Chambana Sun

State Rep. Mike Marron (R-Fithian) lambasted the budget process and urged a no vote on Senate Bill 2800 and its amendments.

He compared how budgets are crafted at a county board level — an organized and transparent one, he said, against what is currently being done at the state level.

“This budget process is ridiculous,” Marron said. “I was a county board chairman for four years. There is no government entity in this nation that conducts business like this. This is absurd. We had to put our budget on display for 30 days. If you’re on a city council you have to put your budget on display for two weeks so that the public, the media, the other party can vet it. And you know what? It's a pretty good process. You come to a consensus, you meet the adequate needs of your constituents by doing it that way.”

The state House changed its rules to accept votes cast virtually, which Marron was also against.

“This stuff of cramming things in at the last minute, dropping a 3,000-page budget with hours left to go in the legislative session, amending it at the last minute to provide for legislative pay increases,” Marron said, pointing out the flaws in the process. “It's no wonder people have lost faith in us when we do stuff like that. When we drop life-altering legislation in the middle of the night at the end of a lame-duck session. When we do things like change the rules to allow for remote voting at the end of a pandemic because we can't get members here. We face a crisis of confidence that is tearing at the fabric of our democracy and we need to ask ourselves what role we played in this. Vote no.”

He added that the assembly should reassess how they perform their jobs.

“Every day, I talk to a lot of people,” Marron said. “I talk to my constituents. I talk to people… an overwhelmingly large portion of the people I talk to are mad as hell. They have lost faith. They have lost faith in this body. They lost faith in you. They lost faith in me. They don't believe in the system anymore. And I think when we evaluate where we’re at in June of 2021 and the crisis that we face in confidence and government, we need to take a long look in the mirror in how we conduct business.”

Remote votes on the governor’s amendatory veto were allowed, giving Democrats the minimum number of votes required to pass the bill.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker certified the changes on June 17.

The bill makes appropriations of over $40 billion — for lawmakers’ pay increases and increase taxes on Illinois businesses, according to Republicans.