Representative Davidsmeyer shares thoughts on lack of state budget

By Gary Scott on December 3, 2016 at 10:00am

State Representative C.D. Davidsmeyer of Jacksonville believes the time for Illinois to pass a budget bill is now.

At the conclusion of the state’s veto session on Thursday, legislators passed a bill that will raise electricity rates for the state’s consumers and businesses. The legislation comes as an effort to bail out a pair of struggling nuclear power plants in Clinton and the Quad Cities.

However, lawmakers are now leaving Springfield having failed to pass a state budget. Davidsmeyer is one of many legislators left disconcerted about the lack of effort when it comes to budget concerns.

“Today we actually passed a piece of energy legislation that really came through in two weeks. We made something happen, people made some difficult decisions to actually raise rates for our constituents. We’ve been fighting for the past year and a half over a budget  and we can’t get it done in a year and a half, but this piece of energy legislation, which is huge, managed to come through in two weeks. I think that just shows the political will out there, from the Speaker and others, to actually get a budget done. If there’s no will on that side, it’ll never get done. We need to put the pressure on them, we’ve got thirty days before the new General Assembly comes in, and I think we need to get it done now,” says Davidsmeyer.

Governor Rauner said yesterday that he plans to meet with legislative leaders later today as well as on Sunday.