Metro East Sun

Assistant Republican Leader C.D. Davidsmeyer (R-Jacksonville) raised a red flag on the budget bill and argued about the Democrats’ lack of transparency.

Echoing his party’s sentiment, Davidsmeyer said in a news conference that the bill contains a lot of errors including how it was crafted, presented, and voted on.

“We've been notified about the other problems within the budget,” he said. “You know, as my colleague said, the working groups work behind the scenes and they make up random cuts to the budget, they'll say, 'well let’s cut 5% across the board' and they do that because they know that the speaker is not going to actually use those numbers. They are crafting behind the scenes and I will say the reason why they don't want transparency in this process is not because they're worried about the minority party supporting, they're worried about their own members coming up with reasons not to support bad budgets.”

He alleged that the majority manipulated the system.

“They didn't have an open process, it's absolutely ridiculous that we're sitting here even discussing that. And now they're even talking about changing the way they vote because they screwed up the budget,” Davidsmeyer said. “They're talking about having remote voting because their members can't even show up to vote for the budget, which is the number-one job for the state legislature. So, not being able to show up is absolutely ridiculous, and changing the rules to allow for remote voting on something this important is absolutely crazy. We know we are better than this, we should be better than this, we owe the people of the state of Illinois much better than this.”

According to Davidsmeyer, his Taxpayers’ Fiscal Charter (House Bill 2441), would require transparency on budget proposals unlike what happened to Senate Bill 2800.

“This reiterates the need, and I've been filing a bill for about 5 or 6 years now that requires the budget to be posted online for at least 72 hours prior to any vote,” he said. “When I was on the Jacksonville City Council, we always had two votes on our budget. We had a vote and then two weeks later at our normal meeting we would have another vote. That allowed the general public to come in and view the budget.”

Davidsmeyer also said that “Illinois Democrats continue to use the word ‘transparency’ while doing the exact opposite.”

Gov. J.B. Pritzker proposed that Senate Bill 2800 “upon becoming law, except that Articles 25 through 129, Articles 137 through 173, and Article 997 take effect July 1, 2021," and the bill would have his approval if the changes will be concurred upon by the legislators

Both Democratic-controlled Houses accepted the governor’s amendatory veto.