HAPPY THANKSGIVING
Wishing you a very happy and blessed Thanksgiving from my family to yours!
UPCOMING EVENTS
Rep. Spain hosting Annual Veterans Resources Fair Dec. 2. State Representative Ryan Spain is hosting his second annual Veterans Resources Fair for constituents on Monday, December 2, at the Bureau County Metro Center in Princeton.
The free fair will offer helpful guides, literature and other resources from a variety of local organizations, as well as state, county and local government agencies. The fair will also feature a door prize raffle for attendees.
Staff members from Rep. Spain’s office will also be available to assist constituents with state government concerns.
Monday, December 2
10 a.m. to Noon
Bureau County Metro Center
837 Park Ave W
Princeton, IL 61356
Rep. Spain is also seeking feedback from veterans about how the State of Illinois can improve services for the veteran community. Please visit RepRyanSpain.com and select “Veterans Survey” under the “Resources” tab at the top of the website to complete a brief survey or Click Here.
Rep. Spain launches 7th Annual Holiday Diaper Drive to support local families. State Representative Ryan Spain invites constituents to spread some holiday cheer to families in need this year by donating to his annual Holiday Diaper Drive. The holiday season is a time of joy as we come together with family and friends, but for some families, it can be a time of uncertainty as they struggle to meet basic needs. Diapers, baby wipes and diaper cream are some of the most sought-after items for young families.
“Nearly 1 in 2 families in the U.S. struggle to afford diapers, but programs like WIC and SNAP do not cover diapers and many other items families need to care for a baby,” said Spain. “Many families in need turn to local food pantries in times of need, but with such high demand, it’s often difficult for our local food pantries to keep up with the need for diapers, wipes and cream. This annual diaper drive has become a way for us to help fill the gap as the holiday season approaches so families can sleep a little easier. I hope those who are able will consider donating to help us spread some extra cheer this year.”
Donations are being accepted now through December 11. Donations may be delivered in-person or shipped directly to Rep. Spain’s Peoria office. Donations may also be made using the Amazon wish list.
Drop off or ship donations to: 5407 N. University St., Arbor Hall, Suite B, Peoria, IL 61614
(Remote drop off location open on Wednesday’s 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.: Rep. Tony McCombie Office, 9317B IL Rt 84, Savanna, IL 61074)
Drive-Thru Donation Event:
December 11, 2024
10 a.m. to 12 p.m.
Illinois Central College North Campus – Arbor Hall
5407 N. University St., Peoria, IL 61614
All donations will be distributed to local food and diaper pantries in our 73rd House District. For a list of participating pantries, Click Here.
If you would like to host a remote donation site at your church, business or organization, or if you have any questions, please contact Rep. Spain’s office at 309-690-7373.
BUDGET
House Republicans: irresponsible budgeting by the supermajority has led to a $3.2 billion deficit. Illinois House Republicans are reacting to the Pritzker Administration’s announcement of a $3.2 billion projected budget deficit for FY26. The lawmakers have repeatedly voiced concerns about the state’s budget process, especially for the past fiscal year which relied on gimmicks and tax hikes amid the Majority Party’s continued failure to manage state finances responsibly.
Despite raising taxes by $1 billion in FY25, the Administration is now scrambling to address a staggering deficit by asking state agencies to propose cuts to programs and operations. While this outcome could have been avoided had the Majority Party exercised fiscal discipline and listened to repeated concerns voiced by House Republican lawmakers. Instead, they relied on temporary federal windfalls from the COVID-19 pandemic and other non-repeatable revenue sources to prop up unsustainable spending priorities.
“House Republicans support the ongoing budget review process led by the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget (GOMB),” said House Minority Leader Tony McCombie. “However, we urge the Administration to share the results of these exercises transparently with legislators and appropriation committees. For too long, the Majority Party has shielded critical budget details, preventing lawmakers from making informed decisions about how to address these challenges.”
Major cost drivers in recent budgets have been Medicaid expansions including free healthcare for migrants, increased funding for K-12 education, expanded early childhood and afterschool programs, public safety reforms under the SAFE-T Act, human services programs, and the rising costs of group health insurance and the AFSCME contract. While many of these initiatives address real needs, they were implemented without a long-term plan to pay for them.
“For years, House Republicans have warned that the Majority Party’s insatiable appetite for spending would outpace the state’s revenue growth,” said Deputy Minority Leader Ryan Spain. “These warnings were dismissed by the Governor, who resorted to name-calling, labeling us ‘carnival barkers’ and ‘doom grifters.’ Yet, the fiscal reality we cautioned against has now come to pass.”
The uphill battle this year’s budget presents is nothing new for House Republicans, who have repeatedly voiced concerns about state spending, the expansion of new programs, and the lack of transparency in budget processes.
