Legislators Want Say Over Federal COVID Money
The empty floor of the Illinois House of Representatives in Springfield.
Some House Republicans say they want the legislature to have more say over how the state spends an expected $7.5 billion in federal relief dollars signed into law this week, but a top Democrat says that’s already the plan.
Rep. Tom Demmer (R-Dixon) says he wants funds to go directly to helping businesses and people hurt by the pandemic, and not government to institute new long-term spending programs with a one-time influx of dollars.
“We think it’s very important that we exercise fiscal restraint through this process, that we think about the people who have been so dramatically impacted by COVID, and that we pass along relief dollars to them,” Demmer said in a Friday news conference. “And that we don’t look to fund new or expanded recurring programs using one-time federal revenue or we’ll find ourselves in a worse situation financially than what we were when we came into this pandemic.”
Demmer says the state should prioritize paying down the $3 billion the state has already borrowed from the federal government then start paying down the state’s estimated $5.4 billion bill backlog.
“If we pay down those bills, if we reduce our backlog, we improve the state’s debt situation, our overall financial picture. We also put money in the pockets of these businesses in Illinois who have been waiting for the state to pay them.”
But, Rep. Mike Zalewski (D-Riverside), Chair of the House Revenue & Finance Committee says he believes the legislature should oversee appropriating the dollars.
“As I mentioned during the committee hearing [this week,] the power to appropriate rests with the Legislature,” Zalewski said. “It’s good to see there’s bipartisan agreement.”
How long that agreement lasts is up for debate, though.
Republicans like Rep. Keith Wheeler (R-Oswego) says the federal money should allow Governor JB Pritzker to roll back his decision to cut off funding to the bi-partisan “Blue Collar Jobs Act,” which provided tax credits for construction projects. Pritzker proposed freezing the plan in his state budget proposal.
But, Demmer says, the legislature should play a role in the way the dollars are spent, criticizing a prior Democratic budget which left much of the appropriating of federal dollars to the Governor.
“We should aggressively use our appropriation power to ensure that specific dollar amounts are allocated to the people who really need them,” he said. “It’s really our choice whether this is COVID relief or whether this is a bailout of a system that was flawed long before anyone ever heard the word COVID.”