombie include improving rural health care, implementing term limits for legislative leaders, cutting spending and opposing tax increases. A majority of the questions from constituents related to health care, property taxes and the state’s declining population.

Fritts represents the 74th House District, which includes most of Lee County and parts of Whiteside, Ogle, DeKalb and La Salle counties. McCombie represents the 89th House District, which includes Jo Daviess County and parts of Stephenson, Ogle, DeKalb, Winnebago and Carroll counties.

The event was held during a lame-duck session which, in years where they occur, are held after the election and before newly elected lawmakers are sworn into office.

“The House Republicans are opposed to being here when lame-duck should not be the norm,” McCombie said. “This is the time when the legislative body takes up sometimes some sketchy legislation before the new assembly is inaugurated.”

The rural health care shortage

“A really, really big thing for me, especially right now back in our home district, is addressing our rural health care crisis,” Fritts said.

He recalled how two hospitals within his district closed shortly after he started his first term in January 2023.

St. Margaret’s Health in Peru closed Jan. 28, 2023, and not long after, its sister hospital in Spring Valley closed June 16, 2023. Both closures were related to financial issues.

More recently, KSB Hospital in Dixon completed a merger Jan. 1 with OSF HealthCare after long-standing financial troubles.

According to a December 2024 report by the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform, Illinois has 74 rural inpatient hospitals in operation. Of those, 23% lose money on services, 14% are at risk of closing and 8% are at “immediate risk” of closure.

“Every single person that walks through the door of our rural hospitals our hospitals are losing money on and when we represent districts that have an incredibly large amount of our older population and our underserved populations, and that’s a lot of the clientele that walks through. We end up having some serious issues with that,” Fritts said. “A lot of that has to do with our Medicaid reimbursement rate, Medicare and Medicaid.”

Medicare and Medicaid are government-funded health insurance programs. Medicare is a federal program for those aged 65 and older while Medicaid is a joint federal and state program for those who meet certain low-income requirements.

Historically, both programs - and most significantly Medicare - underpay hospitals for the cost of patient care, according to a January 2024 report by the American Hospital Association.

“The rate that Illinois reimburses is really a travesty and a continued problem within our healthcare,” McCombie said.

One caller asked why don’t they ask Gov. JB Pritzker to allocate additional funding for those costs.

McCombie agreed.

“One of the things that’s been a priority for the governor is to actually take our taxpayer dollars and pay for illegal health care,” she said. “We should be taking care of Illinois citizens first.”

High property tax

One caller told Fritts and McCombie “in the state of Illinois we are slaves to our property taxes...it is what is going to drive my wife and I out of this state.”

“As I have events across the district, I hear that over and over and over and over and over again,” Fritts said.

One way that Fritts hopes to lower property taxes is by eliminating unfunded state mandates, he said.

“Unfortunately, here in Springfield, we have a terrible habit of putting unfunded mandates down upon our municipal governments,” Fritts said.

To follow those mandates, the municipalities have to use local funds. If they don’t have enough local funding, they have to increase revenue and one of its only ways to do that is by increasing property taxes, Fritts said.

Another caller asked what voters can do to aid in the efforts to lower taxes.

McCombie said for any piece of legislation constituents can send a letter to their representative or when a bill comes forward constituents can fill out a witness list.

“That is extremely important to do. Your voice does matter,” she said.

Addressing declining population in the districts

Fritts and McCombie said high property taxes and the health care shortage are both factors that contribute to declining population.

“We need to grow our population compared to growing our tax rate,” McCombie said. She also said the state needs to stop spending.

“There’s conversations about taxes on services, taxes on raising your sales tax. That hurts you, and that hurts senior citizens around the state,” McCombie said. She will be advocating for “no new tax.”

“We have five working groups within our caucus that target everything from child care to ethics reform to the economy itself,” Fritts said. “We are coming up with solutions, and we are filing legislation and as there becomes more and more inviting on our colleagues on the other side, we hope that some of those solutions are taken up, and we’re going to continue to advocate and work to make sure that your voice is heard.”

Ethics reform

“The last thing I want to make sure that we stress this next session is ethics reform. Across the state of Illinois, we have had incredibly poor leaders who have made poor ethical decisions for a really long time,” Fritts said.

He referenced former House Speaker Mike Madigan, who is currently on trial at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse.

Madigan was first elected in January 1971, according to the Illinois General Assembly website.

He was indicted March 2, 2022, by a federal grand jury in Chicago on several racketeering and bribery charges, according to a 2022 news release from the United States Attorney’s Office, Northern District of Illinois.

Fritts said Madigan’s nearly 30 years of continuous service contributed to corruption. He said term limits need to be imposed and McCombie agreed.

“We need to make sure, as we move through the next session and moving forward, that we limit our legislative leaders to terms of 10 years, because we need turnover of fresh ideas and to make sure that that series of corruption is able to be ended and new ideas are able to be brought in,” Fritts said.

Residents can contact Fritts’ office at 815-561-3690 or McCombie’s office at 815-291-8989.