“It is clear that the supermajority’s reckless spending practices have caught up with them, leaving taxpayers to shoulder the burden of their mismanagement,” said Deputy Minority Leader and House Budgeteer Norine Hammond. “Moving forward, Illinois needs a budgeting process that prioritizes fiscal responsibility and transparency—not one built on political expediency and budgetary sleights of hand.”
According to Assistant Deputy Leader and House Budgeteer Amy Elik, “Republicans specifically called out the gimmicks used to balance the FY25 budget. Those included using FY24 surplus funds to cover FY25 Medicaid liabilities, diverting Road Fund dollars to cover General Revenue Fund (GRF) costs, and relying on one-time Personal Property Replacement Tax (PPRT) revenues. These irresponsible practices have created the fiscal cliff we now face.”
As legislative veto session concluded in the Illinois House, lawmakers will now return to the legislature for the Lame Duck Session early next year.
MADIGAN TRIAL
Mike McClain’s “magic lobbyist list” presented to jurors in Madigan criminal trial. McClain, a former close associate of Michael J. Madigan, is on trial with the former Illinois House Speaker in federal court in Chicago. Madigan and McClain have been charged with a variety of crimes relating to influence peddling. These charges include allegations that Madigan and McClain “clouted” their allies and associates into leadership positions in other key Illinois entities, such as Chicago-based electricity distributor ComEd. On Tuesday, November 19, former ComEd board member Juan Ochoa testified to the court about how, as a Madigan ally, he had won appointment to the governing board of ComEd.
In courtroom action on Monday, November 18, the jurors got to see printed emails from McClain’s home office, which had been raided by the FBI in May 2019. McClain, then a powerful lobbyist and Madigan insider, was actively searching for clients and his emails sold himself as a gatekeeper with ultimate access to Speaker Madigan.
“I don’t roam the [State Capitol] halls like I used to,” McClain admitted, but he claimed that his clout was as big as ever. As proof, the email contained a sealed list, which McClain referred to as a “magic lobbyist list” of influencers associated with McClain and Madigan. Acting as Madigan’s informal aide, McClain wrote down a claim that he had helped these “magic lobbyists” gain special entry into the Speaker’s office.
Once there, these lobbyists could help write the future laws of Illinois, and block bills that their clients did not like. The case being made by the federal prosecution in this trial includes allegations that these lobbyists included high-ranking representatives of ComEd, whose leadership had allegedly been drawn into the Madigan orbit. This orbit included associated control over Illinois electricity generation, distribution, and rates.
GENERAL ASSEMBLY
Illinois General Assembly concludes quiet veto session. House Republicans, led by Tony McCombie and her leadership team, took the November 2024 veto session as an opportunity to welcome new lawmakers to the Illinois State Capitol. These included newly elected state representatives who will take the oath of office in the 104th General Assembly in January 2025.
Little legislative action was taken during the recently concluded Veto Session. Governor Pritzker and the Democratic supermajority punted controversial legislative proposals to the January lame-duck session of the current General Assembly.
Following the adjournment of legislative veto session in the Illinois House, House Minority Leader Tony McCombie issued the following statement:
“We do not need more time for out-of-touch Democrats to dream up harmful legislation. We need bipartisan legislation that focuses on the issues Illinois families care about most. Until the Democrat majority can get their priorities in order, the House Republicans oppose a Lame Duck session.”
CORRECTIONS
Republican Lawmakers Want Answers on IDOC Drug Exposures. State Representative Charlie Meier joined State Representatives David Friess and Bill Hauter to address growing concerns on harmful substances entering Illinois Department of Corrections facilities across Illinois.
“We should be taking every step necessary to protect our prison workers and inmates,” said Rep. Meier. “We’ve requested a hearing to address these concerns, and they’ve been ignored.”
“Until we can figure out what’s going on, we should pause the physical mail process,” Meier suggested. “Our constituents who work in these facilities are telling us that part of the problem is physical mail. Let’s have a hearing and figure out what is going on and how these substances are entering our prisons.”
Meier called out IDOC Acting Director Latoya Hughes, who has not yet been confirmed as Director. “I’m calling on Acting Director Hughes to join me at any one of the facilities that have experienced these drug exposures. Together, her and I will go through the mail. If she is confident that the drugs are coming in elsewhere, she should have no problem doing this with me. At the very least, she owes it to the citizens of Illinois to provide some answers and solutions to this issue, preferably through a committee hearing. It’s imperative that this hearing takes place before Acting Director Hughes’ confirmation hearing.”
The prison workers and inmates in Reps. Meier, Friess, and Hauter’s districts are not the only ones who are being exposed. When exposure to these unknown substances occurs, healthcare workers, family members, and other innocent individuals are at risk.
“At the end of the day, no matter how these drugs and substances are entering our facilities, we need answers and solutions. Why won’t Acting Director Hughes work with us to get to the bottom of this? All we want to do is keep our constituents safe,” Meier noted.
