EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: In a wide-ranging interview with Capitol News Illinois, Gov. JB. Pritzker touted progress in his first seven years but said there’s “more work to do” economically as he ramps up his bid for a third term. We’ll publish further updates throughout the day.
KEY QUOTE: “The point is: we’ve turned this battleship around in the right direction, and now we’re accelerating in that direction,” Pritzker said, talking of Illinois’ economic headwinds. “But remember: Some of these problems took literally 50 and 75 years for Illinois to get into the problem. And it’s going to take a few years to come out of them.”
STATE OF THE STATE: In his State of the State address last month, Pritzker described Illinois’ economy as “remarkably resilient” and “forging ahead toward accelerating growth and expansion.”
But a recent Moody’s Analytics report prepared for the nonpartisan Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability said Illinois’ economy is in “a precarious spot” and would “underperform” the Midwest and nation this year. The report also said wage and job growth would likely remain a few steps behind the region and nation.
REPUBLICAN ATTACKS: Those lagging economic indicators and the state’s relatively high tax burden (the nonpartisan Tax Foundation ranks it 38th in state tax competitiveness) have opened Pritzker up to attacks from Republicans.
Repeating some Pritzkerisms of years past, the governor cast his opponents as “doom grifters” and “carnival barkers” who say “everything is terrible and we’re falling off a cliff.”
“And the truth is, they continue to say that despite the progress that we made,” Pritzker said. “It’s almost like they’re rooting against the state of Illinois.”
“THERE’S MORE WORK TO DO,” Pritzker said. “And I certainly did not suggest… that we’ve gotten to where we want to be, or that we’ve caught up even to the entire United States. But we are doing better than we were when I took office, and it is accelerating in the right direction.”
PRITZKER’S POINTS OF PROGRESS: Despite a hiccup with COVID-19 and notwithstanding present federal uncertainty, Pritzker touts progress: the books are balanced, the bill backlog is gone. The state has also built up the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity and the public-private Illinois Economic Development Corporation to attract businesses in emerging industries like electric vehicles and quantum computing. Illinois’ credit rating, once near junk, has been upgraded 10 times collectively by multiple rating agencies.
Pritzker added: “Illinois was growing at less than half of the growth rate of the nation” when he took office in 2019, with the state bogged down by years of unbalanced budgets, a budget impasse that left more than $17 billion in unpaid bills and weak state-level business attraction efforts.
“We had all these terrible fiscal situations; a long-term, low growth mode of the state and no economic development efforts,” Pritzker said. “So all of that needed to be worked on.”
MORE TO COME: Pritzker also addressed the Bears’ stadium situation, his philosophy for dealing with President Donald Trump and the never-ending speculation about a potential campaign for president in 2028. We’ll have further updates throughout the day and will publish the full interview tomorrow.
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