Rockford Sun

Illinois state Sen. Dave Syverson (R-Cherry Valley) criticized what he calls the governor's claimed balanced budget and questioned whether it is truly as balanced as Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-IL) claimed it is.

Syverson shared his thoughts about the recently approved and signed 2023-2024 budget in a June 15 Facebook video.

"The Governor and the Democrats have been traveling around the state talking about how they’ve passed this balanced budget, but was it really balanced? There’s creative government budgeting, and then there’s normal household and business budgeting that you and I have to follow," Syverson said in the video. "If we did budgeting like the government did, we’d probably end up in jail. You know, when you do your budgeting, you meet with your accountants and bankers or financial planners and you do an annual budget. In there, you show your annual revenue and your annual expenses. You can’t say, for example, ‘My revenue was $80,000, and my expenses for just six months of the year were $50,000, so you know, I’m ahead.’ No. You can’t say to your banker, ‘Well, my income is $80,000, and if you total most of my expenses, it is $60,000, but there are some expenses we’re not going to include.’"

Gov. Pritzker signed the $50.4 billion expenditure budget ($50.6 billion in revenues) for the fiscal year beginning July 1 on June 7. The State Journal-Register said the budget included investments in homelessness prevention and education but did not include funding that Republicans wanted for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) negotiations.

The paper quoted Pritzker as saying the budget does account for those negotiations. "We built in what we thought might be the appropriate amount of money for what we expect from that AFSCME negotiation," Pritzker said during a ceremony in Chicago, the Journal-Register reported. "So that’s in the budget already," he said. "That’s, you know, once again, one of those false things that Republicans like to say about the budget, but it is in the budget."

Syverson pointed out some areas where he said the budget isn’t balanced. They included starting programs halfway through the year so only half the costs show up, not accounting for possible pay raises under negotiations, and underestimating the cost of healthcare for undocumented citizens.