SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WCIA) — Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza sat down with Capitol Bureau Chief Cole Henke on Capitol Connection to give some insight on the upcoming budget address.
Mendoza said she believes Governor J.B. Pritzker will rise to the challenge of presenting a balanced budget at his address Wednesday despite a $3.2 billion projected deficit. That job is made much harder due to federal funding freezes from President Donald Trump’s administration.
"I think it’s significantly going to be worse given what we expect could happen at the federal level of potentially freezing federal funds in future budgets," Mendoza said. "We saw the panic that ensued recently when we were locked out of the Medicaid system for almost the entirety of the day by not just us, but across the country."
"It thankfully got back up and running and they said that Medicaid was off the table for now in terms of being frozen," she added. "But these are real moments of unpredictability, of chaos that get thrown into budgets across America. And certainly here we’re concerned about the one in Illinois."
The comptroller also characterized Wednesday, when a jury found former Illinois Speaker of the House Mike Madigan guilty on 10 criminal counts, as "another sad day in Illinois’s history."
"No matter how long you’re in office, no matter how powerful you become, no matter how untouchable you think you might be, this type of illegal behavior can and hopefully will catch up with people," Mendoza said. "And accountability will be given to the taxpayers."
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February 17, 2025 at 10:29PM
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