Also around that time, Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security, or CARES Act, which sent roughly $3.5 billion in relief money to the state. But lawmakers generally left it up to the Pritzker administration to decide how to spend those funds.

That was due, in part, to the fact that federal rules put strict limits on how it could be spent. But it was also because the General Assembly itself all but shut down its own operations until late May when it reconvened for an abbreviated four-day session to pass some essential legislation, including a state budget.

But the state is expected to have considerably more flexibility in deciding how to spend the latest round of relief funding because much of it is intended to replace the revenue losses that state and local governments around the country suffered as a result of the pandemic.

In a separate interview Thursday, however, Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza said officials should not get too excited over the sudden influx of federal money.

“I think that, the first thing to keep in mind is that the majority of that money is spoken for, I do believe that,” Mendoza said. “As soon as we get that, the first thing that we should spend that stimulus money on is to pay back the money that we borrowed from the Federal Reserve for the state’s COVID and other medical expenses.”