West Central Reporter

Sen. Steven McClure (R-Jacksonville) has plenty of issues with Gov. J.B. Pritzker's recent State of the State and budget address.

Patch reports Pritzker’s state budget totals $112.5 billion with $45.5 billion coming from the state’s general revenue fund and the rest ifrom federal funds. Public employee pensions are a large part of the budget.

McClure said that he was bothered by the governor's approach to fighting crime.

“One of the concerning things for me and members of our caucus has been the fact that the governor talked about witness intimidation, however, here's the deal, while the governor says he's going to give money for a program to help hide witnesses – that's fantastic – but at the same time last year in January, at 4:30 in the morning a bill was passed the takes away the ability of law enforcement to detain people in jail on pretrial detention for the offense of witness intimidation.”

McClure said that it’s extremely troubling to release criminals back into the neighborhood to scare witnesses.

“We have to address crime. It's a crisis. Just speaking about it is not enough. The Democrats have to come to the table with Republicans to work on this issue. We're ready to do it, but unfortunately, our side has been totally ignored and we are seeing the terrible results of that throughout the state right now.”

McClure is also worried about how the budget will be funded.

“My concern is that the Biden bucks are going to be up soon. My other concern is the fact that there is $2.5 billion in new spending and temporary tax relief,” he said. “Well, the new spending is now permanent, so how are we going to wrangle that? It's going to be very interesting to vote on the actual budget and I'm going to have a long-term view when I vote on the budget.