FIREARMS
Atty. Gen. Raoul asks appellate court to stay federal ruling striking down firearms ban. The decision by federal District Judge Stephen McGlynn found that the so-called “Protect Illinois Communities Act,” a January 2023 law that purports to ban almost all private-sector possessions of certain groups of firearms and ammunition supplies in Illinois, is unconstitutional. The 168-page decision struck down the law in its entirety, citing various case judgements from the United State Supreme Court and other courts that draw broad boundaries around the “right to bear arms” enshrined in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
As with all federal district court decisions in Illinois, the decision can be appealed to the Seventh Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals, the Chicago-based federal appellate court. Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, a Democrat, has filed an appeal. His appeal supports the law and opposes the judicial decision. As a move affiliated with the overall appeals process, the attorney general has also asked that the district court’s permanent injunction against the enforceability of the Protect Illinois Communities Act be stayed. If the appellate court grants the stay, the controversial law will remain in place, for now.
Criticisms of the new Illinois gun ban are widespread. Lawmakers who voted “no” against the new law, which included most Illinois House Republicans, pointed out that the definitions of banned firearms and ammunitions supplies set forth in the new law are vague and potentially unenforceable. They also, like Judge McGlynn, point towards the explicit right to bear arms contained in the federal Bill of Rights, which outranks all State laws.
JOBS
Illinois unemployment rate remained at 5.3% in October 2024. Based on the preliminary figures released by the Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES), the unemployment rate remained unchanged from the 5.3% confirmed for the previous month of September. This Illinois jobless rate was 120 basis points higher than the comparable national unemployment rate of 4.1%.
The preliminary October findings continue to indicate that the post-COVID-19 economic recovery has effectively ended in Illinois, with payroll growth flattening out to zero. Illinois employers reported paying 6,142,400 (seasonally adjusted) non-agricultural workers in October 2024, down 2,400 from the equivalent number in September.
The overall picture of zero job growth in Illinois in 2024 contains large pockets of growth and decline. Over the most recently concluded 12-month period, Illinois employers of people in professional and business services reported cutting 18,400 Illinois jobs, and employers in financial services reported cutting 8,000 jobs.
Illinois continued to create new jobs in healthcare (up 30,400) and government (up 22,300) during the same 12-month period. Manufacturing-oriented metro areas within Illinois continued to experience comparative job stagnation and high unemployment in October 2024. Examples include Danville (6.2% unemployment in October 2024), Decatur (5.8%), and Rockford (5.4%).
Change to State law partly forestalls additional lawsuits based on biometric privacy. Many workplaces use technology-based identifiers, such as fingerprints, to verify that workers have signed in for their work hours and for other essential purposes. Workplaces constantly require people to sign in. As just one example, current federal law requires over-the-road truckers to maintain secure electronic logs for their work hours and mileage driven. These logs are essential to maintain the safety of our nation’s highways.
The Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), an Illinois law enacted in 2008, jeopardized many forms of electronic sign-in in its original wording. Up until this year, the Act treated each of these sign-ins as separate potential violations of the biometric privacy of the people who sign in. Aggressive trial lawyers then began to use the Act to file class-action lawsuits against Illinois employers, seeking huge damages. These damage suits were filed against a wide variety of workplaces and employers, including employers who were using electronic sign-ins to comply with other State and federal laws.
Seeing a threat to Illinois jobs and acting with increasingly rare sensitivity to the need to protect Illinois jobs and workplaces, the 103rd General Assembly enacted a key amendment to BIPA. The new amendatory Act maintains the status of Illinoisans’ biometric privacy as a legal right, but sharply lowers the amount of damages that aggressive trial lawyers can sue for and collect for alleged violations of this privacy.
In a recent decision in federal court in Chicago, the court upheld the validity of this year’s General Assembly clarification of the BIPA law. The decision could save some jobs from being moved out of Illinois. Many House Republicans continue to call for further changes to BIPA to create a reasonable standard for protection of worker privacy, and to grant much-needed clarity to workers and employers as to when a violation of the Act has taken place.
OUTDOOR RECREATION
Firearm Deer Season in Illinois. A second round of firearm deer hunting will be coming from December 5 through 8.
During Firearm Season, hunters can use shotguns, muzzleloaders, handguns, and centerfire rifles. Vertical, traditional, and crossbows can also be used, but only on private property. Hunters also must adhere to clothing requirements, which call for a solid blaze orange or blaze pink hat and an outer garment that displays at least 400 square inches of orange or blaze pink material. In 2018, Rep. Tony McCombie co-sponsored legislation that allowed deer hunters to wear solid pink gear in addition to solid orange.
Hunting hours during this period are one-half hour before sunrise to one-half hour after sunset. Hunters must also have proper deer permits and a valid hunting license. The bag limit is one deer per hunter, and over a 12-month period that begins on July 1, no hunter may harvest more than two antlered deer. Upon killing a deer, hunters must adhere to reporting/registering guidelines as outlined by the IDNR. Find license and permit information here.