East Central Reporter

Rep. Brad Halbrook (R-Champaign) was recently on the “The Real Story with Jeanne Ives” podcast to talk about the state budget for the upcoming 2023 fiscal year.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the budget into law on April 19. Halbrook said Republicans were kept in the dark during its creation.

“We’ve known now for a few months that April 8 was going to be the day (of the vote); we had our normal appropriations hearings, but about three weeks ago the process for us kind of broke down," Halbrook said on the podcast that he linked to on his Facebook page. "Typically you go from hearings into working groups and then bills get formed and ... that’s the process. However, we were never invited in. The Republicans were never invited into the working groups after the hearings ended."

"It’s just typical true-to-form for the Democrats. You got 3,035 pages of bill information (with) just hours to go before the votes,” Halbrook said.

He explained that the Democratic caucus meetings would take hours and he didn't know what topics were discussed

“There’s just a handful of people in the room making the decision about what’s going to be (in the budget) and I think they tell their members, and I think that’s maybe the problem why there’s 2-3-4-hour Democrat caucuses,” Halbrook said. “I think maybe they are getting some details leaked out. I don’t know, I’m not in that room, I’m not privy to those details. It’s been these marathon caucus sessions that the Democrats have, and I know they’re grappling with a lot of issues: the SAFE-T Act and the criminal stuff, the list goes on and on; so I don’t know if they’re spending all this time talking about budget details. But yeah, there’s just a handful of people making these decisions because it’s just bizarre the way it works out.”

Halbrook has been outspoken on a variety of topics this session, including how the Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES) operated during the height of the pandemic. He recently spoke about that topic in a roundtable discussion with his colleagues.

“When the governor shut the state down nearly two years ago ... these (IDES) field offices got shut down and I’m sure every one of our offices got all the calls about ‘hey, we’ve got these special situations,’ Halbrook said. “How many months or weeks longer was it for Illinois to get everything operational to disperse benefits than all the other neighboring states?”